Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/107

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC. The inner skin was not continued aft of the aftermost bulkhead, for the reason that at the stern it would have been unnecessary and somewhat inconvenient.

The double hull was closed in by a watertight iron deck (the lower deck), which served to entirely separate the boiler- and engine-rooms and the holds from the passenger quarters. Above the lower deck the hull was built with a single skin, which terminated at a flush, continuous, cellular steel deck, corresponding to the shelter deck of modern steamships, which extended unbroken from stem to stern. This deck was an unusually rigid structure. Its upper and lower surfaces were each one inch in thickness, and each consisted of two layers of half-inch plating riveted together. The double deck thus formed was two feet in depth, and the intervening space was intersected by longitudinal girders, the whole construction forming an unusually stiff and strong watertight deck, which was admirably suited to meet the heavy tensional and compressive stresses, to which a ship of the length of the Great Eastern is subjected when driving through head seas. [ 85 ]