An Unsinkable Titanic: Every Ship its own Lifeboat

by John Bernard Walker

Courtesy of U. S. Navy Department

Below the water line this ship is divided into 500 water-tight compartments.

The United States Battleship Kansas

In the matter of subdivision as a protection against sinking, there is this important difference between the merchant ship and the warship, that, whereas the merchant ship is sunk through accident, the warship is sunk by deliberate intention. The amount of damage done to the former ship will be great or small according to the accidental conditions of the time; but the damage to the warship is the result of a deliberately planned attack, and is wrought by powerful agencies, designed to execute the maximum amount of destruction with every blow delivered.

A large proportion of the time and money which have been expended in the development of the instruments of naval warfare has been devoted to the design and construction of weapons, whose object is to sink the enemy by destroying the integrity of the submerged portion of the hull. Chief among these weapons are the ram, the torpedo, and the mine. There can be no question that the damage inflicted by the ram of a warship would be far greater, other things being equal, than that inflicted by the bow of a merchant ship. The ram is built especially for its purpose. Not only is it an exceedingly stiff and strong construction; but it is so framed and tied into the bow of the warship, that it will tear open a long, gaping wound in the hull of the enemy before it is broken off or twisted out of place. The bow of the merchant vessel is a relatively frail structure, and many a ship that has been rammed has owed its salvation to the fact that immediately upon contact, the bow of the ramming ship is crumpled up or bent aside, and the depth of penetration into the vessel that is rammed is greatly limited. Furthermore, because of its underwater projection, the ram develops the whole force of the blow beneath the water-line, where the injury will be most fatal. Even more potent than the ram is the torpedo, which of late years has been developed to a point of efficiency in range, speed, and destructive power which has rendered it perhaps the most dreaded of all the weapons of naval warfare. The modern torpedo carries in its head a charge of over 200 pounds of guncotton and has a range of 10,000 yards. Ordinarily, it is set to run at a depth of 10 to 12 feet below the water; and should it get home against the side of a ship, it will strike her well below the armour belt and upon the relatively thin plating of the hull.

Most destructive of all weapons for underwater attack, however, is the mine, which sent to the bottom many a good ship during the Russo-Japanese war. The more deadly effects of the mine, as compared with the torpedo, are due to its heavy charge of high explosive, which sometimes reaches as high as 500 pounds. Contact, even with a mine, is not necessarily fatal; indeed the notable instances in which warships have gone to the bottom immediately upon striking a mine have been due to the fact that the mine exploded immediately under, or in close proximity to the ship's magazines, which, being set off by the shock, tore the ship apart and caused her to go down within a few minutes' time. This was what happened to our own battleship Maine in Havana harbour, and to the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk and the Japanese battleship Hatsuse at Port Arthur.

Enough has been said to prove that when the naval architect undertakes to build a hull that will be proof against the blow, not merely of one but of several of these terrific weapons, he has set himself a task that may well try his ingenuity to the utmost. Protection by heavy armour is out of the question. The weight would be prohibitive and, indeed, all the side armour that he can put upon the ship is needed at the water-line and above it, as a protection against the armour-piercing, high-explosive shells of the enemy.

Heavy armour, then, being out of the question, he has to fall back upon the one method of defense left at his disposal,—minute subdivision into watertight compartments. Associated with this is the placing at the water-line of a heavy steel deck, known as the protective deck, which extends over the whole length and breadth of the hull and is made thoroughly watertight.