Wednesday, August 29, 2012

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

About transferring passengers to the iceberg, it is my understanding that the ship kept steaming after the collision. The iceberg was far behind them. In fact it is claimed that this caused the ship to sink sooner than it would have otherwise as water was forced in under ram pressure as opposed to just normal flooding.

-BB

Anonymous said...

I've seen that theory before. Namely, if the Titanic had hit the iceberg head-on it would have stayed afloat. The ship would have been damaged, but it could have been towed into port at the very least.

The officer instinctively tried to miss the iceberg by turning. Since they were already too close, a gash was torn against the hull. First one compartment, then another until the ship sunk.

As the above poster wrote, the iceberg was far behind by the time the ship was stopped dead in the water.

Present-day America is an obvious parallel to the Titanic for those willing to look.

David In TN

Anonymous said...

Present-day America is an obvious parallel to the Titanic for those willing to look.

In other words our ship America has already struck the iceberg and all chances of saving the ship has been expended and there are not enough life boats for the passengers and we are going down by the head.

So it will be blacks and hispanics first into the life boats. The liberals will shoot any White trying to get into a life boat. We Whites can just sing.