A GENERAL SEMANTICSANALYSIS OE THE RMSTITANIC DISASTERMA.docx

A GENERAL SEMANTICS
ANALYSIS OE THE RMS
TITANIC DISASTER
MARTIN H . LEVINSON
...And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue.
In shadowy silent distance
grew the Iceberg too.
From The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy
Introduction
RMS Titanic, the largest moving object of its time, began its
maiden voyage
from Southampton, England, to New York City on Wednesday,
April 10,
1912. On Sunday, April 14, the temperature of the Atlantic
Ocean fell to
near freezing; the night was clear and calm. The ship's captain
had received
various ice warnings from other vessels, some of which reached
him while
others did not.
At 11:40 PM, while sailing about 400 miles south of the Grand
Banks of
Newfoundland, lookouts spotted a large iceberg directly in the
Titánicas path
The ship turned left to avoid the berg, but the massive chunk of
ice openec

mortal holes on the vessel's starboard side. The captain ordered
lifeboats
deployed and distress signals sent out.
Many of the lifeboats were launched at less than full capacity
and a
woman-and-children-first policy was the rule for coming
aboard. At 2:20 AM.
Martin H. Levinson, PhD, is the president of the Institute of
General Semantics, vice presi-
dent of the New York Society for General Semantics, and a
member of the Titanic Histori-
cal Society. He is the author of numerous articles and several
books on general semantics
and other subjects. His latest book is Brooklyn Boorher:
Growing Up in the Fifties (2011). He
can be contacted at [email protected]
143
144 ETC • APRIL 2012
the Titanic sank beneath the waves, a sinking that ended in the
deaths of over
1,500 people and the start of a public fascination with a disaster
filled with
hubris, heartbreak, and heroism. This article will examine many
significant
aspects of that disaster through the formulations of general
semantics.
/. The Map IsJVot the Territory
An Unsinkable Ship—Not Really

In 1912, the year it sank, the Titanic was known as the finest
ship afloat. It
weighed over 46,000 tons, was as high as an 11-story building,
and was
883-feet long from bow to stem (about a sixth of a mile). It had
29 boilers,
159 furnaces, and a maximum speed of 24 knots. The Titanic
was consid-
ered so well constructed that many nautical experts thought the
ship vir-
tually unsinkable.
The Titanic was reported to be watertight. It had a double
bottom (the hull
was built with two coats of steel) and was divided into 16
watertight compart-
ments separated by bulkheads pierced by a series of doors that
were controlled
either by automatic floating switches or by command from the
bridge.
On the night of April 14, when the Titanic hit the iceberg, water
begun
flooding into at least five of its "watertight compartments" that
were any-
thing but watertight as the bulkhead walls did not rise
appreciably .above
the waterline. Water coming over the bulkhead walls could
cascade into
other compartments, which is what happened the night the
Titanic went
under. (The Titanic was designed to stay afloat with any two
watertight
compartments or its first four bow compartments flooded, but
that number

was exceeded in the collision. As its forward compartments
filled, the Titanic
began to go down at the head, and water rose and spilled into
successive
"watertight" compartments, much like water spilling into
adjoining sections
of a tilted ice-cube tray. Sinking became inevitable.)
Another factor that contributed to the Titanic'?, foundering was
that the
ship's builder had not used the highest quality wrought-iron
rivets in welding
the vessel's steel plates, so when the Titanic hit the iceberg, its
rivet heads were
more easily sheared off causing the plates that the rivets were
holding to sepa-
rate. Also, the expansion joints (mechanical assemblies that
allow a ship's cas-
ing to flex in heavy seas) on the Titanic were poorly designed,
which, even if
the vessel had not struck an iceberg, made the ship vulnerable
to stresses on its
superstructure. Unsinkable the Titanic defiinitely was not, and
sink it did.
Following the Titanic disaster, the company that operated the
Titanic,
the White Star Line, modified the design of the Titanic's sister
ships in two
A GENERAL SEMANTICS ANALYSIS OF THE RMS
TITANIC DISASTER 145
ways: the double bottoms were extended up the sides of the

hull, and the
transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were
raised.
All the News Isn't Necessarily Fit to Print
Radio communication was in its formative years in 1912, and
there was a
great deal of confusion in England and the United States over
the fate of the
Titanic. Because of garbled messages, several newspapers
published sketchy
information as unvarnished truth by reporting that all the
passengers had
been saved and that the ship was being towed to Halifax, Nova
Scotia. Both
the New York Evening Sun and the Boston Evening Transcript
made this
error. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which had
the boldest
headline of any newspaper, declared "ALL SAFE ON THE
TITANIC."
But one paper put out information that was highly accurate from
the
start. The New York Times headline on April 15, the day of the
sinking,
read "NEW LINER TITANIC HITS ICEBERG; SINKING BY
THE
BOW AT MIDNIGHT; WOMEN PUT OFF IN LIFEBOATS;
LAST
WIRELESS AT 12:27 A.M. BLURRED" and its enure front
page was
devoted to as many of the details as were known. The Times
went on to
earn national and international notice for its meticulous and
comprehensive

coverage of the "story of the century." The April 15th edition is
considered
by many media mavens to be the most important single issue
leading to the
creation of the Times as a global authority.
Seeing Should Not Always Be Believing
Although only three funnels were needed, a fourth "dummy"
funnel was
added to the Titanic by the White Star Line, so the public would
not perceive
the four-funnel ships Mauritania and Lusitania, which were
faster than the
Titanic and the pride and joy of the Cunard Line, as being more
powerful.
//. The Value of Delayed Reactions
Slapdash Supervision
Binoculars were issued to the lookouts on the Titanic on its trip
from Belfast
to Southampton. But during a last minute shakeup of personnel,
they were
removed from the crow's nest and not replaced for the
transatlantic voyage;
thus, the lookouts were unable to scour the sea for icebergs with
field glasses
during the crossing. When the ship's Second Officer, Charles
Lightoller, was
questioned at an inquiry about the lookouts not having
binoculars he down-
played the matter saying that binoculars can be a liability in
maintaining a

sharp vigil. However, other experts, including the renowned
Arctic explorer
Admiral Robert Peary, disagreed.
While it is impossible to go back and test the binoculars that
were
issued to the Titanic, to see how they would have performed in
the low-
light conditions that were prevalent the night the ship took its
last dive,
they may have proven helpful to the lookouts in spotting
dangers on the
sea. That is what Frederick Fleet, the lookout who reported the
iceberg to
the Titanic's bridge, said at a Senate hearing on the disaster. He
maintained
if he had been equipped with binoculars the night of the
tragedy, the colli-
sion could have been avoided, which leads one to wonder if the
Titanic
might have had a different fate if the officers responsible for
supplying the
lookouts with binoculars would have taken some extra moments
to consider
the merits of such devices and made sure the lookouts had them.
Reckless Speed
At the time of the calamity, it is thought the Titanic was at its
normal cruis-
ing speed of around 22 knots (approximately 25.3 mph), which
was a bit
under its top speed of about 24 knots (approximately 27.6 mph).
However,
not all ships were traveling at such a rapid pace in the area

