Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 226, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1913 — SHIPS WHICH WILL NOT SINK [ARTICLE]

SHIPS WHICH WILL NOT SINK

Once more we hear talk of an unsinkable ship, remarks the New York Commercial. An English Inventor claims to have solved the problem, but bis experiments have been confined to a small model only four feet in length and nine inches wide, so the problem of applying his system to a vessel 500 or 1,000 feet in length is by no means solved. • ' 4 Few people outside of practical shipbuilders and navigators understand the difference between a large vessel and a small one in point of structural strength. The strongest vessel that floats in the water is a common rowboat One can take an ordinary roWboat and carry it by the ends or it can rest on cleats under each end without breaking in the middle, but the strongest man-of-war or ocean liner that floats today would break in two if subjected to a similar strain. The larger a vessel the weaker it becomes in this respect and for this reason many apparently good ideas which work out well in model form have failed utterly when applied to large vessels. It is doubtful if any real progress tn building ships has been made since the days of the Great Eastern, as far as the use of watertight compartments and bulkheads Is concerned. The designer of the Great Eastern divided that vessel into cellular compartments, and no improvement on this plan has as yet been made, although it is not used extensively because it requires too many hatches for the loading and unloading of cargo. The invention to which reference has been made consists of surrounding the vessel with a water-tight belt divided into calls for the purpose

of giving the vessel greater buoyancy as it sinks in the water. There is really nothing new in this Ideea and it has been applied successfully in building lifeboats and other small vessels. It adds to the width of the vessel above the water line and the inventor is wrong in claiming that it would not interfere with its cargo-carrying capacity. Modern steamships are safe enough when at sea, so far as the storms and lashing of the waves are concerned. The dangers that threaten them are collisions with other vessels, with derelicts or with Icebergs, and, of course, running ashore or on a rock in a dense fog. Take two vessels *f equal size crossing each other’s paths, let ose strike the other amidships and the vessel struck would be cut In two If the other were going at full speed. The tremendous force of the blow is almost beyond calculation. In the case of a vessel the size of the new Imperator, It would probably be equal to a striking force of 8,000,000 foot tons. No cellular belt or any other conceivable construction would save a ship under such conditions. The thing to do Is to avoid all such risks as far as possible. The Titanic was'lost because its captain had too much confidence in its unslnb able construction.