hts and levels that
the technicians responsible for the _Titanic_ persuaded themselves that a
ship _not divided_ by water-tight compartments could be "unsinkable."
Because, you know, she was not divided. You and I, and our little boys,
when we want to divide, say, a box, take care to procure a piece of wood
which will reach from the bottom to the lid. We know that if it does not
reach all the way up, the box will not be divided into two compartments.
It will be only partly divided. The _Titanic_ was only partly divided.
She was just sufficiently divided to drown some poor devils like rats in
a trap. It is probable that they would have perished in any case, but it
is a particularly horrible fate to die boxed up like this. Yes, she was
sufficiently divided for that, but not sufficiently divided to prevent
the water flowing over.
Therefore to a plain man who knows something of mathematics but is not
bemused by calculations, she was, from the point of view of
"unsinkability," not divided at all. What would you say of people who
would boast of a fireproof building, an hotel, for instance, saying, "Oh,
we have it divided by fireproof bulkheads which would localise any
outbreak," and if you were to discover on closer inspection that these
bulkheads closed no more than two-thirds of the openings they were meant
to close, leaving above an open space through which draught, smoke, and
fire could rush from one end of the building to the other? And,
furthermore, that those partitions, being too high to climb over, the
people confined in each menaced compartment had to stay there and become
asphyxiated or roasted, because no exits to the outside, say to the roof,
had been provided! What would you think of the intelligence or candour
of these advertising people? What would you think of them? And yet,
apart from the obvious difference in the action of fire and water, the
cases are essentially the same.
It would strike you and me and our little boys (who are not engineers
yet) that to approach--I won't say attain--somewhere near absolute
safety, the divisions to keep out water should extend from the bottom
right up to the uppermost deck of _the hull_. I repeat, the _hull_,
because there are above the hull the decks of the superstructures of
which we need not take account. And further, as a provision of the
commonest humanity, that each of these compartments should have a
perfectly independent and free access to that upper
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