The building of the Titanic was poorly thought out and unplanned while construction took place. The “hull of the ship was divided by 15 transverse watertight bulkheads into 16 watertight compartments. [It] was designed to float with any of [the] two compartments breached” (Ballard). The compartments automatically closed tightly if the water level had reached a certain height (“Titanic”). The ship was equipped with two reciprocating four-cylinder, triple-expansion steam engines and one low-pressure Parsons turbine. The turbine powered three propellers. The Titanic held the ability to sail at a top speed of 26 miles per hour. She was equipped with 29 boilers that were operated by 159 coal-burning furnaces (“Titanic”). Later concluded, construction was poor. Little time had been put forth into making the ship as safe as it possibly could have been due to the designers being too enthralled in the final appearance of the ship. The fundamentals needed to built a ship had been ignored by the people involved in the final product of the Titanic. After construction had been completed, there was room for improvement. However, the crew of the Titanic had made little effort in making the travelers safe.
The officers of the Titanic had failed to take the necessary precautions of the ship in order to make it a successful and long-lasting voyage to New York. Dr. Ballard remarks, “The ship had lifeboats for barely half the estimated 2,200 [people] on board. Incredibly, the Titanic actually carried more lifeboats than the British Board of Trade regulations of the day required” (Ballard). The lifeboat requirement had been in direct proportion to the ship’s gross tonnage, explains Candace Keener of HowStuffWorks. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 “stopped calculating at a ship of 10,000 tons, which was beholden to carry 16 lifeboats. Titanic, which had about 35,000 tons on that figure, carried precisely 16 lifeboats” (Keener). The Merchant Shipping Act required a ship of a much lighter weight than the Titanic to carry 16 lifeboats. The Titanic had strategically hidden only 16 lifeboats for the trip to New York. Based on the Act, it is estimated that the Titanic should have carried approximately 70 lifeboats. Safety supplies had also been a concern. The ship had been short on supplies, such as binoculars (used by spectators and crew members on higher decks) and searchlights. Crewmembers and the captain of the Titanic had ignored the precautions. The devastating amount of deaths could have been avoided if they had put more effort into making the ship safe.
The devastatingly low amount of lifeboats played a giant role in the unnecessarily high death toll. Although, the crewmembers did not load the maximum amount of people onto the lifeboats as the ship was sinking. Ballard explains, “The first boat was lowered-starboard No. 7. Although it had a capacity of 65 people, it left with only 28 aboard” (Ballard). The members allowing travelers on the lifeboats were not following the guidelines given to them by the captain. The members were to load women and children on first, then to allow travelers from descending class orders (first class was to board first, second class to follow, and third class was to board after). A majority of the families and those traveling to New York who had been rescued were from first class. Also, men sneakily boarded the lifeboats while they were descending to the ocean in order to avoid because demanded by crew to disembark the lifeboat. Of the approximate 2,200 total amount of travelers, only 705 people survived. The 705 survivors were the only ones who had been lucky enough to board a lifeboat.
Titanic officials failed to realize that there had been additional ways to save more people, but they failed to do so. The ship had never been tested at its maximum speed, therefore causing dilemma when the ship traveled at full speed the night that it had hit the iceberg. If practice had been taken advantage of, the crewmembers would have noticed the implications of the engines that the ship underwent at full speed. The ship underwent only a minimum of six hours of testing (Keener) while most ships undergo far more hours of testing and investigation of safety before hitting the high seas for a long travel period. Also, if practice had been done, members would have had more time to work with lowering the lifeboats. Although it seems as if the construction of the Titanic had been well planned and strategic, the progression of speed and travel traveled with ship’s strength to a point that she could not handle. By reversing the engines, as the captain explained to do, the ship would travel in the opposite direction, change paths, and hopefully avoid hitting the iceberg that had been their main obstacle. The Titanic had been traveling at full speed, something that the crewmates were not used to, and the 300-foot long iceberg sliced the side of the hull. Had the ship traveled at a slower pace and more carefully, the iceberg may have been avoided. The captain had been too anxious and performed the first thought that came to his mind: the fast the ship goes, the better. The mast had also been pulled backwards after the ship’s four stacks had been ripped from their foundation and had fallen across the bridge as the ship was sinking. The collapsing stack pulled the mast in a backward direction. The main reasoning behind the fatal loss of the Titanic had been in direct contact with its construction, as well as the crewmembers’ actions. The iceberg that collided with the shit had been a large contributor, but the ship’s construction was poorly thought out, concluding in the sinking of the ship and the high death toll.
The construction, ignored precautions, and main reasoning behind the end of the Titanic resulted in a majority of the lives’ of travelers being lost. The construction of the Titanic had been poor and resulted in the ship being fragile and damaged easily. There had been few precautions made in order to ensure the safety of the travelers during the trip from Southampton, England to New York. Besides from the construction and ignored precautions, there had been obvious conclusions behind the collapse of the ship on April 14th. Although it had been a beautiful ship on the outside, it lacked the important fundamentals on the inside, especially in the engine room where little notice had been taken. If the necessary precautions had been made, and the construction had been better planned, there could have been more survivors of the accident to tell their hidden stories; however, there is only a limited amount of facts to be researched and read.
Works Cited
“Titanic Construction, Construction of the Titanic.” Titanic Universe—Extensive Information
about the RMS Titanic of 1912. Web. 15 Dec 2010.
Ballard, Dr. Robert D. and Rick Archbold. The Discovery of the Titanic. New York:
Warner/Madison Press, 1987. Print.
Keener, Candace. “Howstuffworks “How the Titanic Worked” Howstuffworks “Adventure”
Web. 15 Dec 2010.
Mertz, Leslie A. Science and Its Times. “Remains of the RMS Titanic Discovered” Detroit: Gale,
2001. P33-36. Gale Virtual Reference Library. 19 Dec 2010. eBook.
