Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/201

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC struction; and in the designing of warships, they receive the first consideration, all other questions of speed, armour-protection, and gun-power being made subordinate.

VII.In the building of merchant ships, unsinkable construction has been sacrificed to considerations of speed, convenience of operation, and the provision of luxurious accommodations for the travelling public. The inner skin, the longitudinal bulkhead, and the watertight deck have been abandoned. Although the transverse bulkhead has been retained, its efficiency has been greatly impaired; for, whereas these bulkheads in the Great Eastern extended thirty feet above the water-line; in the Titanic, they were carried only ten feet above the same point.

VIII.The portentous significance of this decline in the art of unsinkable construction will be realised, when it is borne in mind that the Titanic was built to the highest requirements of the Board of Trade and the insurance companies. She was the latest example of current and approved practice in the construction of high-class passenger ships of the first magnitude; and, judged on the score of safety [ 181 ]