contiguous to
the Titanic on its luckless night. The skipper of the 55
Californian, which
was anchored less than 20 miles from where the Titanic went
down, had
prudently decided to heave to.
But the captain of the Titanic, Edward J. Smith, elected to
sprint toward
his final port of call on the evening of April 14, even though
there was no
moon, wind, or swell to help spot icebergs and the Titanic had
received a
number of wireless warnings earlier in the day from ships in
front of it about
bergs ahead—it seems Smith did not appreciate the value of
wireless as a
constant, continuous navigation aid. Captain Smith clearly
wanted to reach
New York City on schedule. (Some reasons for that: There was
lots of com-
petition for sea-going passengers in 1912, and punctual
performance was a
good selling point. J. Bruce Ismay, the head of the White Star
Line, was
aboard the Titanic, and Smith's boss would certainly have been
happy about
getting to New York on or ahead of time. This was Captain
Smith's last trip
before retiring, and he may have wanted to finish his career
with a flourish.)
If Captain Smith had delayed his reflexive desire to maintain
normal
cruising speed and instead had given added thought to the risks
of moving

qviickly on iceberg-laden waters, perhaps he would have
concluded that slow-
ing his ship down would be a wise thing to do. Such a
conclusion might have
resulted in a more beneficial outcome for the Titanic, as a
slower speed would
have given the ship's lookouts a better chance to see the iceberg
and the ship a
better chance of surviving the crash. With more thought. Smith
might have
also decided to alter his course further to the south, post extra
lookouts, and
warn his engineers to be ready for emergency engine orders
from the bridge.
Regrettably, and to the great detriment of the crew and
passengers aboard the
Titanic, such actions were never taken.
///. The Importance of Accurate Assumptions
Foolhardy Pre-Sail Assumptions
The operators of the Titanic assumed that the technology and
leadership on
board the vessel was of such high quality that rigorous
preparation for the
ship's maiden voyage was unnecessary. Evidence of that lack of
rigor includes
the following: The sea trials of the Titanic took place just ten
days before its

initial trip and lasted no more than 12 hours over the course of a
day (the
Olympic, a sister ship to the Titanic, received two days of sea
trials). During
these trials, the ship was never run at full speed (the Olympic's
sea trials
included several high-speed runs). A number of the crew did not
join the ship
until hours before its first, and last, commercial voyage. There
were no life-
boat drills before the Titanic set sail for New York.
Had the White Star Line been less confident and more vigilant
in their
preparations for the Titanic's transatlantic journey it is likely
more lives
would have been saved after the ship struck the iceberg because
its crew
would have had added training in dealing with emergency
situations. More-
over, if the Titanic's officers had been given further time to
practice steering
the ship during its sea trials, the crash with the iceberg might
have been
avoided altogether as they would have had a better chance to
fathom that a
huge vessel like the Titanic does not respond quickly to the
helm. That
thought might have led the captain to cut back speed when he
was informed
of bergs ahead on April 14.
The Titanic may have also been able to miss the iceberg if First
Officer
William Murdoch, who was on bridge duty when the berg was
sighted, had

not requested the engines be reversed, prior to steering the ship
to the left, as
reversing the engines decreased the forward motion of the
Titanic causing it
to turn more slowly. Additionally, if Murdoch had opted to
collide head on
with the iceberg, the Titanic's bow would have undoubtedly
sustained major
damage, but the ship almost certainly would not have sunk—in
1907 the
Kronprinz Wilhelm, a German liner, rammed an iceberg but was
able to com-
plete its voyage despite suffering a crushed bow.
Flawed Signal Readings
The night the Titanic sank, crewmembers on the Californian (a
cargo stea-
mer that Lord Mersey, the man in charge of the British Board of
Trade
Inquiry into the Titanic disaster, surmised was five to ten miles
from the
Titanic) observed lights from a "mystery ship." The sighting
was made
known to the Californian's captain, Stanley Lord, who
concurred that a
Morse-lamp signal be send to that ship. The other vessel never
replied.
A short while later, at 1:15 AM. Captain Lord was stirred from
slumber
and informed that rockets were being fired from a ship in the

vicinity of the
Californian. Lord asked the crewman who had seen the rockets
if they had
been a company signal. The crewmember replied he didn't
know. Lord said
to keep signaling the ship by Morse lamp but did not request the
vessel be
contacted by wireless. He then went back to sleep.
Ships in the Titanic era sometimes fired flares and Roman
candles at
night for communication. By firing these in various colors each
ship was iden-
tified. The night the Titanic went under, it sent up eight white-
exploding flares
over the course of an hour at regular intervals. No company had
as distress
signals only white rockets or white rockets throwing off stars.
Furthermore,
rockets fired off one at a time at short intervals were
internationally agreed
to be distress signals.
Had Lord given the situation the benefit of a doubt he could
have discov-
ered if the mystery ship's rockets were distress signals by
waking his radio
operator and having him ascertain whether distress messages
were coming in
over the wireless. He then would have known of the Titanic's
plight and
could have steamed off to help rescue its passengers. Alas,
Captain Lord
chose not to rouse his radio operator, or himself; hence he did
not learn of
the tragedy until 6 AM, when he heard from another ship about

the sinking
and when it was far too late to save anyone in the water. The
Carpathia,
which had rushed at top speed from 58 miles away, was already
picking up
survivors.
After the Titanic disaster, it was agreed that rockets at sea
would be
interpreted as distress signals oniy, thus removing any possible
misinterpre-
tation from other vessels. Lamentably, that agreement came too
late to help
the poor souls on the Titanic.
"Women and Children First" Conjectures
Second Officer Charles Lightoller was in charge of loading the
lifeboats on
the port side of the Titanic, and First Officer William Murdoch
was in com-
mand on the starboard side. Both officers filled the boats using
Captain
Smith's policy directive of women and children first. However,
each man
interpreted the evacuation order differently; Murdoch took it to
mean
women and children first while Lightoller thought it meant
women and chil-
dren only. Consequently, Lightoller lowered lifeboats with

