The Titanic Tragedy

Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger liner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. On the night of 14 April 1912, during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City with 2,240 people on board, Titanic struck an iceberg. The ship sank two hours and forty minutes later early on 15 April 1912. At the time of her launching in 1912, she was the largest passenger steamship in the world. The sinking resulted in the death of 1,517 people. The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be “unsinkable” .It was a great shock to many that despite the advanced technology and experienced crew, the Titanic still sank with a great loss of life. The construction of the RMS Titanic, funded by the American J.P. Morgan and his International Mercantile Marine Co., began on 31 March 1909. Titanic's hull was launched on 31 May 1911, and the outfitting was completed by 31 March 1911. Titanic was 269 m long and 28 m wide, had a gross register tonnage of 46,328 tons, and the distance from keel to top of funnels was 54 m. Titanic contained two reciprocating four-cylinder, triple expansion, inverted steam engines and one low pressure Parsons turbine which powered three propellers. There were 29 boilers fired by 159 coal burning furnaces that helped the vessel achieve a top speed of 23 knots. Only three of the four 19 m tall funnels were functional; the fourth funnel, which only served as a vent, was added to make the ship look more impressive. The ship could hold a total of 3,547 passengers and crew and because she carried mail, her name was given the prefix RMS (Royal Mail Steamer) as well as SS (Steam Ship).
In luxury and opulence Titanic surpassed all rivals. The facilities included an on-board swimming pool, a gymnasium, a Turkish bath, libraries in both the first and second-class, and a squash court. The ship incorporated technologically advanced features of the period. She had an extensive electrical subsystem with steam-powered generators and ship-wide electrical wiring feeding electric lights. It also had boasted two wireless Marconi sets, including a powerful 1,500-watt radio manned by operators who worked in shifts, allowing constant contact and the transmission of passenger messages. While sailing south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the lookouts spotted a large iceberg directly ahead of the ship and sounded the ship’s bell three times. The first officer ordered an abrupt turn to port (left) and full speed astern, which began the process of stopping and reversing the ship’s engines. A collision was inevitable and the iceberg brushed the ship’s starboard (right) side, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 91 m .The hull of the ship was divided into 16 watertight compartments. As seawater filled the forward compartments, the watertight doors shut. However, while the ship could stay afloat with four flooded compartments, five were filling up with water.
When the first four forward compartments were flooded , the vessel developed a trim by bow. The Titanic’s compartments were not capped at the top, so water from the ruptured forward compartments filled each succeeding compartment aft as the ship’s incline brought the bow below the waterline. The five water-filled compartments weighed down the ship so that the tops of the forward watertight bulkheads fell below the ship’s waterline, allowing water to pour into additional compartments. The stern tilted up to a 45 degree angle. The critical load at a point between the third and fourth funnels had been reached and the ship split apart down the middle under its enormous weight. The streamlined bow planed off approximately 609 m below the surface and slowed somewhat, landing relatively gently. The stern, however, plunged violently to the ocean floor, the hull being torn apart along the way from massive implosions and smashed into the bottom at considerable speed, grinding the hull deep into the silt.
A detailed analysis of small pieces of the steel plating from the Titanic's wreck hull found that it was of a metallurgy that loses its elasticity and becomes brittle in cold or icy water, leaving it vulnerable to dent-induced ruptures. The pieces of steel were found to have very high content of phosphorus and sulphur. High content of phosphorus initiates fractures, sulphur forms grains of iron sulphide that facilitate propagation of cracks, and lack of manganese makes the steel less ductile. Another factor was the rivets holding the hull together, which were fragile than; from the 48 rivets recovered from the hulk of the Titanic, scientists found many to be riddled with high concentrations of slag. A glassy residue of smelting, slag can make rivets brittle and prone to fracture. The investigations found that many safety rules were simply out of date. The investigators also learned that the Titanic had sufficient lifeboat space for all first-class passengers, but not for the lower classes. In fact, most third-class, or steerage, passengers had no idea where the lifeboats were, much less any way of getting up to the higher decks where the lifeboats were stowed. . The Titanic carried 20 lifeboats with a total capacity of 1,178 persons. While not enough to hold all of the passengers and crew, the Titanic carried more boats than was required by the British Board of Regulations. At the time, the number of lifeboats required was determined by a ship's gross register tonnage, rather than her human capacity.
Although Titanic’s rudder was not legally too small for a ship of her size, the rudder’s design was hardly state-of-the-art; no account was made for advances in scale and little thought was given to how a ship, 269 m long, might turn in an emergency or avoid collision with an iceberg. A more objective assessment of the rudder provision compares it with the legal requirement of the time; the area had to be within a range of 1·5% and 5% of the hull’s underwater profile and, at 1·9%, the Titanic was at the low end of the range. However, the tall rudder design was more effective at the vessel’s designed cruising speed; short, square rudders were more suitable for low-speed manoeuvring. Perhaps more fatal to the design of the Titanic was her triple screw engine configuration, which had reciprocating steam engines driving her wing propellers and a steam turbine driving her centre propeller. The reciprocating engines were reversible while the turbine was not. After the collision the engines were reversed to avoid the iceberg but since the centre turbine could not reverse during the ”full speed astern” manoeuvre, it was simply stopped. Since the centre propeller was positioned forward of the ship’s rudder, the effectiveness of that rudder was greatly reduced.
As a result of the disaster, the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was called in London in 1913, the first version of which was adopted in 1914. The convention drew up rules requiring that every ship have lifeboat space for each person embarked; that lifeboat drills be held during each voyage; and because the Californian had not heard the distress signals of the Titanic, that ships were to maintain a 24-hour radio watch. The International Ice Patrol also was established to warn ships of icebergs in the North Atlantic shipping lanes. While Titanic had a double bottom, she did not have a double hull; after the sinking of Titanic, new ships were designed with double bottoms as well as double hulls which were extended up the sides of their hulls, above their waterlines.
Numerous safety improvements for ocean-going vessels were implemented, including improved hull and bulkhead design, access throughout the ship for egress of passengers, lifeboat requirements, improved life-vest design, the holding of safety drills, better passenger notification, radio communication laws etc. The current SOLAS Convention includes articles setting out general obligations, amend-ment procedure on the Construction - Subdivision and stability, machinery and electrical installations on sea going vessels. It is stipulated that the subdivision of passenger ships into watertight compartments must be such that after assumed damage to the ship’s hull the vessel will remain afloat and stable. The degree of subdivision - measured by the maximum permissible distance between two adjacent bulkheads - varies with ship’s length and the service in which it is engaged. The highest degree of subdivision applies to passenger ships. The machinery and electrical installations are designed to ensure that services which are essential for the safety of the ship, passengers and crew are available at all times. SOLAS also stress on Life-saving appliances and arrangements like adequate number of life boats, rescue boats and life jackets according to type of ship.
All passenger ships and all cargo ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards on international voyages are required to carry equipment designed to improve the chances of rescue following an accident, including satellite emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRBs) and search and rescue transponders (SARTs) for the location of the ship or survival craft. The dramatic sinking of the luxury liner Titanic remains one of the most terrible catastrophes in shipping history.