Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/167

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC of the battleship Connecticut, below the protective deck, is divided up into as many as 500 separate and perfectly watertight compartments.

Moreover, in some of the latest battleships of the dreadnought type the practice has been followed of permitting no doors of any description to be cut through the bulkheads below the water-line. Access from one compartment to another can be had only by way of the decks above. Furthermore, all the openings through the protective deck are provided with strong watertight hatches or, as in the case of the openings for the smoke stacks, ammunition-hoists, and ventilators, they are enclosed by watertight steel casings, extending to the upper decks, far above the water-line.

In the later warships, further protection is afforded by constructing the first deck above the protective deck of heavy steel plating and making it thoroughly watertight, every opening in this deck, such as those for stairways, being provided with watertight steel hatches. This deck, also, is thoroughly subdivided by bulkheads and provided with watertight doors.

It sounds like a truism to say that a water- [ 147 ]