Titanic Essay

Submitted By Kariannee5683
Words: 942
Pages: 4

10th April 2015 I am starting my investigation into the sinking of the titanic. My great grandfather, John

Jacob Astor IV, died on April 15, 1912. He was freshly married to my great grandmother who had been pregnant with my grandfather at the time. The death of my great grandfather intrigued me and caused me to look into the titanic. Today, is the 103rd anniversary of the titanic's first passenger launch. I will be studying and finding out if anything specifically went wrong before the iceberg had hit.

I am reading old newspapers about the titanic and about her receiving her first passengers.
It seems the world, well most of it, was ecstatic. Titanic was the worlds largest steamship in
1912. Equipped with 3 steam stacks and the power to go as fast as 24 knots, which is the equivalent of 28 mph, Titanic was the talk of the world with it being the fastest, biggest ship thats ever sailed the North Atlantic.

I know, the titanic may have seemed invincible, but it had only taken one iceberg to take her down. I looked into the safety features of the titanic and I discovered that she was very well constructed to sail the harsh Atlantic. As I look into the emergency features of the titanic I couldn't help but realise the many flaws she had carried. The ship deemed “unsinkable” got its name from the new safety feature that seemed like it wouldn’t fail. 16 watertight bulkheads, each sealed by electric powered doors, also equipped with electric water sensors and controlled by switches on the bridge. In the event electricity failed, the

doors could be closed manually by pulling a pin and letting gravity close the door. The lower section of the Titanic was divided into sixteen major watertight compartments that could easily be sealed off if part of the hull was punctured and leaking water. After the collision with the iceberg, the hull portion of six of these sixteen compartments was damaged. Sealing off the compartments was completed immediately after the damage was realized, but as the bow of the ship began to pitch forward from the weight of the water in that area of the ship, the water in some of the compartments began to spill over into adjacent compartments. Although the compartments were called watertight, they were actually only watertight horizontally; their tops were open and the walls extended only a few feet above the waterline. After this study I had realised that it wasn’t the por construction of the ship that caused it to sink but the behavior of one major character that played a role on the titanic that night.
Operator John Phillips was in charge of incoming messages from other ships that night. There were many warnings of icebergs. The warnings had made it to the captain but he, thinking a change of the ships course which made the ship move more south of the atlantic, would make them avoid any icebergs. However, another ship only a few kilometers away had stopped and turned around because of the iceberg. In attempt to contact and warn the titanic of what would lie ahead the had attempted to send a radio frequency signal. Because the ship, s.s California, was so close to the titanic the radio frequency was loud enough to blow the ears off of John Phillips, the titanics operator. He decided to ignore their annoying warnings, an illegal move for him to make.
He had also failed to inform the captain about this important warning that could have saved lives.

Eureka! Now that I know the cause of the collision I can look into some more safety