The Sinking of the Titanic, and Great Sea Disasters | Page 8

and refrigerating machine
and a number of provision rooms on the after part of the lower and
orlop decks. There were separate cold rooms for beef, mutton, poultry,
game, fish, vegetables, fruit, butter, bacon, cheese, flowers, mineral
water, wine, spirits and champagne, all maintained at different
temperatures most suitable to each. Perishable freight had a

compartment of its own, also chilled by the plant.
COMFORT AND STABILITY
Two main ideas were carried out in the Titanic. One was comfort and
the other stability. The vessel was planned to be an ocean ferry. She
was to have only a speed of twenty-one knots, far below that of some
other modern vessels, but she was planned to make that speed, blow
high or blow low, so that if she left one side of the ocean at a given
time she could be relied on to reach the other side at almost a certain
minute of a certain hour.
One who has looked into modern methods for safeguarding
{illust. caption = LIFE-BOAT AND DAVITS ON THE TITANIC
This diagram shows very clearly the arrangement of the life-boats and
the manner in which they were launched.}
a vessel of the Titanic type can hardly imagine an accident that could
cause her to founder. No collision such as has been the fate of any ship
in recent years, it has been thought up to this time, could send her down,
nor could running against an iceberg do it unless such an accident were
coupled with the remotely possible blowing out of a boiler. She would
sink at once, probably, if she were to run over a submerged rock or
derelict in such manner that both her keel plates and her double bottom
were torn away for more than half her length; but such a catastrophe
was so remotely possible that it did not even enter the field of
conjecture.
The reason for all this is found in the modern arrangement of
water-tight steel compartments into which all ships now are divided
and of which the Titanic had fifteen so disposed that half of them,
including the largest, could be flooded without impairing the safety of
the vessel. Probably it was the working of these bulkheads and the
water-tight doors between them as they are supposed to work that saved
the Titanic from foundering when she struck the iceberg.

These bulkheads were of heavy sheet steel and started at the very
bottom of the ship and extended right up to the top side. The openings
in the bulkheads were just about the size of the ordinary doorway, but
the doors did not swing as in a house, but fitted into water-tight grooves
above the opening. They could be released instantly in several ways,
and once closed formed a barrier to the water as solid as the bulkhead
itself.
In the Titanic, as in other great modern ships, these doors were held in
place above the openings by friction clutches. On the bridge was a
switch which connected with an electric magnet at the side of the
bulkhead opening. The turning of this switch caused the magnet to
draw down a heavy weight, which instantly released the friction clutch,
and allowed the door to fall or slide down over the opening in a second.
If, however, through accident the bridge switch was rendered useless
the doors would close automatically in a few seconds. This was
arranged by means of large metal floats at the side of the doorways,
which rested just above the level of the double bottom, and as the water
entered the compartments these floats would rise to it and directly
release the clutch holding the door open. These clutches could also be
released by hand.
It was said of the Titanic that liner compartments could be flooded as
far back or as far forward as the engine room and she would float,
though she might take on a heavy list, or settle considerably at one end.
To provide against just such an accident as she is said to have
encountered she had set back a good distance from the bows an extra
heavy cross partition known as the collision bulkhead, which would
prevent water getting in amidships, even though a good part of her bow
should be torn away. What a ship can stand and still float was shown a
few years ago when the Suevic of the White Star Line went on the
rocks on the British coast. The wreckers could not move the forward
part of her, so they separated her into two sections by the use of
dynamite, and after putting in a temporary bulkhead floated off the
after half of the ship, put it in dry dock and built a new forward part for
her. More recently the battleship Maine, or what