Exhibition of design flops should suit British sense of humour, says its founder, but also shows failure is a part of learning
There was nothing wrong with RMS Titanic. Her first sister, RMS Olympic, trundled along until being scapped in 1936 after the merger with Cunard. The issue with the Titanic was that she was driven into an iceberg.
EDIT: To understand the story of RMS Titanic, there are many superb books you could read (David Brown’s ‘Last Log of the Titanic’ is a favourite of mine) but I’d recommend reading this, which is IMO the absolute best: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/report-into-the-loss-of-the-ss-titanic
EDIT 2: I’ve been a Titanorak for decades and used to post regularly on Reddit but I’m past all that now. I’m not an expert. If you want to read the opinions of experts, visit Encyclopedia Titanica and peruse the articles there. Avoid books pushing conspiracy theories (coal fire damage, swapped ships, etc.) and go to the original source material: the British and American Enquiries, both of which are available online. You’ll have a blast and enjoy the rabbit holes, and perhaps even make new friends; I did!
“The Toyota Corolla is an absolute failure”
“Really, how so?”
“My uncle crashed his into a lamppost and then it was rendered un-drivable”
You’re confusing design/technical failure with failure in the broader, catastrophic sense. It was an ‘unsinkable ship’ that sank. As Picard said, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
If you read the article you’ll see that the exhibition is about failure in all its guises.
Possibly. It was never said to be unsinkable, that was a myth. Certainly any ship can be sunk by poor seamanship or adverse circumstances.
I love the way you delivered the punchline - very reminiscent of Douglas Adams
And the coal bunkers were on fire before she even left port but safety concerns were ignored by her owners because of the bad PR of delaying to deal with it. This may have contributed to the rapid sinking as the structure was damaged before she set to sea and broke apart faster than she might otherwise have done.
This was common with coal-fired ships in those days. It had no impact on the sinking.
Bunker fires were very common, were handled during voyages as a matter of routine and it didn’t in any way compromise the structure. If anything it kept the ship afloat and uprignt longer by necessitating the use of coal from the starboard first, resulting in a port list.
Nothing wrong except those key oversights like not actually compartmentalizing the sections but only doing it 80 % of the way such that it will flood no matter what.
That was absolutely not an issue. Titanic was a 4 compartment ship: any 4 compartments could be flooded without the ship sinking. Thus was WAY superior to the vast majority of ships sailing in 1912. Her design was superb.
When she hit the iceberg, 5 compartments were holed. No-one foresaw such severe damage as a possibility and it only happened because of the unique circumstances of the collision (actually, the alliision) with the 'berg.
In short, RMS Titanic was designed and built superbly.
Absolutely not? It only sank because of that. Had they compartmentalized all the way, we might have it as a museum floating somewhere. Sure it was built better than things at the time usually were, that does not make it good in absolute numbers. Especially when you look at how much regulations changed because of this. If they were adequate and this a freak accident, there would be no need to change so much.
The SOLAS regulations that came into effect were mainly around lifeboat provision.
One cannot build a liner with full compartmentalisation, and nothing in the two Enquiries said otherwise. Titanic wasn’t a warship. No other civilian ship - even today - has fully watertight compartments.
It didn’t sink because of its design. It sank because it was driven at 22.5 knots into an iceberg. If you want to know more, read the book I linked in my original reply to OP or visit Encyclopedia Titanica.
