The Loss of the S.S. Titanic by Lawrence Beesley (free ebook reader for pc .txt) 📕

CONSTRUCTION AND PREPARATIONS FOR THE FIRST VOYAGE

The history of the R.M.S. Titanic, of the White Star Line, is one of

the most tragically short it is possible to conceive. The world had

waited expectantly for its launching and again for its sailing; had

read accounts of its tremendous size and its unexampled completeness

and luxury; had felt it a matter of the greatest satisfaction that

such a comfortable, and above all such a safe boat had been designed

and built—the “unsinkable lifeboat”;—and then in a moment to hear

that it had gone to the bottom as if it had been the veriest tramp

steamer of a few hundred tons; and with it fifteen hundred passengers,

some of them known the world over! The improbability of such a thing

ever happening was what staggered humanity.

If its history had to be written in a single paragraph it would be

somewhat as follows:—

“The R.M.S. Titanic was built by Messrs. Harland & Wolff at their

well-known ship-building works at Queen’s Island, Belfast, side by

side with her sister ship the Olympic. The twin vessels marked such an

increase in size that specially laid-out joiner and boiler shops were

prepared to aid in their construction, and the space usually taken up

by three building slips was given up to them. The keel of the Titanic

was laid on March 31, 1909, and she was launched on May 31, 1911; she

passed her trials before the Board of Trade officials on March 31,

1912, at Belfast, arrived at Southampton on April 4, and sailed the

following Wednesday, April 10, with 2208 passengers and crew, on her

maiden voyage to New York. She called at Cherbourg the same day,

Queenstown Thursday, and left for New York in the afternoon, expecting

to arrive the following Wednesday morning. But the voyage was never

completed. She collided with an iceberg on Sunday at 11.45 P.M. in

Lat. 41� 46’ N. and Long. 50� 14’ W., and sank two hours and a half

later; 815 of her passengers and 688 of her crew were drowned and 705

rescued by the Carpathia.”

Such is the record of the Titanic, the largest ship the world had ever

seen—she was three inches longer than the Olympic and one thousand

tons more in gross tonnage—and her end was the greatest maritime

disaster known. The whole civilized world was stirred to its depths

when the full extent of loss of life was learned, and it has not yet

recovered from the shock. And that is without doubt a good thing. It

should not recover from it until the possibility of such a disaster

occurring again has been utterly removed from human society, whether

by separate legislation in different countries or by international

agreement. No living person should seek to dwell in thought for one

moment on such a disaster except in the endeavour to glean from it

knowledge that will be of profit to the whole world in the future.

When such knowledge is practically applied in the construction,

equipment, and navigation of passenger steamers—and not until

then—will be the time to cease to think of the Titanic disaster and

of the hundreds of men and women so needlessly sacrificed.

A few words on the ship’s construction and equipment will be necessary

in order to make clear many points that arise in the course of this

book. A few figures have been added which it is hoped will help the

reader to follow events more closely than he otherwise could.

The considerations that inspired the builders to design the Titanic on

the lines on which she was constructed were those of speed, weight of

displacement, passenger and cargo accommodation. High speed is very

expensive, because the initial cost of the necessary powerful

machinery is enormous, the running expenses entailed very heavy, and

passenger and cargo accommodation have to be fined down to make the

resistance through the water as little as possible and to keep the

weight down. An increase in size brings a builder at once into

conflict with the question of dock and harbour accommodation at the

ports she will touch: if her total displacement is very great while

the lines are kept slender for speed, the draught limit may be

exceeded. The Titanic, therefore, was built on broader lines than the

ocean racers, increasing the total displacement; but because of the

broader build, she was able to keep within the draught limit at each

port she visited. At the same time she was able to accommodate more

passengers and cargo, and thereby increase largely her earning

capacity. A comparison between the Mauretania and the Titanic

illustrates the difference in these respects:—

Displacement Horse power Speed in knots

Mauretania 44,640 70,000 26

Titanic 60,000 46,000 21

The vessel when completed was 883 feet long, 92 1/2 feet broad; her

height from keel to bridge was 104 feet. She had 8 steel decks, a

cellular double bottom, 5 1/4 feet through (the inner and outer

“skins” so-called), and with bilge keels projecting 2 feet for 300

feet of her length amidships. These latter were intended to lessen the

tendency to roll in a sea; they no doubt did so very well, but, as it

happened, they proved to be a weakness, for this was the first portion

of the ship touched by the iceberg and it has been suggested that the

keels were forced inwards by the collision and made the work of

smashing in the two “skins” a more simple matter. Not that the final

result would have been any different.

Her machinery was an expression of the latest progress in marine

engineering, being a combination of reciprocating engines with

Parsons’s low-pressure turbine engine,—a combination which gives

increased power with the same steam consumption, an advance on the use

of reciprocating engines alone. The reciprocating engines drove the

wing-propellers and the turbine a mid-propeller, making her a

triple-screw vessel. To