empty seats if
there were no women and children waiting to board, while
Murdoch
allowed a limited number of men to board if all the nearby
women and
children had embarked.
The women and children first rule, which was honored by most
men on
the ship and produced an overall death toll of nine men for
every one
woman, dealt a serious blow to the women's suffrage movement
and the
related cause of women's rights, both up-and-coming ideas in
the first two
decades of the twentieth century. The cry of "Votes for
women!" seemed not
so compelling when set against that of "Women and children
first," a decree
that was put into practice and went unchallenged by nearly all
the women
aboard the Titanic (some feminists were outraged that women
may have let
themselves be treated as helpless objects). Equality of rights
also brought with
it equality of risks, a notion that the suffragettes and women's
rights advo-
cates of the time, unlike second-wave feminists 50 years
afterward, had not
adequately considered.
The Assumptions of George Bernard Shaw and Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle
George Bernard Shaw and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a
series of let-
ters in the Daily News and Leader in May 1912, expressing

opposing views
on the Titanic disaster. The first letter was written by Shaw,
who railed
against the British press for "outrageous romantic lying" on
matters regarding
the sinking. He specifically argued that the women and children
first policy
was not strictly followed; that Captain Smith, rather than being
a superhero
for going down with the ship, had been the precipitator of the
accident by
having his vessel speed through an ice field and having no
binoculars for the
lookouts; that lifeboats did not rescue people in the water
because their occu-
pants were afraid they would jeopardize their own lives by
doing that; and
that it was wrong to elevate preventable tragedies into badges of
national
honor. (Shaw particularly objected to the "canonizing" of
Captain Smith for
his supposed heroism and the myth that all the Englishmen
aboard the ship
had met death without a tremor.)
Doyle replied to Shaw by accusing him of deliberate
misrepresentation
and perversity. Yes, Captain Smith had made a mistake, but he
had given his
life in recompense. The women and first policy was for the most
part
observed. The conduct of the American males aboard the ship
was every bit

150 ETC - APRIL 2012
as noble as that of their British counterparts. And courage and
discipline
should be honored when it is demonstrated in its highest form.
One can argue that Shaw and Doyle both made valid points. For
exam-
ple, it is true that lots of journalists outrageously romanticized
the sinking.
Nevertheless, many passengers and crew behaved with great
dignity in the
face of death. And while it would be wrong to say that only the
Americans
and British on board acted bravely throughout the disaster, we
don't know
much about how everyone else on the Titanic reacted because
their stories
were not reported on—of 43 survivor accounts in the New York
Herald,
only two were steerage experiences. Suppositions about how the
bulk of the
Titanic's more than 2,000 passengers responded during the
ship's last
moments must be left to our individual imaginations, as must
surmises
about how we ourselves would have behaved during those
terrible hours.
IV. Indexing
Iceberg] Is Not Iceberg2
Icebergs are commonly regarded as white. But not all icebergs
are that color.
When a melting iceberg becomes top heavy and rolls over, it

turns dark blue
until the water runs out of it. At night, icebergs undergoing this
change are
quite hard to see. The iceberg that struck the Titanic was most
likely one of
these "blue" icebergs. It was invisible until it was just a third of
a mile away,
and there were witnesses, who testified at inquiries that were
held following
the disaster, who said that it looked dark as it passed the ship.
Passengeri Is Not Passenger2 Is Not Passengers
The Titanic's passengers were divided into three classes,
determined not only by
the price of their ticket, but by their wealth and social position.
Individuals tra-
veling in first class, the wealthiest passengers on board,
included the cream of
American and British society. Among the Titanic's first-class
passengers were
John Jacob Astor IV (who was worth well over $100 million in
1912, which
would make him a multibillionaire in today's world), George
Widener (after
the Titanic tragedy, his wife donated a library at Harvard
University in her
son's name), Isidor Straus (co-owner of Macy's department
store), Benjamin
Guggenheim (he became famous for spending his final hours
changing into for-
mal evening wear in order to die with dignity as a gentleman),
and Mrs. Margaret
Tobin Brown (a woman who posterity has dubbed "The
Unsinkable Molly
Brown"—the nickname refers to the help she rendered in the

ship's evacuation
and her insistence that Lifeboat No. 6 go back to look for
survivors).
Second-class passengers were middle-class individuals and
included
teachers, writers, clergymen, and tourists. Third-class
passengers, or "steerage"
as the class was popularly labeled, were mainly immigrants
moving to the
United States and Canada.
First-class passengers resided on five levels from the upper to
the prome-
nade decks. They had easy or relatively easy access to the boat
deck where
all the lifeboats were housed. Sixty percent of first-class
passengers survived
the sinking, as did two "first-class pets," a Pomeranian and a
Pekinese, who
accompanied their owners into hfeboats.
Second-class passengers were located on the middle, upper, and
saloon
decks. Where second-class passengers were on the same deck as
first-class
passengers, the second-class passengers were further aft. More
by social
than physical barriers, many second-class passengers would
have refrained
from entering the first-class section of the boat deck. Forty-two

percent of
second-class passengers survived the sinking.
Third-class passengers had rooms on the lower decks of the ship
and,
with a few exceptions, had no direct or immediate access to
lifeboats on the
boat deck. Some gates separating the third-class section of the
ship from the
other areas, like the one leading from the aft well deck to the
second-class
section, were locked. Numerous third-class passengers who
made it through
the' disaster did so only by reaching the last of the lifeboats that
were
launched. Twenty-five percent of third-class passengers
survived the sinking.
Class distinctions were followed in death as in life. After the
Titanic
went down, the cable ship Mackay-Bennett gathered floating
corpses in the
water. The bodies of first-class passengers were put into coffins
on deck,
while those of the second and third class were sewn into canvas
bags and
stored on ice in the hold. Survivors on the rescue-ship Carpathia
also
observed class divisions by coming ashore from that steamer in
class order.
The Importance of Radio Operatorn
There were two wireless operators on the Titanic. Jack Phillips,
age 25, was
the senior operator and Harold Bride, age 22, was his assistant.
The men,

who made less than $300 each per year, worked in a small
windowless room
and had to keep the wireless operating round the clock. Between
shifts they
slept on bunks in a tiny space next door.
Phillips and Bride signed Ship's Articles and were therefore part
of the
crew and under the captain's command. But their chief devotion
was to their
employer, Marconi International Marine Communication
Company Limited,
an outfit that made most of its profits from sending
Marconigram messages
of the "Having a wonderful time, wish you were here" variety.
About 9 AM on Sunday, April 14, the Titanic received an ice
advisory
from the Cunard liner Caronia that told of field ice ahead.
Around 20 minutes
before noon, the Dutch liner Noordam reported ice in much the
same area,
and at 1:41 PM a warning of ice from the SS Baltic was
received. A German
ship, the Amerika, conveyed a message that it had passed two
large bergs at
1:45 PM. Not all these warnings were given to the officers
navigating the
Titanic.
The wireless stopped working around midday on Sunday, April

14, and
Phillips and Bride spent the next seven hours locating the
problem and
making repairs. They got the wireless functioning again just a
little after
7 PM, and Phillips began to deal with the backlog of passenger
messages
that had collected at his desk.
Shortly after 9:30 PM, Phillips received an ice warning from the
SS
Mesaba that a large number of icebergs, heavy pack ice, and an
ice field lay
in the path of the Titanic. Phillips, who was busily occupied
transmitting
passenger messages, did not send the warning to the bridge. Had
Captain
Smith known of that warning, which contained a detailed
reading of the
dangerous ice conditions in the area surrounding the Titanic, he
might have
considered changing course or reducing speed.
Around 11 PM, less than an hour before the Titanic hit the
iceberg that
sank it, Phillips was once more interrupted by another ship, the
SS Californian.
The Californian's wireless operator relayed that his vessel was
encircled by ice
and had stopped. The Californian was quite close and the signal
came in very
loudly over Phillips' headphones, which led him to respond
"Shut up!" and to
put the message aside for later delivery. This communication
was also not for-
warded to the bridge, which was most unfortunate because if

heeded it could
have prevented the Titanic's sinking.
At 11:30 PM, a half hour after he had imparted his ice update to
the
Titanic, the Californian's radio operator switched off his set and
went to
bed for the night. As a result, he missed the wireless distress
signals that
were sent from the Titanic 45 minutes later, an incredibly
unlucky happen-
ing, as the Californian was close by and could have helped save
people.
Following an investigation into the Titanic disaster, the U.S.
Congress
passed the Radio Act of 1912. This law, along with the
International Conven-
tion for the Safety of Life at Sea, mandated that radio
communications on
passenger ships be operated 24/7 along with a secondary power
supply, so as
not to miss distress calls. The Radio Act also compelled ships to
maintain
contact with vessels in their vicinity and coastal onshore radio
stations. And it
called for all U.S. radio operators to be licensed by the
Department of Com-
merce and Labor. This latter proviso meant that to fulfill federal
guidelines,

radio operatori, radio operator2, radio operators, and all radio
operators
going forward had to operate in a standardized manner, as radio
operatorn
so to speak. (NB: Pay for wireless operators also substantially
increased and
working conditions were improved.)
V. Dating
Steamships (1894) Are Not Steamships (1912)
No one thing relating to the huge loss of life from the Titanic's
sinking has
provoked more fury than that the ship did not carry enough
lifeboats for all
its crew and passengers. The most recent law concerning
lifeboats dated from
1894 and required a minimum of 16 lifeboats for ships over
10,000 tons.
This law had been established when the largest vessels afloat
were the
12,950-ton-Cunarder RMS Lucania and her identically weighted
sister RMS
Campania. Since then, the size of ships had dramatically
increased without a
corresponding boost in lifeboat requirements, the consequence
being that the
46,328-ton Titanic was legally required to carry only enough
lifeboats for less
than half its capacity.
The White Star Line actually exceeded regulations by including
four col-
lapsible lifeboats, providing a total capacity of 1,178 people,
which amounted

to about a third of Titanic's total capacity of 3,547. As there
were around
2,200 passengers on the Titanic's maiden voyage even had its
lifeboats been
fully loaded, which they were not (only 705 people were loaded
or made it
onto the lifeboats the night of the tragedy), more than 1,000
passengers would
not have been able to board them.
Some of the lifeboats were lowered half full, in large part
because many
of the passengers believed that the "unsinkable" Titanic was
itself a lifeboat
and the crew, which was new to the ship and had not been told
that the life-
boats could be safely loaded at full capacity, was afraid if the
lifeboats were
full that the added weight would cause them to buckle while
they were sus-
pended over the side.
For the first hour, many passengers did not take the order to get
into life-
boats all that seriously. They preferred the comfort and warmth
of the ship to
sitting in a small, exposed rowboat on the open seas. Also, there
had been no
hfeboat drills on the voyage, so people did not know which
boats they had
been assigned to or how to get to those boats quickly in an
emergency.

It had been presumed that if a serious accident occurred in the
well-
traveled North Atlantic sea-lanes, assistance from other vessels
would be
close by. Lifeboats then would be used to ferry passengers and
crew from
the incapacitated ship to its rescuers. Having enough lifeboats
on the
stricken vessel to accommodate all its passengers was
considered superflu-
ous to support this activity.
After the Titanic disaster, recommendations were made by both
British
and American authorities that (1) ships would carry enough
lifeboats for
those aboard, (2) mandated lifeboat drills would be
implemented, and (3) life-
boat inspections would be conducted. These recommendations
were incorpo-
rated into a global maritime safety treaty known as the
International
Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which took effect in
1914. (Nowadays,
due partly to the Titanic's tragic loss of life, cruise ships must
have enough
lifeboats to hold 25% more people than the total number of
passengers and
crew on board.)
Alexander Carlisle, the chairman of the managing directors
from
Harland and Wolff, the firm that built the Titanic, had
originally plarmed for
64 lifeboats to be on the ship. But in a rare cost-cutting and

space-saving
exercise, the White Star Line overruled him by deciding that
only 20 lifeboats
would be carried on the Titanic. Carlisle didn't push the matter,
and the rest,
sad to say, is history.
Ship Safety in the North Atlantic (1912) Is Not Ship Safety
in the North Atlantic (Today)
The Titanic disaster led to the convening of the first
International Convention
for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in London, on November
12, 1913.
On January 30, 1914, a treaty was signed at the conference that
resulted in
the formation and worldwide funding of the International Ice
Patrol, an
agency of the United States Coast Guard that to the present day
monitors
and reports on the location of North Atlantic icebergs that could
pose a
threat to transatlantic sea traffic. Over the years, the Coast
Guard has experi-
mented with ways of removing dangerous bergs. They've tried
gunfire, mines,
torpedoes, depth charges, and bombing, but just giving ships
early warning
so the ice can be avoided has ended up being the most practical
solution.
VI. Etcetera
The Brave Postal Workers and Engineers Aboard the Titanic
The Titanic's official name was RMS Titanic. RMS stood for

