COULD THE TITANIC DISASTER HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?

The Titanic was an ocean liner owned by the White Star Line. This "unsinkable" British ocean liner sank on her maiden voyage in 1912. resulting in the death of more than 1,500 men, women, and children. The casualties were the highest compared to any other marine disaster in peacetime history. The seeming improbability of the event and ultimately the magnitude of the tragedy resulted in casting the Titanic into the realm of myth and legend.

The Titanic measured 270 meters long and 28 meters wide, was as high as an eleven-story building, and had a gross tonnage of just over 46,000. She was the largest moving object ever made by man. The Titanic was also considered very luxurious. The Titanic boasted of a double-bottomed hull divided into 16 compartments that would allow her to stay afloat even if three of the compartments were breached. Thinking that no more than two compartments could ever be breached at one time, her creators believed this design made the ship virtually unsinkable.

The much-publicised maiden voyage of the Titanic commenced from Southampton, England to New York on April 10, 1912. Four days later, as she sailed the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, she received a total of seven iceberg warnings, yet her captain saw no need to slow down. At 11:40 PM there was a sudden alarm of an iceberg dead ahead. The officer in charge instinctively reversed engines and swerved the wheel to avoid the iceberg.

The iceberg however passed along the ship's starboard side leaving a series of gashes at least 80 meters long. The gashes had opened six compartments to the sea.

This was something that had never been imagined. let alone planned for. The sinking of the Titanic was inevitable

Many of the passengers and crew could not believe that the Titanic would actually sink. The evacuation was disorderly at first, but as the ship began to sink, the passengers and crew soon panicked.

The ship's 20 lifeboats could accommodate only around half of the 2.227 people on board. The crew.

nevertheless followed the implicit rule of "women and children first" and rarely filled the lifeboats to capacity. Most third class passengers, many of them women and children, remained trapped in the lower decks of the ship

The Titanic sank at 2:20 AM on April 15, less than three hours after the initial impact. 1.522 people including the ship's captain, one of her designers.

most of her crew, most of her third class passengers, and most of the adult male passengers in first and second classes were lost at sea. The 705 survivors in the lifeboats awaited rescue by the Cunard liner Carpathia amid the clamour of those dying of hypothermia in the cold Atlantic water.

Later analysis of the disaster suggested that if the Titanic had hit the iceberg head-on, her bow would have crumpled but she would not have received any fatal wounds to her starboard side and therefore she would have remained afloat. Even if the engine speed had not been reduced, the ship would have turned more quickly with the greater forward motion, and a collision could have been avoided altogether.

In 1994, samples of the hull were retrieved from the site and examined by metallurgists who were interested in the ship's physical composition. The samples of the damaged hull appeared jagged rather than bent, and the scientists soon discovered that the steel used to construct the ship's hull was brittle, far more brittle than modern steel, because of its high sulphur content. When the hull met the iceberg, the steel plates did not bend inward, instead they fractured. Scientists believe that if the ship's builders had used higher quality steel that had more flexibility, the hull would have absorbed more shock, suffered less damage, and the ship might have remained afloat long enough for most of the people to be rescued.