This well-protected ship has side coal bunkers, and inner skin in engine-rooms. There are thirty-three compartments below the water-line.
Hold Plan of Kronprinzessin Cecilie
It is greatly to the credit of the Germans that they have given such careful attention to the question of fire protection. We have shown in a previous chapter that the long stretch of staterooms, with alleyways several hundred feet in length running through them, offer dangerous facilities for the rapid spread of a fire, should it once obtain a strong hold on the inflammable material of which the stateroom partitions and furnishings are composed. On the Kaiser Wilhelm II and Cecilie the passenger accommodations on the main deck are protected against the spread of fire by four steel bulkheads, which extend from side to side of the ship. Where the alleyways intersect these bulkheads, fire-doors are provided which are closed by hand and secured by strong clamps.
Courtesy of Engineering
Section Through Engine-Room of the Kaiser Wilhelm II, Showing Inner Bottom Carried Up Sides of Ship, to Form Double Skin
The fire protection also includes both an outside and an inside line of fire-mains. Fire-drill, with full pressure on the mains, is carried on every time the ship is in port, the outside lines of fire-mains being used. Once every three months there is a fire-drill with the inside line of mains. Every time the ship reaches her home port, both fire-drills and lifeboat drills are carried out under the close inspection of German Government officials.
Now, the provision of fire bulkheads is such an excellent protection that it should be made compulsory upon every steamship of large carrying capacity. Moreover, they should be extended throughout the full tier of decks reserved for passenger accommodation. The bulkheads need not be of heavy construction, and they can be placed in the natural line of division of the staterooms, where they will cause no inconvenience.
Special interest attaches to the Imperator of the Hamburg-American Line, just now, because she is the latest and largest of those huge ocean liners, of which the Olympic and Titanic were the forerunners. This truly enormous vessel, 900 feet long and 96 feet broad, will displace, when fully loaded, 65,000 tons, or 5,000 tons more than the Titanic. A study of her hold plan and inboard profile, shown on page [163], proves that it is possible to provide for an even larger boiler and machinery plant than that of the Titanic, without making any of that sacrifice of safety, which is so evident in the arrangement of compartments and bulkheads on the Titanic. Not only are the bulkheads throughout the machinery and boiler compartments carried to the second deck above the water-line, but the same spaces, throughout their whole length, are protected by an inner skin in the form of the longitudinal bulkheads of the side bunkers. The large forward engine-room is also protected by two longitudinal bulkheads at the sides of the ship and the after engine-room is divided by a central longitudinal bulkhead. Protection against the spread of fire is assured by several bulkheads worked across the decks which are devoted to passenger accommodation.