ral water,
wine, spirits and champagne, all maintained at different temperatures
most suitable to each. Perishable freight had a compartment of its own,
also chilled by the plant.

COMFORT AND STABILITY

Two main ideas were carried out in the Titanic. One was comfort and the
other stability. The vessel was planned to be an ocean ferry. She was
to have only a speed of twenty-one knots, far below that of some other
modern vessels, but she was planned to make that speed, blow high or
blow low, so that if she left one side of the ocean at a given time she
could be relied on to reach the other side at almost a certain minute of
a certain hour.

One who has looked into modern methods for safeguarding

{illust. caption = LIFE-BOAT AND DAVITS ON THE TITANIC

This diagram shows very clearly the arrangement of the life-boats and
the manner in which they were launched.}

a vessel of the Titanic type can hardly imagine an accident that could
cause her to founder. No collision such as has been the fate of any ship
in recent years, it has been thought up to this time, could send her
down, nor could running against an iceberg do it unless such an accident
were coupled with the remotely possible blowing out of a boiler. She
would sink at once, probably, if she were to run over a submerged rock
or derelict in such manner that both her keel plates and her double
bottom were torn away for more than half her length; but such a
catastrophe was so remotely possible that it did not even enter the
field of conjecture.

The reason for all this is found in the modern arrangement of
water-tight steel compartments into which all ships now are divided
and of which the Titanic had fifteen so disposed that half of them,
including the largest, could be flooded without impairing the safety
of the vessel. Probably it was the working of these bulkheads and the
water-tight doors between them as they are supposed to work that saved
the Titanic from foundering when she struck the iceberg.

These bulkheads were of heavy sheet steel and started at the very bottom
of the ship and extended right up to the top side. The openings in the
bulkheads were just about the size of the ordinary doorway, but the
doors did not swing as in a house, but fitted into water-tight grooves
above the opening. They could be released instantly in several ways,
and once closed formed a barrier to the water as solid as the bulkhead
itself.

In the Titanic, as in other gr