Royal Mail
Steamer. The ship's official job was to deliver tons of mail to
countries on
either side of the ocean. The mail was very important because it
was one of
the few ways of communicating with other people in 1912. The
Titanic car-
ried over 3,000 mailbags and five postal workers, three
Americans and two
Brits, on its maiden voyage.
When the Titanic hit the iceberg its lower decks began to flood.
The postal
workers responded by assembling the mail and pulling it to
higher decks. They
were racing against time, hoping to keep the mail safe until help
arrived.
Sadly, help never came and the frigid, 28-degree waters of the
North Atlantic
claimed them all on the morning of April 15. The mail was lost
as well.
The entire complement of 34 engineers and assistant
engineers—
electricians, plumbers, and boiler room personnel—under the
control of Joseph
Bell, the chief engineer officer, was also lost when the Titanic
sank. These
brave men kept the power on and the lights burning until almost
the very

last moment. Their commitment to duty is commemorated in the
Titanic
Engineers' Memorial, which was unveiled in Southampton,
England, two years
after the disaster. (NB: Seventy-eight percent of the Titanic's
crew went down
with the ship.)
The Valiant Musicians Aboard the Ship
The White Star Line hired musicians for the voyage but
registered them as
second-class passengers, so the company could avoid paying
union wages.
During the sinking, the bandleader, Wallace Hartley, led the
musicians in
playing music, to keep those on board the ship from panicking.
Reports
from survivors indicate that the band was successful in that
mission.
Passengers who were in lifeboats some distance from the
Titanic could
hear, above the tumult and clamor, the orchestra playing lively
tunes.
Legend has it that Hartley released the musicians only when the
incline of
the ship made further playing impossible. None of the eight
musicians
aboard the Titanic survived when the great leviathan took its
final plunge
to the bottom of the ocean.
Bibliograpby
Ballard, Robert D. The Discovery of the Titanic. New York:
Grand Central,

1995.
Barratt, Nick. Lost Voices from the Titanic. New York:
Palgrave, 2010.
Beesley, Lawrence. The Loss of the S. S. Titanic: Its Story and
Its Lessons.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Brewster, Hugh and Laurie Coulter. 882'A Amazing Answers to
Your Questions
about the Titanic. Toronto: Madison Press, 1998.
Brown, David. The Last Log of the Titanic. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2001.
Butler, Daniel Allen. "Unsinkable": The Eull Story.
Mechanicsburg, PA:
Stackpole, 1998.
Cox, Stephen. The Titanic Story: Hard Choices, Dangerous
Decisions. Chicago:
Open Court, 1999.
Davie, Michael. Titanic: The Death and Life of a Legend. New
York:
Knopf, 1986.
Eaton, John P. and Charles A. Haas. Titanic: Destination
Disaster: The
Legends and the Reality. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1998.
Encyclopedia Titánica: Titanic Eacts, Survivor Stories,

Passenger and Crew Bio-
graphy and Titanic History. Encyclopedia Titánica, 2012. Web.
10 Jan. 2012.
Heyer, Paul. Titanic Legacy: Disaster as Media Event and Myth.
Westport,
CT: Praeger, 1995.
Hines, Stephen W. Titanic: One Newspaper, Seven Days, and
the Truth That
Shocked the World. Naperville, IL: Cumberland House, 2011.
Howells, Richard. The Myth of the Titanic. New York: St.
Martin's Press,
1999.
Lord, Walter. A Night to Remember. New York: Bantam, 1997.
Lord, Walter. The Night Lives On. New York: Morrow, 1986.
Lynch, Don. Titanic: An Illustrated History. New York:
Hyperion, 1992.
Marcus, Geoffrey. The Maiden Voyage. New York: Viking,
1969.
Matsen, Brad. Titanic's Last Secrets. New York: Twelve, 2008.
Pellegrino, Charles R. Ghosts of the Titanic. New York:
Morrow, 2000.
Wade, Wyn Craig. The Titanic: End of a Dream. New York:
Penguin, 1992.
Wilson, Frances. How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J.
Bruce Ismay.
New York: HarperCollins, 2011.
Copyright of ETC: A Review of General Semantics is the
property of Institute of General Semantics, Inc. and

its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or
posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for individual use.
Copyright of ETC: A Review of General Semantics is the
property of Institute of General Semantics, Inc. and
its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or
posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
BY DAN DEITZ
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
this month, the Titanic struck
an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean
and sank within hours. More
than 1,500 people lost their
lives. There were those who had
claimed the ship was unsinkable.
In August 1998, Mechanical
Engineering devoted its cover
to a feature on the event. The

article reported highlights of
recent research into exactly how
the ship sank. On the centennial
of what may be the most famous
shipwreck of the 20th century,
we reprint that article here.
The paper, 'Titanic, The Anatomy
of a Disaster, a Report From
the Marine Forensic Panel," on
which the article is based is still
available through the website of
the Society of Naval Architects
and Marine Engineers.
Dan Dietz was executive editor of Mechanical
Engineering rDagazine in August 1998.
hen our boat had rowed
about half a mile from the
vessel, the Titanic-which^^^
was illuminated from stem to stern-was
perfectly stationary, like some fantastic
piece of stage scenery," recalled Pierre
Maréchal, a French aviator and a surviving
first-class passenger of the ill-fated liner. ,̂,.
"Presently, the gigantic ship began to sink ^
by the bows... suddenly the lights went out,
and an immense clamor filled the air. Little
by little, the Titanic settled down... and
sank without noise... In the final spasm the

stern of the leviathan stood in the air and
then the vessel finally disappeared."
Elmer Z. Taylor, who watched from
Lifeboat No. 5, close enough to the Titani^
to observe its final demise, would later 1^
write, "The cracking sound, quite audible
a quarter of a mile away, was due, in my
opinion, to tearing of the ship's plates apart,
or that part of the hull below the expansion
joints, thus breaking the back at a point
almost midway the length of the ship."
"At that time the band was playing a
ragtime tune," remembered Harold Sydney
Bride, the surviving wireless operator of the
Titanic. "I saw a collapsible boat on deck...
I went to help when a big wave swept it off,
carrying me with it. The boat was
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 1 April 2012
I engineering
. Jjêvidence suggests
that the unsinkable
ship experienced
a hull failure at the
surface and broke into
pieces before it went doum.

overturned and I was beneath it, but I managed to get clear.
I swam with all my might and I suppose I was 150 feet away
when the Titanic, with her aft quarter sticking straight up,
began to settle."
"The orchestra belonging to the first cabin assembled on
deck as the liner was going down and played 'Nearer My
(lod to Thee.' By that time," as Miss C. Bounnell, first-class
sui-vivor, relived the night, "most of the lifeboats were
some distance away and
only a faint sound of the
.st rains of the hymn could
be heard. As we pulled
away from the ship, we
noticed that she was hog-
hacked, showing she was
already breaking in two."
Four survivors with first-
hand knowledge, remem-
horing probably the most
i inportant—certainly the
most traumatic—event in
their lives, disagreed on
one major point, and it
has remained a mystery L|g,
lor more than 80 years: '^•*-
Did the Titanic break
apart at the surface or
sink intact?
Although all the officers
I t'stified that the ship sank
II tact, some survivors and crew testified to a hull failure at

