On the 100 year anniversary of it's sinking:

[skull_bearer]

Interesting tip-bit about the Titanic. Apparently, had the Titanic not tried to turn to avoid the iceberg (resulting in it being raked by the ice and flooded five of the ship's compartments) but had instead decided that no block of ice was going to tell the biggest ship afloat what to do and rammed it like a bro, it probably would have been better off.

The impact would probably have crumpled the front of the ship like aluminium, but it would most likely only have flooded two or three compartments. The Titanic was considered unsinkable becuase it could stay afload with four compartments flooded. It would have been completely crippled and probably only about to go in little circles, if at all, but it wouldn't have gone under.

Comments

[linguini17.livejournal.com]

...what was it sinking about? :)

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Exactly. One of the biggest mistakes made was to turn the ship to attempt to avoid impact, which was impossible at that speed. Of course another huge mistake was the increased speed. But had the Titanic hit the iceberg head-on, the ship could have been saved. There would be great loss of life from the force of the impact, but nothing like the losses suffered from the ship sinking. The ship would indeed have been crippled, but it would have been able to stay afloat long enough for rescue ships to arrive and evacuate passengers.

However, if the f***ing idiots on The Californian had paid closer attention to the signals being sent to it, they could have arrived quickly enough to evacuate much of the ship and/or rescue people from the water.

Scary footnote: although maritime laws were indeed changed after the sinking of the Titanic to ensure that ships had enough lifeboats for all passengers, these laws apply only to ships chartered in European and other ports of call in the Western world--they do NOT apply to most of the the popular cruise lines like Royal Caribbean, which are chartered in tiny ports of call like Mauritious to avoid having to pay high tariffs. These ports of call are not all bound by International maritime law. In fact, it's highly likely that most of the massive cruise ships you see today are not properly equipped with lifeboats. So if you ever decide to go for a cruise, stick with transcontinental voyages on the better known lines, like Cunard, and avoid the massive tourist ones.

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I believe I remember reading speculation along those lines while doing some (very basic) research for a story set on the Titanic a couple years ago. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere.