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Lusitania and Mauretania, which were built to fulfil British Admiralty
regulations for time of war--an extraordinary risk which no builder of a
passenger steamer--as such--would be expected to take into consideration
when designing the vessel. It should be constantly borne in mind that the
Titanic met extraordinary conditions on the night of the collision: she was
probably the safest ship afloat in all ordinary conditions. Collision with an
iceberg is not an ordinary risk; but this disaster will probably result in
altering the whole construction of bulkheads and compartments to the Great
Eastern type, in order to include the one-in-a-million risk of iceberg
collision and loss.
Here comes in the question of increased cost of construction, and in
addition the great loss of cargo-carrying space with decreased earning
capacity, both of which will mean an increase in the passenger rates. This
the travelling public will have to face and undoubtedly will be willing to
face for the satisfaction of knowing that what was so confidently affirmed
by passengers on the Titanic's deck that night of the collision will then be
really true,--that "we are on an unsinkable boat,"--so far as human
forethought can devise. After all, this must be the solution to the problem
how best to ensure safety at sea. Other safety appliances are useful and
necessary, but not useable in certain conditions of weather. The ship itself
must always be the "safety appliance" that is really trustworthy, and
nothing must be left undone to ensure this.
Wireless apparatus and operators
CHAPTER VIII 106
The range of the apparatus might well be extended, but the principal defect
is the lack of an operator for night duty on some ships. The awful fact that
the Californian lay a few miles away, able to save every soul on board, and
could not catch the message because the operator was asleep, seems too
cruel to dwell upon. Even on the Carpathia, the operator was on the point of
retiring when the message arrived, and we should have been much longer
afloat--and some boats possibly swamped--had he not caught the message
when he did. It has been suggested that officers should have a working
knowledge of wireless telegraphy, and this is no doubt a wise provision. It
would enable them to supervise the work of the operators more closely and
from all the evidence, this seems a necessity. The exchange of vitally
important messages between a sinking ship and those rushing to her rescue
should be under the control of an experienced officer. To take but one
example--Bride testified that after giving the Birma the "C.Q.D." message
and the position (incidentally Signer Marconi has stated that this has been
abandoned in favour of "S.O.S.") and getting a reply, they got into touch
with the Carpathia, and while talking with her were interrupted by the
Birma asking what was the matter. No doubt it was the duty of the Birma to
come at once without asking any questions, but the reply from the Titanic,
telling the Birma's operator not to be a "fool" by interrupting, seems to have
been a needless waste of precious moments: to reply, "We are sinking"
would have taken no longer, especially when in their own estimation of the
strength of the signals they thought the Birma was the nearer ship. It is well
to notice that some large liners have already a staff of three operators.
Submarine signalling apparatus
There are occasions when wireless apparatus is useless as a means of
saving life at sea promptly.
One of its weaknesses is that when the ships' engines are stopped, messages
can no longer be sent out, that is, with the system at present adopted. It will
be remembered that the Titanic's messages got gradually fainter and then
ceased altogether as she came to rest with her engines shut down.
CHAPTER VIII 107
Again, in fogs,--and most accidents occur in fogs,--while wireless informs
of the accident, it does not enable one ship to locate another closely enough
to take off her passengers at once. There is as yet no method known by
which wireless telegraphy will fix the direction of a message; and after a
ship has been in fog for any considerable length of time it is more difficult
to give the exact position to another vessel bringing help.
Nothing could illustrate these two points better than the story of how the
Baltic found the Republic in the year 1909, in a dense fog off Nantucket
Lightship, when the latter was drifting helplessly after collision with the
Florida. The Baltic received a wireless message stating the Republic's
condition and the information that she was in touch with Nantucket through
a submarine bell which she could hear ringing. The Baltic turned and went
towards the position in the fog, picked up the submarine bell-signal from
Nantucket, and then began searching near this position for the Republic. It
took her twelve hours to find the damaged ship, zigzagging across a circle
within which she thought the Republic might lie. In a rough sea it is
doubtful whether the Republic would have remained afloat long enough for
the Baltic to find her and take off all her passengers.
Now on these two occasions when wireless telegraphy was found to be
unreliable, the usefulness of the submarine bell at once becomes apparent.
The Baltic could have gone unerringly to the Republic in the dense fog had
the latter been fitted with a submarine emergency bell. It will perhaps be
well to spend a little time describing the submarine signalling apparatus to
see how this result could have been obtained: twelve anxious hours in a
dense fog on a ship which was injured so badly that she subsequently
foundered, is an experience which every appliance known to human [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]