Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/79

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC by transverse watertight partitions (see plan of Mauretania, Fig. 3, page 129), placed centrally between the main transverse bulkheads of the ship. A further and most effective means for protecting the buoyancy is to construct the ship with a double skin up to and preferably a few feet above the water-line. The inner skin should extend from the first bulkhead abaft the engine-room to the first or collision bulkhead, forward. This construction merely involves carrying the inner floor plating of the double bottom up the sides of the ship to the under side of the lower deck. As all merchant ships are built with a double bottom (see page 107), the cost of thus providing a double skin below the water-line is small in proportion to the security against flooding which it affords.

The description of the Titanic, published at the time of her launch, stated that any two of her adjoining compartments could be flooded without endangering the safety of the ship, and the question must frequently have occurred to the lay mind as to why the ability of the ship to sustain flooding of her interior was confined to two, and not extended to include three or even more compartments. [ 61 ]