By Bill Fawcett
A tragedy of errors.
So many mistakes and failures were involved in the sinking of the Titanic that picking just one seems unfair. However, if we count them all separately, the total would equal a quarter of the book’s 101, and the book would be twice as long. So, to compromise, we will count the Titanic’s many design errors, command errors, and incidental problems as just one big, continuing technical mistake followed by a second, seemingly trivial mistake made before the ship even sailed. A small mistake without which there would have been no disaster.
The White Star Line’s Titanic was a technological wonder: a four-stacker passenger ship capable of speeds most of the era’s battleships could not match. The Titanic was the largest passenger liner ever built, the most luxurious (if you were in first class), and the most highly promoted. It was the sensation of its day. Even before it launched, you could buy Titanic soap, Titanic tea, Titanic towels, Titanic candy, and just about anything else you could think of. Expectations were high and anything less than a record sailing time from Southampton to New York City would have been a disappointment. So it sailed at its best speed, without slowing. The risk was minimal because the ads all said the liner was unsinkable.
There were a number of engineering flaws in the design of the Titanic. To begin with, the hull was made up of a type of mild steel that tended to become brittle when chilled. Not really a good decision for a ship that was going to sail the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. But the rivets were iron, and their difference from the metal in the plates created a microcurrent that degraded and loosened them from the hull plates they held on. But beyond a weak hull, there was a built-in failure point. Worried that the ship was too big and would be damaged by rolling on the high seas, the designers decided to allow it to flex in rough waters. To do this a “flex panel”—basically, a separate part of the hull that would bend when needed—was added. But this flex point was, by its very nature, a weak spot in the hull. And so it proved. The Titanic actually split completely in half at the flex point, and so it sits on the bottom of the North Atlantic, in two pieces.
Furthermore, the allegedly unsinkable ship was really very vulnerable. Any military ship’s watertight hulls extended from the top deck to the bottom of the ship. Most were also sealed or could be closed off at various levels by watertight doors. The watertight holds on the Titanic only extended up partway from the bottom of the hull. Worse yet, these were open on top, allowing water to pour in and fill them. A way to picture what this meant to the Titanic is to take out an empty ice cube tray and put it in a sink full of water. Sitting flat, the tray stays afloat. Now take one end of the tray and push it down until the first couple sets of ice cube compartments are filled up. As each one fills, it pulls that end of the tray down lower, which allows the third and fourth compartments to start filling. This will continue until enough ice cube compartments are filled and the tray sinks. That is exactly what happened to the Titanic when the iceberg opened a number of its forward compartments. As the nose of the ship plunged lower and lower, each watertight but open-topped compartment filled, one after another.
Having managed to create a ship that was highly vulnerable, the White Star Line then made arrangements to ensure that any sinking would be a disaster. Or, perhaps a more accurate description would be that they failed to make proper arrangements, just in case it did sink. Toward the end of construction (to save money and keep the appearance of the hull clean), it was decided to place only enough lifeboats on the ship to hold fewer than half of the passengers booked aboard. And never mind the crew. After all, this was the UNSINKABLE Titanic. But the passengers were unaware of the lack of lifeboats, because no lifeboat or emergency drills were ever held, even just among the crew.
Knowing that their ship was unsinkable, no one bothered to build into it a public-address system. The only way to communicate with passengers or the crew was to send crew members to walk down the corridors and announce any problems. But that was itself a problem, since many of the crew were from non-English-speaking countries, and were unable to communicate with the passengers—or many of the other crewmen.
There have been questions about the steering of the Titanic and why it slid along the iceberg rather than turn away, but the entire bridge crew perished, and knowledge of who did what perished with them. But one minor mistake, one really trivial oversight, contributed as much to the Titanic’s sinking as any of the mistakes mentioned above. This was recounted by one of the few surviving crew members, Fred Fleet. His job was to stand on the high mast and watch for hazards, including icebergs. He did this, but on the inaugural voyage of the Titanic, he could only use his naked eyes. There were binoculars on board, but they were locked in a cabinet that could not be opened. At the last minute, the first officer was changed to a different seaman. The original first officer had the key to the locker and failed to pass it on to his replacement. It seems there was only one key, so the lookout was limited to what he could see without magnification. We know this to be true, as both men attested to it at the congressional hearings subsequent to the disaster, and, in 2014, the missing key was actually sold at auction. No one was concerned enough to break into the shiny, new locker and take the binoculars out. After all, the Titanic was unsinkable, and what could possibly threaten such a great ship? With the special binoculars, any lookout would have seen the fatal iceberg much sooner—soon enough for the liner to avoid a collision. Without a collision, all the other flaws in the design and construction would not have mattered. So, for lack of a key, the Titanic was lost.