A Seattle Reader Writes on the Titanic

 

 

RMS Titanic departing Southampton on April 10, 1912
 

Titanic Memorial Statue, Strauss Park, Manhattan
 

California, the Unsinkable State; what statue will be built, memorializing her?
 

[In response to “Diversity Makes You Stupid, Crazy, and Criminally Negligent, Chap. MMMCCCCC: Cal School District Took Out $100M Bond That Will Cost It 900% in Interest to Repay=$1Billion! And It’s Not Alone.”]


Dear Mr. Stix,

Ironically, some say that if the Titanic had steered straight for the iceberg, it may not have sunk. The ship was, as my engineer father said, an example of knuckle-headed English design: the watertight compartments did not go all the way up to the deck. Consequently, when the damaged compartments filled up, they overflowed into the next compartments in a domino effect until the ship could not stay afloat. When the Titanic veered away, it struck a glancing blow so multiple compartments were opened--enough that the ship went low enough for the water to overflow into the other compartments.

[N.S. But if they were watertight, how could one overflow into the next? Shouldn’t the damage have been contained?]

On the other hand, if the ship struck head on, only the first compartment would have been damaged and the ship would have remained riding high enough that water wouldn't have overflowed and flooded the other compartments.

By the way, your article says the "shit heading straight for an iceberg"--very funny. Perhaps you subconsciously were thinking that the shit was going to hit the fan--or what the helmsman said when he saw what was happening.

I have always wondered why there was no attempt to transfer the passengers to the icebergs where they could have waited safely for the rescue ship which came by within a few hours.

Best wishes,

BR

N.S. responds: All excellent points that never occurred to me. (Then again, I’m not one of The Better Mousetrap People ™.)

The simplest response I can think of is that following the hubristic delusion of White Star Line officials that they had built an unsinkable ship, they failed to think through a list of disaster scenarios, so that they would have a series of plans in place for dealing with most foreseeable situations. Very few people are any good at coming up with a plan on the fly.

The idea of heading straight into the iceberg is brilliant, but I would imagine counterintuitive, especially since the ship’s officers were looking to save the ship, and such a change of plan would have required that they turn on a dime, and accept that her ship was lost.

Your idea about transferring passengers to icebergs also sounds brilliant, but again, would have required all sorts of logistical thinking and physical preparations (e.g., equipment and training) that went completely against the grain of White Star officials’ thinking, a type of technotopian thinking that was common at the time.