Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/159

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC bursting of heavy 12-inch shells at or just below the water-line of the leading ship of the Russian line that sent her to the bottom before she had received any serious damage to her main batteries. Later in the fight, several other Russian battleships capsized from the same cause, assisted by the weight of extra supplies of coal which the Russians had stowed on the upper decks above the water-line.

In the matter of subdivision as a protection against sinking, there is this important difference between the merchant ship and the warship, that, whereas the merchant ship is sunk through accident, the warship is sunk by deliberate intention. The amount of damage done to the former ship will be great or small according to the accidental conditions of the time; but the damage to the warship is the result of a deliberately planned attack, and is wrought by powerful agencies, designed to execute the maximum amount of destruction with every blow delivered.

A large proportion of the time and money which have been expended in the development of the instruments of naval warfare has been devoted to the design and construction of [ 139 ]