The Night Lives On Read Online Free Page A

doors were cut in the watertight bulkheads. A grand staircase required a spacious opening at every level, making a watertight deck impossible.The sweep of a magnificent dining saloon left no room for bulkheads that might spoil the effect. Stokers could work more efficiently if longitudinal bulkheads were omitted and the bunkers carried clear across the ship. A double hull ate up valuable passenger and cargo space; a double bottom would be enough.
    One by one the safety precautions that marked the Great Eastern were chipped away in the interests of a more competitive ship. There were exceptions of course—the Mauretania and Lusitania had to meet Admiralty specifications—but the Olympic and Titanic were more typical. When the “unsinkable” Titanic was completed in 1912, she matched the Great Eastern in only one respect: she, too, had 15 transverse watertight bulkheads.
    But even this was misleading. The Great Eastern’s bulkheads were carried 30 feet above the waterline; the Titanic’s bulkheads, only 10 feet. Even her vaunted system of watertight doors that could be closed from the bridge “by simply moving a switch” fell short of its promise. Only 12 doors at the very bottom of the ship could be closed this way. The rest (some 20 or 30) had to be closed by hand. On the night of the collision some were; some weren’t. Some were even closed, then opened again to make it easier to rig the pumps.
    Why, then, was such a vulnerable ship considered by the owners themselves to be virtually unsinkable? Partly, it was because the Titanic would indeed float with any two compartments flooded, and the White Star Line couldn’t imagine anything worse than a collision at the juncture of two compartments. But there was another reason, too, why the owners were lulled into complacency. This was because the ship looked so safe. Herhuge bulk, her tiers of decks rising one atop the other, her 29 boilers, her luxurious fittings—all seemed to spell “permanence.” The appearance of safety was mistaken for safety itself.
    The Titanic was indeed a magnificent sight as she left Belfast on April 2, 1912, and headed for Southampton, where she would begin her service on the North Atlantic run. At 46,328 tons, she was the largest ship in the world—only a trifle bigger than her sister ship Olympic, but 50% larger than any other liner afloat. With ships increasing in size so dramatically, her vast bulk inevitably led to still more legends: that she had a golf course…that she carried a small herd of dairy cows to supply fresh milk…that she was a half-mile long. The Titanic boasted none of these features; in fact, she was quite similar to the Olympic, which had already been in service for a year. White Star’s problem was how to give the new ship a little extra glamour when both vessels had basically the same structure.
    The company solved this problem brilliantly with two new amenities that required a minimum of structural change. First, a set of 28 splendid staterooms were installed on B Deck, more lavish than any on the Olympic and complete with large windows (not portholes) that looked out directly on the sea. Most of these rooms were interconnecting and could be turned into suites of any size. Each was painstakingly decorated in a different period style—Louis XVI, Early Dutch, Regency, and so on. Two suites even had private promenade decks done in half-timbered Tudor.
    The second innovation was even more arresting. A section of the Second Class Promenade Deck was appropriated for a dazzling new First Class attraction: agenuine French “sidewalk” café, complete with genuine French waiters. By now the veteran Atlantic traveler was bored by mere paneled magnificence—one more ornate lounge would have made no impression—but the addition of this bright, airy café with its Continental chic (especially on a staid British ship) was sensational.
    As a final touch, the forward half of the Promenade Deck was glassed in, giving the