Titanic - Case Study

It was on 10th April 1912, Titanic left the Southampton port in England and began its maiden
voyage to New York. Titanic was an Olympic class luxury ocean liner operated by white star line,
and she was the largest ship ever built at the time of her construction. Despite the makers’ claim
that the ship is ‘Unsinkable’, Titanic couldn’t even complete her maiden voyage. On 14th April
1912, by 11:40 pm, the ship collided with a massive iceberg and later sank at the middle of Atlantic
Ocean resulting in the death of more than 1500 passengers. The sinking of Titanic is considered
as one of the worst maritime disaster ever happened in the history.

The Titanic

Titanic was a huge ship having a 269.1m length, 28.2 m beam and 53.3m height (keel to top of
funnels) and a weight more than 46000 tons. It was powered by two reciprocating steam engines
with a combined 30000 HP and one low pressure turbine of 16000 HP together producing a 46000
HP to drive 3 propellers. 29 boilers were present to produce the huge quantity of steam at high
pressure to drive the steam engines for its propulsion. There were nearly 2223 passengers and crew
members onboard the ship. Titanic had 16 watertight compartments and the ship could stay afloat
up to 4 of these compartments flooded. The ship was equipped with 20 lifeboats to facilitate
emergency evacuation of passengers in case of accidents. Captain Edward Smith was designated
as the chief commander of Titanic in its first voyage.

Studies & The cause of sinking

A large number of studies were carried out to reveal, what exactly happened and lead to the sinking
of the so-called unsinkable ship. Studies conducted at St. Johns Newfoundland recreated the
accident of Titanic with the help of simulating software and revealed many of the reasons for her
sinking. It was clear that despite warnings regarding the presence of icebergs in the path, the ship
didn't slowdown and was cruising with a speed of around 22 knots. Simulation was done at 20
knots speed, and a mile before the iceberg they stopped the engine and turned the ship completely
to the port side. The distance was just about 640 yards in reality. The simulation found that the
ship could turn only 21 degree and the iceberg hit on the starboard bow after 52 seconds from
spotting it. They found that cruising at half the speed, the bow cleared the iceberg, stating that the
accident could have been avoided if they cruised at a lower speed. Icebergs when hit on hard
surface behaves in a peculiar way, forming a pyramid shape concentrating the pressure at the point
of impact. North Atlantic icebergs are mainly solid mass of fresh water coming from the regions
of Greenland and has pieces of rocks embedded in it. This showed that the collision with iceberg
could offer a momentarily impact high enough, even to break the steel plating of a ship. In the case
of Titanic, the collision with the iceberg cut a hole side below the Waterline 2 inches wide and
running intermittently 300 feet longitudinal. The steel plates of Titanic were joined by rivets and
it contained a fatal design flaw. At the time of collision, the plates buckled due to the impact load
and the rivet heads were ripped off, resulting the hull to lose its watertight integrity. This caused a
longitudinal flooding allowing water to enter and flood 5 of the 16 watertight compartments of the
ship. With maximum 4 compartments flooded ship could still stay afloat, but with flooding 5
compartments, water spilled over the compartments reaching to other areas and eventually the ship
sank. Within 2 hr 40 mins from the time of collision, Titanic sank completely leaving all the
passengers and crew at the middle of Atlantic Ocean.

Ethical issues

Looking back, there are many ethical aspects of the accident to be considered of. Studies revealed
its captain Smith as the real architect of the disaster. The captain ignored the warning of iceberg
in their route and was reluctant to slow down the ship. He wanted the ship to reach the destination
at the advertised time, where the press and crowd would be waiting for him. His concern was more
on the fame than on the safety of the people. Even after the collision, we can see a drastic leadership
failure from the captain in dealing the situation. The crew failed to give proper awareness to the
people onboard. This created a chaos at hard time. There were a social order and divide between
the passengers even at the face of a disaster. Priority was given to the life of esteemed class. There
were 20 lifeboats onboard and they had a capacity to accommodate about 1200 people. But
lifeboats were not completely filled by the crew members and many of the seats were left vacant,
thus limiting the number of survivors.

Lessons learned

Studies revealed that the accident could have been avoided if the ship considered the warning
regarding icebergs in its route and would have slowed down. As the front end of the ship is
designed to crumble and sustain the damage during a collision without giving its impact to the
other compartments, the ship could have survived the accident if it was a head on collision instead
of a glancing collision. The design of the ship with riveted joint plates and a single plate structure
caused the water to flood the compartments easily during collision. Due to the cold air temperature
above the sea, a phenomenon called super refraction caused the officers onboard Titanic to see a
Californian ship on the port side, 5 miles away, expecting it to help the sinking ship. Officers were
wrong about the distance of the ship, and it was too far away to help. Rockets were fired not in the
correct sequence to show that the ship was in distress. The studies also revealed the failure of
effective leadership and crowd management of the Captain and other officers in the face of an
accident. People died mainly due to the thermal shock and hypothermia caused by the freezing
water in the sea. They couldn’t swim or hold on anything as their body temperature was drained
away by the freezing water. Tests revealed that manual dexterity and grip strength of people in ice
cold water reduces rapidly and they could be saved only by the people on the lifeboats.

Conclusion

The Titanic disaster completely changed the law of the sea. After the disaster, concerns regarding
safety of the ship and the crew onboard escalated worldwide. Double sided bottoms and hulls were
added to ship design to avoid hull damages during similar accidents. The minimum lifeboat
capacity on board ship was increased to equal the number of passengers and crew on board. The
accident and its studies created an awareness among the seafarers and, the changes made in ship
design and safety regulations following the disaster were effective in decreasing the casualties of
accidents at sea later.