t he surface. Even during the American and British inqui-
ries into the disaster, few questions focused on the struc-
tural aspects of the ship. Despite survivors' testimonies, it
was concluded that the ship sank intact.
Evidence From the Depths
The mystery arose again when the vwreck of the Titanicwas
discovered in 1985 and the hull was found in twopieces. Many
theories were developed as to how the
ship broke apart during the sinking process, and research
w as begun to determine how this could have happened. The
speculation intensified further when the wreck site was revis-
ited in 1986 and a third 17.4-meter section from the midship
region of the ship was found.
To help solve this mystery, the Discovery Channel, in de-
veloping its award-winning "Titanic: Anatomy of a Disaster"
television documentary, approached Gibbs & Cox, Inc., one of
t he oldest naval architecture and marine engineering firms in
the world. Gibbs & Cox agreed to perform a stress analysis to
help determine the possibility of hull fracture at the surface.
With funding provided jointly by the Discovery Channel
and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers,
C'libbs & Cox conducted a basic study of the breakup of RMS
Titanic using linear finite-element-analysis (FEA) software.
This study was done in conjunction with materials testing of
the Titanic steel by the University of Missouri-Rolla, with ad-
A veN of the Titanic's hull at the shipyard in Belfast, Ireland,
shortly before the vessel was launched.
vice from Prof. H.P. Leighly Jr.. Timothy Foecke of NIST, and
Harold Reemsnyder of the Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Homer
Research Laboratory in Bethlehem, Pa.

Important to the analysis eñ"ort was accurate weight and
buoyancy data for the ship at the time it struck the iceberg,
and then later while it was sinking. These data were pro-
vided via a recent study of the ship's breakup undertaken
for another technical paper, "The Titanic and Lusitania, A
Final Forensic Analysis,"
published in a 1996 issue
oí Marine Technology. The
study provided the load-
ing information needed
to take "snapshots" of the
ship's state of stress during
the sinking process. Tests
conducted on the steel
recovered from the wreck
site were performed at the
University of Missouri and
the National Institute of
Standards and Technology
in Gaithersburg, Md. The
results from these metal-
lurgical tests of Titanic steel
and rivets were also input
as data for the finite ele-
ment analysis.
Gibbs & Cox engineers
selected MSC/NASTRAN,
from the MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. in Los Angeles, to
perform the analysis. FEMAP engineering-analysis model-
ing and visualization software from Enterprise Software
Products in Exton, Pa., was used to perform the pre- and
postprocessing of the analyses. Gibbs & Cox had been using

MSC/NASTRAN for approximately five years. According
to David Wood, the firm's structures department manager,
MSC worked closely vAÜ his team during the development of
MSC/NASTRAN Version 70 to provide the special program
solutions needed for use in their industry.
Engineers analyzed the stresses in the Titanic as the flood-
ing progressed within the bow region, using modern FEA
techniques that simply were not available until the 1960s,
and certainly were not known to the structural designers
of the ship in the first decades of the century. In the 1960s,
engineers started to analyze the stresses in ship hulls using
finite-element modeling (FEM). As a pioneer of FEA technol-
ogy, MSC has been in the forefront of dramatically improving
this technique to take advantage of advances in computer
technology.
A full-ship model was graphically constructed, employing a
modern approach similar to that used for U.S. Navy destroy-
ers and cruisers today. Loadings for the model were devel-
oped based on one flooding scenario from the paper, "The
Sinking of the Titanic," by Chris Hackett and John C. Bedford.
The corresponding weight and buoyancy curves, developed
by Arthur Sandiford imd William H. Garzke, Jr., were used to
36 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING I April 2012
A»tp«i
Boiler
Room
Forepeak

The Titanic and the approximate divisions of the ship's hull. As
Boiler Room No. ̂ filled with water,
the stern would have risen until the weight of 76 meters of
unsupported hull stressed the structure of the ship.
model the critical fiooding conditions believed to represent
the hull loading just prior to hull fracture. Since the flooding
process took place over several hours, a quasi-static analysis
was considered appropriate. The initial modeling effort fo-
cused on the determination of the location and magnitude
of high-stress regions that developed in the hull while she
remained on the surface.
Engineers determined that stress levels in the midsection of
the ship were at least up to the yield strength of the steel just
prior to sinking. When considered alone, stresses at these lev-
els do not indisputably imply catastrophic failure. Additional
analyses, focusing on probable locations of initial hull frac-
ture, are required to indicate that the ship sustained possible
catastrophic failure at the surface and began to break apart.
Significant stresses were developed in the vicinity of the
two expansion joints, and in the inner bottom of the ship be-
tween the forward end of Boiler Room No. 1 and the aft end
of the Reciprocating Engine Room. Structural discontinui-
ties, such as expansion joints, result in stress-concentration
development. Typically, stress concentration levels are three
to four times that of free-field stresses. While these structural
discontinuities have not yet been thoroughly investigated,
it is believed that stresses developed at these locations were
significantly higher than the material yield stress.
The Death of a Ship
A t 2:17 a.m., according to the various investigationsafter the
disaster, the Titanic began to go under, herlights blazing in the

cold of the sub-Arctic night and
with more than 1,500 people still on board. With a rumbling,
crashing noise, the bow of the ship sank deeper into the water
and the stern rose into the air.
The stern section remained motionless and high out of the
water for 30 seconds or more. The hull fracture was described
as the sound of breaking chinaware, but as it continued, it was
like a loud roar. A minute later, her lights nickered and then
went out.
Then, at 2:20 a.m., the stem settled back into the water. Fol-
lowing a series of explosions, the submerged forward section
began to pull away from the stern. As the forward section
began its long descent, it drew the stern almost vertical again.
Once this began, TYton/c picked up speed as she sank below
the surface of the pond-still waters of the North Atlantic.
Some of the survivors on the stern stated that it was almost
perpendicular as it slid silently and with hardly a ripple be-
neath the surface. William Garzke, staff naval architect at
Gibbs & Cox, points out that, had the liner been elevated at 90
degrees, the huge boilers would have been ripped from their
moorings, which was not the case. He suggests that the stern
section likely rose from the surface to at least 20 degrees
but not more than 35 degrees, as it filled with water or was
dragged down by the bow section.
Chief baker Charlie Joughin, who was at the ensign staff
at the stern end, later testified that it was like riding an eleva-
tor down to the water. With the absence of suction forces, he
was able to swim away without even wetting his hair, so swift
was the stern's demise.
The failure of the main hull girder of the Titanic was the
final phase of her sinking process. This began between 2:00

and 2:15 a.m., starting somewhere between stacks Nos. 2 and
4. The FEA results indicate that the plate failures might have
started around the second expansion joint, or just behind it.
Stresses in the hull were increasing as the bow flooding
continued and the stern rose from the water. Detailed ex-
amination of survivor testimony and underwater surveys has
confirmed that the forward expansion joint was opened up
while the ship was still on the surface, suggesting the signifi-
cant stresses induced by the flooding of the forward part of
the hull. An FEA review of the stresses in this area confirms
that the nominal hull stresses were well above the material
yield stress.
Most probably, significant stress developed in the way of the
second expansion joint, between its root and the deck struc-
ture below it. As the flooding progressed aftward, the hull
girder was strained beyond its design limitations, and the lo-
cal stresses around this expansion joint soon reached the ulti-
mate strength of the material. It is thought that, in the end, a
critical structural failure in the hull or deck plates occurred in
the area around the second expansion joint.
Once localized fracture began in the way of this joint, ad-
ditional plate failures and associated fracturing likely radi-
ated out from this joint, toward both port and starboard.
The decks, however, with their finer grain structure, were
most likely able to deform well into the plastic range of the
April 2012 I MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 37
TESTING THE TITANIC'S STEEL
I

n 1996, several samples of steel from the Titanic—a hull
plate from the bow area and a plate from a major transverse
bulkhead—were recovered from the wreck site and subjected
to metallurgical testing by H.P. Leighly at the University of
Missouri-Rolla, as well as at the laboratories of Bethlehem
I Steel and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Chemical testing revealed a low residual nitrogen and
manganese
content, and higher levels of sulfur, phosphorus, and oxygen
than
would be permitted today in mild steel plates or stiffeners. This
indicates that the steel was produced by the open-hearth rather
than the Bessemer process, most likely in an acid-lined furnace;
the steel is of a type known as semi-killed, that is, partially
deoxi-
dized before casting into ingots. (Other fragments of the
Titanic's
hull have yielded slightly different results, suggesting a degree
of
variability in the chemical and, hence, the mechanical
properties of
the steel used in the ship.)
Excess oxygen can form precipitates that can embrittle the steel,
and will also raise transition temperatures. In the absence of
suf-
ficient manganese, sulfur reacts with the iron to form iron
sutfide
at the grain boundaries; it can also react with manganese, in
either
case creating paths of weakness for fractures. Sulfide particles
under stress can nucleate microcracks, which further loading
will
cause to coalesce into larger cracks; in fact, this was found to

have
been the mode of failure in the shell plating of the Titanic.
Phospho-
rus, even in small amounts, has been found to foster the
initiation
of fractures. Of course, much of this metallurgical information
has
only been learned in the years since the Titanicweni down.
To determine the steel's mechanical properties, it was subjected
to tensile testing, as well as the Charpy V-notch test, used to
simulate rapid loading phenomena; the test used samples
oriented
both parallel and perpendicular to the original direction of the
hull
plate. The ductile-brittle transition temperature (using 20 lbs.-
ft.
for the test) was found to be 20 °C in one direction and 30 °C in
the
other, compared with -15 °C for a reference sample of modern A
36 steel—and a water temperature of -2''C on the night the ship
collided with the iceberg. The Titanic steel was also shown to
have
approximately one-third the impact strength of modern steel.
When the Titanic samples were also examined with a scanning
electron microscope, the grain structure of the steel was found
rto be very large; this coarse structure made it easier for cracks
to propagate. Rivet holes were cold-punched, a method no lon-
ger allowed (they must now be drilled), nor were they reamed to
remove microcracks.
The steel grain size; the oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus content
of the steel; and the cold-punched, unreamed rivet holes were
found to have contributed to the breakup of the Titanic, along

with
the steel's relatively low ductility at the freezing point of water.
The
shell plates showed signs of brittle fracture, though some plates
demonstrated significant plasticity.
Of course, the science of metallurgy has advanced considerably
since the Titanic's day, and William Garzke of Gibbs and Cox
and
his collaborators emphasized in their report that "the steel used
in
the r/fan/c was the best available in 1909-19U" when the ship
was
built. In fact, they add that when 39,000 tons of water entered
the
bow, "no modern ship, not even a welded one, could have
withstood
the forces that the Titanic experienced during her breakup."
HENRY BAUMGARTNER
material before failing in ductile tears. It is speculated,
however, that the side shell plates suffered brittle frac-
ture due to their coarser grain structure and manganese
sulfide inclusions. This type of failure is evident on the
wreck today.
Free field stresses, already at the yield point of the ma-
terial, may have been increased by a factor of two to four
in areas of structural discontinuities, such as large open-
ings or those with small radii, or doubler plate edges.
Fractures typically spread in random chaotic paths, fol-
lowing weaknesses in the plate and microcracks íüready
present around rivet holes.
Assuming that the hull girder failed at the surface, then
as Boiler Room No. 4 filled with water, the stern rose far-

ther out of the water, resulting in some 76 meters of un-
supported hull, which sharply increased the hull girder
stresses, in turn accelerating the fracturing of the steel
plates. The angle of trim grew to a maximum of 15 to 20
degrees, further increasing the stresses in the hull and
deck plating near the aft expansion joint. The stresses
continued to build in this area of the ship, where there
were large openings for a main access, the machinery
casing for the Reciprocating Engine Room, the uptakes
and intakes for the boilers, the ash pit door on the port
side of Boiler Room No. 1, and the turbine engine casing.
As the hull girder continued to fail, the bow was first to
begin its plunge toward the seabed.
As the bow and stern sections continued to separate,
there were some local buckling failures in the inner
bottom and bottom structure. This is what caused the
stern section to settle back toward the water's surface
as the decks began to fail and the side shell fractured
into many small plate sections. The MSC/NASTRAN
finite element analysis indicates that the stresses in the
region of Boiler Room No. 1 and the Reciprocating En-
gine Room were elevated.
An additional stress analysis, based on classical beam
theory, indicates that the hull girder stresses exceeded
the yield point of the steel. When the bow and stern
began to separate, the two main transverse bulkheads
bounding Boiler Room No. 1 collapsed as they were
compressed by the downward movement of the deck
structures. The decks, in turn, failed because of the lack
of bulkhead support.
When this happened, the unsupported length of the
inner bottom suddenly grew to 165 feet, encompassing
Boiler Room No. 1 and No. 2, as well as the Reciprocating

