HOW THE GREAT SHIP WENT DOWN
The _Titanic_, fresh from the builder's hands, sailed from Southampton,
Wednesday, April 10, 1912. She reached Cherbourg on the afternoon of the
same day, and Queenstown, Ireland, at noon on Thursday. After embarking
the mails and passengers, she left for New York, having on board 1,324
passengers and a ship's complement of officers and crew of 899
persons. The passenger list showed that there were 329 first-class, 285
second-class, and 710 third-class passengers.
The weather throughout the voyage was clear and the sea calm. At noon
on the third day out, a wireless message was received from the _Baltic_,
dated Sunday, April 14, which read: "Greek steamship _Athinai_ reports
passing icebergs and large quantity of field ice to-day in latitude
41.51 north, longitude 49.52 west." At about 7 P.M. a second warning
was received by the _Titanic_, this time from the _Californian_, which
reported ice about 19 miles to the northward of the track on which
the _Titanic_ was steaming. The message read: "Latitude 42.3 north,
longitude 49.9 west. Three large bergs five miles to southward of us."
Later there was a third message: "_Amerika_ passed two large icebergs in
41.27 north, 50.8 west on the 14th of April." A fourth message, sent by
the _Californian_, reached the ship about an hour before the accident
occurred, or about 10.40 o'clock, which said: "We are stopped and
surrounded by ice."
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF THE TITANIC, TAKEN AS SHE WAS LEAVING SOUTHAMPTON
ON HER MAIDEN VOYAGE]
These wireless warnings prove that the captain of the _Titanic_ knew
there was ice to the north, to the south, and immediately ahead of the
southerly steamship route on which he was steaming. The evidence shows
that Captain Smith remarked to the officer doing duty on the bridge,
"If it is in a slight degree hazy we shall have to go very slowly." The
officer of the watch instructed the lookouts to "keep a sharp lookout
for ice." The night was starlit and the weather exceptionally clear.
After leaving Queenstown the speed of the _Titanic_ had been gradually
increased. The run for the first day was 464 miles, for the second 519
miles, and for the third day, ending at noon Sunday, it was 546 miles.
Testimony given before the Court of Inquiry under Lord Mersey, showed
that the Chief Engineer had arranged to drive the vessel at full
speed for a few hours either on Monday or Tuesday. Twenty-one of the
twenty-nine boilers were in use until Sunday night, when three more were
"lighted." It is evident that the engines were being gradually
speeded up to their maximum revolutions. Both on the bridge and in
the engine-room there was a manifest reluctance to allow anything to
interfere with the full-speed run of the following day. This is the only
possible explanation of the amazing fact that, in spite of successive
warnings that a large icefield with bergs of great size was drifting
right across the course of the _Titanic_, fire was put under additional
boilers and the speed of the ship increased.
It was shown in a previous chapter on "The Dangers of the Sea," that one
of the greatest risks of high-speed travel across the North Atlantic
is a certain spirit of _sangfroid_ which is liable to be begotten of
constant familiarity with danger and a continual run of good luck. If
familiarity ever bred contempt, surely it must have done so among the
captain and officers of the _Titanic_ on that fatal night. One looks in
vain for evidence that the situation was regarded as highly critical and
calling for the most careful navigation;--calling, surely, for something
more than the mere keeping of a good lookout--an imperative duty at
all times, whether by day or night. Yet the fate of that ship and her
precious freight of human life hung upon the mere chance of sighting an
obstruction in time to avoid collision by a quick turn of the helm. The
question of hitting or missing was one not of minutes but of seconds. A
ship like this, nigh upon a thousand feet in length, makes a wide sweep
in turning, even with the helm hard over. At 21 knots the _Titanic_
covered over a third of a mile in a minute's time. Even with her engines
reversed she would have surged ahead for a half mile or so before coming
to a stop. Should she strike an obstruction at full speed, the blow
delivered would equal that of the combined broadsides of two modern
dreadnoughts.
[Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The elimination of swimming pools, squash courts and summer gardens
would cover the cost of additional bulkheads and inner skins.
SWIMMING POOL ON THE TITANIC]
And so the majestic ship swept swiftly to her doom--a concrete
expression of man's age-long struggle to subdue the resistless forces of
nature--a pathetic picture both of his power and his impotence. As she
sped on under the dim light of the stars, not a soul on board dreamed
to what a death-grapple she was coming with the relentless powers of
the sea. Latest product of the shipbuilder's art, she was about to brush
elbows with another giant of the sea, launched by nature from the frozen
shipyards of the north, and she was to reel from the contact stricken to
the death like the fragile thing she was!
At 11.46 P.M. the sharp warning came from the lookout: "Iceberg right
ahead." Instantly the engines were reversed and the helm was put hard
a-starboard. A few seconds earlier and she might have cleared. As it
was, she struck an underwater, projecting shelf of the iceberg, and
ripped open 200 feet of her plating, from forward of the collision
bulkhead to a few feet aft of the bulkhead separating boiler-rooms
numbers 5 and 6. It was a death wound! How deeply the iceberg cut into
the fabric of the ship will never be known. Probably the first incision
was deep and wide, the damage, as the shelf of ice was ground down by
contact with the framing and plating of the ship becoming less in area
as successive compartments were ruptured.
[Illustration: Courtesy of _Scientific American_
THE TITANIC STRUCK A GLANCING BLOW AGAINST AN UNDER-WATER SHELF OF THE
ICEBERG, OPENING UP FIVE COMPARTMENTS. HAD SHE BEEN PROVIDED WITH A
WATERTIGHT DECK AT OR NEAR THE WATER LINE, THE WATER WHICH ENTERED THE
SHIP WOULD HAVE BEEN CONFINED BELOW THAT DECK, AND THE BUOYANCY OF THAT
PORTION OF THE SHIP ABOVE WATER WOULD HAVE KEPT HER AFLOAT. AS IT WAS,
THE WATER ROSE THROUGH OPENINGS IN THE DECKS AND DESTROYED THE RESERVE
BUOYANCY]
Whatever may have been the depth of the injury, it is certain from
the evidence that the six forward compartments were opened to the sea.
Immediately after the collision the whistling of air, as it issued from
the escape pipe of the forepeak tank, indicated that the tank was being
filled by an inrush of water. The three following compartments, in
which were located the baggage-room and mail-room, were quickly flooded.
Leading fireman Barrett, who was in the forward boiler-room, felt the
shock of the collision. Immediately afterwards he saw the outer skin of
the ship ripped open about two feet above the floor, and a large volume
of water came rushing into the ship. He was quick enough to jump through
the open door in the bulkhead separating boiler-rooms 6 and 5, before
it was released from the bridge. The damage just abaft of this bulkhead
admitted water to the forward coal-bunker of room No. 5, which held for
a while, but being of non-watertight and rather light construction, must
have soon given way; for the same witness testified to a sudden rush of
water coming across the floor-plates between the boilers.
In spite of the frightful extent of the damage, the _Titanic_, because
of the great height to which her plated structure extended above the
water-line, and the consequent large amount of reserve buoyancy which
she possessed, would probably have remained afloat a great many hours
longer than she did, had the deck to which her bulkheads extended been
thoroughly watertight. As it was, this deck (upper deck E) was pierced
by hatchways and stairways which, as the bow settled deeper and deeper,
permitted the water to flow up over the deck and pass aft over the tops
of the after bulkheads and so-called watertight compartments. See page
129.
Now, it so happened that for the full length of the boiler-rooms there
had been constructed on upper deck E what was known as the "working-crew
alleyway." On the inboard side of this passage six non-watertight doors
opened on to as many iron ladders leading down to the boiler-rooms. Not
only were these doors non-watertight, but they consisted of a mere open
frame or grating, this construction having been adopted, doubtless, for
purposes of ventilation. Unfortunately, although there was a watertight
door at the after end of this alleyway, there was none at its forward
end. The water which boiled up from the forward flooded compartments,
as it flowed aft, poured successively through the open grating of the
alleyway doors, flooding the compartments below, one after the other.
[Illustration:
TITANIC 1912
MAURETANIA 1906
_Titanic_: Single skin, 16 compartments; _Mauretania_: double skin, 34
compartments.
COMPARISON OF SUBDIVISION IN TWO FAMOUS SHIPS]
It does not take a technically instructed mind to understand from this
that the safety elements of the construction of the _Titanic_ were as
faulty above the water-line as they were below it. The absence of an
inner skin and the presence of these many openings in her bulkhead
deck combined to sink this huge ship, whose reserve buoyancy must have
amounted to at least 80,000 tons, in the brief space of two and one-half
hours.
Not until the designer, Mr. Andrews, had made known to the captain
that the ship was doomed was the order given to man the lifeboats. The
lifeboats, forsooth! Twenty of them in all with a maximum accommodation,
if every one were loaded to its full capacity, of something over one
thousand, for a ship's company that numbered 2,223 in all. Just here,
in this very fatal discrepancy, is to be found proof of the widespread
belief that a great ship like the _Titanic_ was practically unsinkable,
and therefore in times of dire stress such as this, was well able to act
as its own lifeboat until rescuing ships, summoned by wireless, should
come to her aid.
The manner of the stricken ship's final plunge to the bottom may be
readily gathered from the stories told by the survivors. As compartment
after compartment was filled by overflow from the decks above, her bow
sank deeper and her stern lifted high in the air, until the ship, buoyed
up by her after compartments, swung almost vertically in the water like
a gigantic spar buoy. In this unaccustomed position, her engines and
boilers, standing out from the floor like brackets from a wall, tore
loose from their foundations and crashed down into the forward part of
the ship. Probably it was the muffled roar of this falling machinery
that caused some of the survivors to imagine that they witnessed the
bursting of boilers and the breaking apart of the hull. As a matter of
fact, the shell of the _Titanic_ went to the bottom practically intact.
One by one the after compartments gave way, until the ship, weighted
at her forward end with the wreckage of engine- and boiler-rooms, sank,
straight as an arrow, to bury herself deep in the ooze of the Atlantic
bottom two miles below. There, for aught we know, with several hundred
feet of her hull rising sheer above the ocean floor, she may now be
standing, a sublime memorial shaft to the fifteen hundred souls who
perished in this unspeakable tragedy!
[Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Smaller rooms would admit of higher bulkheads and better
fire-protection.
THE VAST DINING-ROOM OF THE TITANIC]