Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/74

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC as to secure a perfectly tight connection. In the standard construction for merchant ships, as used in the Titanic, the bulkheads are placed transversely to the length of the ship, and the number of separate compartments is just one more than the number of bulkheads, ten such bulkheads giving eleven compartments, fifteen, as in the Titanic, giving sixteen compartments, and so on. In the case of a few high-class merchant steamers, built to meet special requirements as to safety, bulkheads are run lengthwise through the ship. These longitudinal bulkheads, intersecting the transverse bulkheads, greatly increase the factor of safety due to subdivision; for it is evident that one such, running the full length of the ship, would double, two would treble, and three would quadruple the number of separate compartments.

The bulkhead subdivision above described is all done in vertical planes. Its object is to restrict the water to such compartments as (through collision or grounding) may have been opened to the sea. As the water enters, the ship, because of the loss of buoyancy, will sink until the buoyancy of the undamaged compartments restores equilibrium and the ship [ 52 ]