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TO PREVENT OCEAN DISASTERS

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By

JOHN E. WHITMAN

PEED mania, an exaggerated idea of luxury, reckless carelessness, sea lanes too far to the north, in the path of icebergs —in the desire to shorten the route between America and Europe, an imperfect and inadequate wireless equipment, and a type of life-boat that invention should long ago have superseded all these are factors in perhaps the most terrible drama in the annals of ocean disaster, the loss of the Titanic. False theory in the construction of safety bulkheads may be very properly added to the list. The human equation need not be considered in this connection. The men -officers, crew and passengers-did the best that human beings could do under the circumstances. No one can question their actions in their last moments. They gave an account of themselves that requires neither defence nor praise. Their behavior was above commendation.

Never, according to ship captains, have icebergs so huge and fields so vast in extent been sighted in the North Atlantic as they have during the past spring. Under the circumstances the charge of speed mania is well founded. Passengers' lives should count for more than trans-atlantic records. Likewise, palatial ball rooms, luxurious swimming tanks and roomy tennis courts are all well enough in their way; cramped quarters with plenty of life-boats are preferable.

But nothing can change the past. The question now is, What can human ingenuity, engineering skill and invention accomplish to safeguard the future?

Discussion after the event shows that the Titanic, with its double bottom and its system of vertical bulkheads, was but little safer than a vessel without these protective devices against accident, in

other words that this great vessel, nearly nine hundred feet long, capable of easily accommodating over three thousand people, and supposedly very nearly unsinkable, had less of a chance for survival after collision with the unseen and sunken spur of the iceberg than an old time sailing vessel would have had. The stokers and other ship workers below at the time of the yielding of the bulkheads, who were later picked up in the sea, narrate that the vertical bulkheads were unable to resist the force of the inrushing

waters.

Ship builders have immediately become fertile in expedients, to obviate so terrible a result, in their plans for future ship construction. For the vertical bulkhead it has been suggested that the horizontal be substituted, and that thereby each deck of the vessel be sealed as tightly in case of need as the bottom, itself, of the liner. Thus even should a vessel be split along the bottom from bow to stern, as was the Titanic, these deck bulkheads could be closed and the steamer could remain afloat till assistance were summoned by wireless or otherwise, even though she were submerged to her middle deck.

Captain George A. Chaddock, an English naval expert, says: "Ships must be made absolutely or relatively unsinkable. The decks are the true line of defense. Their hatches should be water-tight and immovable. Between decks water-tight divisions or collision bulkheads, of course, should be retained. Had the first deck above the injured bottom of the Titanic been seaworthy the vessel would have floated without assuming any dangerous angle until the rescuers arrived. In no circumstances can a ship as now built, with useless wooden hatches, survive anything but compara

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tively trifling injuries from a collision in quiet waters."

Life-boats as now constructed, and as lowered into the water, do not seem to be adequate to the demands placed upon them. In the first place they are fragile, easily capsized, hard to lower, and in danger, if the sea be at all rough, of being dashed to pieces against the sides of the vessel. There are other difficulties, too. It is an extremely hard thing to lower such a boat containing some fifty people for a distance of seventy feet. In fact, it seemed impossible to do this on the Titanic and as a consequence many of the boats were but little more than half-filled. Also, if the sinking ship should list to one side, as generally happens, the line of boats on one side of the vessel is likely to be submerged, the other to be raised high in the air, rendering all useless.

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Recently a life-boat, cylindrical shape like a dirigible torpedo, and designed to be launched in much the same. way, was exhibited at Toronto, Canada. The inventor claims that it can neither be capsized nor sunk. It is designed to bear forty persons to safety. The apparatus consists of a double cylinder. The outer cylinder is permitted to roll

freely with the action of the waves. The ends of this cylinder contain bulkheads. The inner shell is suspended from these. The outer cylinder is twenty-four feet in length, six feet in diameter. Air is drawn into the inner shell or cradle by means of a pump, through a hollow tube, which curves up on the outside, well above the water. A system of valves expels the impure air. A number of these valves are always above the water line. This boat is not lowered awkwardly from the deck of the vessel, but slides head on into the sea. A special launching device has been constructed for this purpose. Passengers were aboard when this new lifeboat was first tried out. They reported that they experienced but little discomfort.

This looks like a feasible solution of the life-boat problem. Only the unprecedentedly calm ocean saved the lives of the Titanic's survivors whom the Carpathia picked up. If the seas had been rough the greater part of these illmanned craft would undoubtedly have gone quickly to the bottom, if indeed conditions had been such that they could have been launched at all.

TO PREVENT OCEAN DISASTERS

The question of the regulation of wireless is one that the wreck of the Titanic has also brought direct attention to. For some time authorized wireless operators on both land and sea have complained that the hosts of irresponsible amateurs who experiment along the Atlantic coast have seriously hampered their work. A wireless station of this sort can very easily pick up a message that is sent from a vessel in distress and thus prevent its being received by some other ship that would at once set its course in the direction indicated by the C. Q. D. signal. In connection with the disaster to the Titanic there seems to have been a veritable wireless chaos. Major Floyd

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Page, at the meeting of the London
Chamber of Commerce, spoke with some
"The
heat in reference to this matter.
United States," he said, "is the only
country in the world where the tele-
graphs do not belong to the government,
and unfortunately, it has become the
fashion in that country to permit ama-
teur wireless operators. When we read
that Marconigrams can be tapped we
must remember that the United States is
the only country in which that can be
done."

Congressional action doubtless will put a stop to this pernicious activity of amateurs. All wireless should be directly under government control.

Philosophy of La Rochefoucauld
¶ Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

¶ Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a
steady eye.

¶ A man who is ungrateful is often less to blame than
his benefactor.

The true way to be deceived is to think oneself
more knowing than others.

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