Engine Room. This condition allowed deformation of
the inner bottom structure to extend up farther into the
ship's machinery spaces, while the deck structure fail-
ures continued. It is believed that this compression of
the hull girder brought about the failure of the side shell
plates, and also freed equipment inside the ship, such as
the boilers in Boiler Room No. 1, from its foundations.
It cannot be established with any certainty what
happened to the ship during its descent to the seabed.
However, what is now known is that once the Titanic
38 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING | April 2012
disappeared below the ocean's surface, it broke into three
pieces. The depth where these events occurred cannot be
estimated with any precision. The buoyancy of the stern
piece also appears to have resisted the downward pull of the
bow. The extent of damage evident in the stern wreck im-
plies that the bow section may have pulled the stern section
quickly below the water's surface, resulting in structural
implosions that caused
significant damage.
Structural failures ulti-
mately led to the separa-
tion of the bow portion,
followed by the third or
double bottom piece. It
is interesting to note that
the bow section did not
suffer damage similar to
that in the stern section.
This was likely due to the
gradual flooding of the

bow section, and its sta-
bility during the descent
to the bottom. It rests up-
right on the bottom with
little apparent damage
directly attributable to
impact with the seabed.
The analysis supports
some witnesses' testimony that the ship likely began to frac-
ture at the surface, and that the fracture was completed at
some unknown depth below the water's surface. The result-
ing stress levels in the strength deck below the root of the sec-
ond expansion joint (aft), and in the inner bottom structure
directly below, were very high because of the unusual flood-
ing occurring in the forward half of the ship. These pafterns
of stress support the argument that initial hull failure likely
occurred at the surface. Additional work is being performed
to investigate this further.
These findings mirror the testimony of Seaman Edward
John Buley at the U.S. Senate hearings. Stating that as the
bow continued to slip below the surface, "She went down
as far as the after funnel, and then there was a little roar, as
though the engines had rushed forward, and she snapped in
two, and the bow part went down and the afterpart came up
and stayed up five minutes before it went down... It was hori-
zontal at first, and then went down."
In response to what he meant by "snapped in two," and
how he knew this, Buley testified, "She parted in two...
Because we could see the afterpart afioat, and there was
no forepart to it. I think she must have parted where the
bunkers were. She parted at the last, because the afterpart
of her settled out of the water horizontally after the other
part went down. First of all, you could see her propellers and

everything. Her rudder was clear out of the water. You could
hear the rush of the machinery, and she parted in two, and
the afterpart settled down again, and we thought the after-
part would float altogether. She uprighted herself for about
British and U.S. investigations of the Titanic tragedy have
resulted In greater lifeboat capacity, improved subdivision of
ships, and the creation of an ice patrol.
five minutes, and then tipped over and disappeared... You
could see she went in two, because we were quite near to her
and could see her quite plainly."
RMS Titanic, the largest ship of its day, was built in Belfast,
Ireland, and was said to be "unsinkable," a belief so strong
that it was to have tragic consequences. Having confidence in
the ship's "unsinkability," many passengers chose to remain
on board. The first life-
boats to leave were only
half, or one-third full.
The fallacy of the claim
itself became tragically
apparent during the ship's
maiden voyage. Just
three hours after it col-
lided with an iceberg, the
majestic Titanic vanished
beneath the cold waters oí'
the North Atlantic. This
ill-founded confidence led
to the ignoring of at least
14 warnings of hazard-
ous ice fields, six of which

were received on the day
of the disaster.
Equipped with only
20 lifeboats, the Titanic
went down with the loss
of 1,523 passengers and crew. This incredible disaster led to
a number of investigations in Great Britain and the United
States that resulted in sweeping changes in maritime safety
law and ship construction.
The demise of the mighty Titanic-was swift, sure, and ter-
rible. Whatever could have gone wrong, did. The engineering
marvel that heralded the beginning of the age of technology
also displayed, all too clearly, its vulnerability and limits—as
well as the need for prudence and safety.
"The analyses, and future analyses we hope to make em-
ploying both MSC/NASTRAN and MSC/DYTRAN, help us
make critical design decisions about future marine struc-
tural features, such as deck openings and expansions joints."
Wood said.
"Today, we're changing the way we design ships. In the past,
nominal load conditions were averaged. Today, we design for
the ultimate stress levels and strength," says Robert Sielski,
senior staff engineer at Gibbs & Cox. "MSC/NASTRAN helps
us evaluate and design for increased survivability." •
This article is based on a paper, "Titanic, The Anatomy of a
Disaster, A Report from the Marine Forensic Panel, " presented
at
the 1997 annual meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and
Marine Engineers, that documents the work of William H.
Garzke,

Jr. and David Wood, Gibbs & Cox, Inc.: David K. Brown,
RCNC; Paul
K. Matthias, Polaris imaging; Roy Cullimore, University of
Regina;
David Livingstone, Harland& Wolff; H.P. Leighly, Jr.,
University of
Missouri-Rolla; Timothy Foecke, National Institute of
Standards and
Technology; and Arthur Sandiford, Consultant. Eyewitness
accounts
are from various sources, including the official transcripts of
the
1912 U.S. Senate investigation.
I
April 2012 I MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 3B
Copyright of Mechanical Engineering is the property of
American Society of Mechanical Engineers and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted
to a listserv without the copyright holder's
PHIL 215 – Engineering Ethics
Paper #3
Due:
November 14th

Format:
4 pages,
12 pt. Times New Roman,
1”margins, double-spaced,
stapled,
Works Cited pg,
in-text citations (author p#)
Paper #3 - Case Study Assignment
For this assignment, research an engineering ethics case study
of your choice and demonstrate an ability to analyze the the
issue from an ethical perspective. Summarize the most
important facts about the case, and explain why particular
decisions or actions were immoral.
· Choose at least one real-world case study to investigate.
· Choose any case which involved engineers and some type of
moral dilemma/controversy.
· Be sure to choose a real case, not a fictional “decision
scenario”
· Try to select a topic not covered in class.
· Do some independent research and use at least two high-
quality, in-depth, academic sources.
· Utilize CSU research databases and online engineering ethics
databases in your research.
· See the instructor if you have trouble selecting a topic.
· Explain the details of the issues/cases you are discussing.

· What decisions were made in this case? Why did the
participants do what they did?
· Were the relevant decisions/actions moral? Why or why not?
· What happened leading up to the failure? What were the focal
and auxiliary consequences?
· What building and professional codes were in place at the
time? Were they followed?
· Be specific about the people, places, companies, decisions,
events, etc. involved in each case.
· Use relevant concepts from class to support your point of view
on the issue.
· How do each of the moral theories and principles weigh in?
Don't “force it,” but use moral theory when appropriate to
support your view.
· From an ethical perspective, what is the ultimate conclusion
you have arrived at through your research of the issue?
· How did individuals related to the case fail to be professional
and/or moral?
Remember:
· Think about what your final conclusion will be – what claim
do you want to make? Mention this in your introductory
paragraph.
· Use evidence (premises) which demonstrate that your point of
view is right. Draw on what you have learned about moral
principles and theories.
· This assignment is intended to help you practice researching
and analyzing a moral failure in the engineering world. The 8-
page Term Paper will follow the same essential guidelines.

A GENERAL SEMANTICSANALYSIS OE THE RMSTITANIC DISASTERMA.docx

A GENERAL SEMANTICSANALYSIS OE THE RMSTITANIC DISASTERMA.docx

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