Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/91

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC than that suffered by the Titanic, the ship came safely to New York under her own steam.

There can be no doubt that in undertaking to build a ship of the then unprecedented length of 692 feet, the designers were as much concerned with the question of her strength as with that of her ability to keep afloat in case of under-water damage. But it so happens that the very forms of construction which conduce to strength are favourable also to flotation—a fact which renders all the more reasonable the demand that, in all future passenger-carrying steamships, a return shall be made to the non-sinkable construction of this remarkable ship of over fifty years ago.

Let it not be supposed, however, that Brunel and Russell were insensible to the risks of foundering through under-water damage, or that the fully protected buoyancy of this vessel was accidental rather than the result of careful planning. For in the technical descriptions of the ship, it is stated that the inner skin was carried forward right up to the bow, as a protection against "collision with an iceberg," and it is further stated that the combination of longitudinal and transverse bulkheads afforded [ 73 ]