An Unsinkable Titanic: Every Ship its own Lifeboat

by John Bernard Walker

I. The fact that the Titanic sank in two hours and thirty minutes after a collision demonstrates that the margin of safety against foundering in this ship was dangerously narrow.

II. It is not to the point to say that the collision was of an unusual character and may never occur again. Collision with an iceberg is one of the permanent risks of ocean travel, and this stupendous calamity has shown how disastrous its results may be. We cannot afford to gamble with chance in a hazard whose issue involves the life or death of a whole townful of people.

III. If it be structurally possible, and the cost is not prohibitive, passenger ships should be so designed, that they cannot be sunk by any of the accidents of the sea,—not even by such a disaster as befell the Titanic.

IV. That such design and construction are possible is proved by the fact that the first of the large ocean liners, the Great Eastern, built over half a century ago, so far fulfilled these conditions, that, after receiving injuries to her hull more extensive than those which sank the Titanic, she came safely to port.

V. It is not to the point to attribute the financial failure of the Great Eastern to the costly character of her construction. She failed because, commercially, she was ahead of her time, passenger and freight traffic being yet in their infancy when the ship was launched. Cheap steel and modern shipyard facilities have made it possible to build a ship of the size and unsinkable characteristics of the Great Eastern, with a reduction in the cost of twenty to thirty per cent.

VI. The principles of unsinkable construction, as formulated by Brunel and worked out in this remarkable ship, have been adopted in their entirety by naval constructors, and are to be found embodied in every modern warship. These elements—the double skin, transverse and longitudinal bulkheads, and watertight decks—are the sine qua non of warship construction; and in the designing of warships, they receive the first consideration, all other questions of speed, armour-protection, and gun-power being made subordinate.

VII. In the building of merchant ships, unsinkable construction has been sacrificed to considerations of speed, convenience of operation, and the provision of luxurious accommodations for the travelling public. The inner skin, the longitudinal bulkhead, and the watertight deck have been abandoned. Although the transverse bulkhead has been retained, its efficiency has been greatly impaired; for, whereas these bulkheads in the Great Eastern extended thirty feet above the water-line; in the Titanic, they were carried only ten feet above the same point.

VIII. The portentous significance of this decline in the art of unsinkable construction will be realised, when it is borne in mind that the Titanic was built to the highest requirements of the Board of Trade and the insurance companies. She was the latest example of current and approved practice in the construction of high-class passenger ships of the first magnitude; and, judged on the score of safety against sinking, she was as safe a ship as ninety-five out of every hundred merchant vessels afloat to-day.

IX. That the narrowing of the margin of safety in merchant ships during the past fifty years has not been due to urgent considerations of economy, is proved by the fact that shipowners have not hesitated to incur the enormous expense involved in providing the costly machinery to secure high speed, or the equally heavy outlay involved in providing the sumptuous accommodations which characterise the modern liner.

X. If, then, by making moderate concessions in the direction of speed and luxury, it would be possible, without adding to the cost, to reintroduce those structural features which are necessary to render a ship unsinkable, considerations of humanity demand that it should be done.