XI. Should the stupendous disaster of April the 14th lead us back to the sane construction of fifty years ago, and teach us so to construct the future passenger ship that she shall be not merely fast and comfortable, but practically unsinkable, the hapless multitude who went down to their death in that unspeakable calamity will not have died in vain.
XII. In conclusion, let us note what changes would render such a ship as the Titanic unsinkable:
(a) The inner floor of the double bottom should be extended up the sides to a watertight connection with the middle deck. This inner skin should extend from bulkhead No. 1 at the bow to bulkhead No. 14, the second bulkhead from the stern.
(b) The lower deck should be made absolutely watertight from stem to stern, so as to form practically a second inner bottom; and it should be strengthened to withstand a water pressure equal to that to which the outer bottom of the ship is subjected at normal draft.
(c) All openings through this deck, such as those for hatches and ladders and for the boiler uptakes, should be enclosed by strong watertight casings, carried up to the shelter deck, and free from any doors or openings leading to the intervening decks,—the construction being such that the water, rising within these casings from the flooded spaces below the lower deck, could not find its way out to the decks above.
(d) The second bulkhead from the bow and the second from the stern should be carried up to the shelter deck. All the intermediate bulkheads should be extended one deck higher to the saloon deck, D.
(e) The cargo spaces in compartments 3 and 4, lying below the middle deck, should be divided by a central longitudinal bulkhead, and the hatches, leading up from these holds, should be enclosed in watertight casings extending, without any openings, to the shelter deck, where they should be closed by watertight hatch covers. The huge reciprocating-engine-room should be divided by a similar, central, longitudinal bulkhead.
(f) Finally, the passenger spaces on decks A, B, C, and D, should be protected against fire by the construction, at suitable intervals, of transverse bulkheads of light construction, provided with fire-doors where they intersect the alleyways.
A Titanic, as thus modified, might reasonably be pronounced unsinkable. To such a ship we could confidently apply the verdict of Brunel, as recorded in his notes on the strength and safety of the Great Eastern: "No combination of circumstances, within the ordinary range of probability, can cause such damage as to sink her."