If only one or two compartments were flooded

[Peter Rasmussen]

What would happen. I know The Titanic is said to have been able to stay afloat with any two compartments flooded. A lot of other ships are divided into compartments, but I do not think any vessel has bulkheads that go the top deck.
I have been wondering, with only one compartment open to the sea what would happen, wouldn't water keep coming in and eventually come up stairs and vents and spill over bulkheads anyway, unless the crew can patch up the leak? The decks were not sealed horizontally.
Of course in that situation she would most likely remain afloat a lot longer giving time to evacuate everybody.

Military ships are probably the only vessels that are divided horizontally. In Denmark we have a 1960's battle ship open to the public as a museum. I have been on board and know, that she has bulkheads to the top of the hull section, no doors between the compartments except one at the stern and watertight hatches at main deck level. Still there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I have been wondering, with only one compartment open to the sea what would happen, wouldn't water keep coming in and eventually come up stairs and vents and spill over bulkheads anyway, unless the crew can patch up the leak?<<

No. At some point, the ship would have reached an equilibrium where there would have been no further ingress of water. This happened several times during the actual sinking where the settling of the bow slowed down, only to speed up again as a new compartment became involved.

With only two compartments flooded, the bulkheads would have been high enough to stop the flooding cold in it's tracks.

 

[Peter Rasmussen]

Okay, thanks.
Would that occur when the waterlevel inside rose to over the leak?
So there was something to the "practically unsinkable" statement.
I am sure, had there been no watertight compartments, the ship would have capsized quickly.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Would that occur when the waterlevel inside rose to over the leak?<<

Not quite sure what you mean herr, but if there had only been two compartments flooded, the tops of the bulkheads would not have been flooded over.

>>So there was something to the "practically unsinkable" statement.<<

Unfortunately, that didn't translate into completely unsinkable.

>>I am sure, had there been no watertight compartments, the ship would have capsized quickly.<<

It's possible. As it stands, the system was designed so that the ship would settle on a more or less even keel in the event of an accident.

 

[Peter Rasmussen]

I know I did not express it clearly, I am danish. I meant, when the surface of the water inside got higher then the leak, if that would be when water stopped coming in.

No, as I said earlier, I know there is no such thing as an unsinkable vessel, but it is likely that in a collision with another vessel the Titanic would have survived.

Take for example The Empress of Ireland which capsized and sank quickly with a smaller amount of damage. 14 minutes wasn't it?

But then there is The Andrea Doria which also sustained damage on her side but took 11 hours to sink.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I know I did not express it clearly, I am danish. I meant, when the surface of the water inside got higher then the leak, if that would be when water stopped coming in.<<

Not really. The inflow would stop when the ship reached an equilibrium where she had enough reserve bouyancy to stay afloat and keep from settling any further.

 

[Peter Rasmussen]

Thank you.

 

[Michael Guntli]

The way the Watertight Compartments were designed actually hurt the ship. The design if only one or two compartments were flooded, would have kept it afloat longer but I think it would have sunk either way.

 

[Michael Kestner]

The easiest way to think of it, in my opinion, is that water generally won't rise any higher inside a vessel than it will outside. The pressure will be equal at that point. So long as the tops of the bulkheads are above the waterline the water can't spill over them. From Wilding's testimony at the british inquiry, the lowest any bulkhead would be with two compartments flooded was two feet seven inches above the water line. That's the worst case scenario for two compartments.

>>The way the Watertight Compartments were designed actually hurt the ship. The design if only one or two compartments were flooded, would have kept it afloat longer but I think it would have sunk either way.<<
The Olympic easily survived the flooding of two compartments after her collision with the HMS Hawke, I don't see why Titanic would be any different.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>The design if only one or two compartments were flooded, would have kept it afloat longer but I think it would have sunk either way.<<

Not really. The Olympic class liners were designed to remain afloat with up to four compartments flooded, which I might add is a lot more then can be said for what's out there now. The watertight sectioning was actually quite good, but it wasn't proof against having a third of the ship's length in open communication with the sea.

 

[Michael Guntli]

In the case of the Titanic- one of the bulk heads was weakened by fire- the harm seemed irrepairable.

 

[Michael Kestner]

The evidence for any severe structural damage to the bulkhead from the coal bunker fire is fairly slim. In any case, the bunker in question was along the bulkhead between boiler rooms five and six. even if that bulkhead had been weakened, the ship was doomed from the flooding in the compartments forward no matter what.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>In the case of the Titanic- one of the bulk heads was weakened by fire- the harm seemed irrepairable.<<

Unfortunately, the forensic evidence to support that isn't just slim. It's non-existant. With five plus compartments breeched by the iceberg in any event, it's also irrelevant. Fire or not, the ship still would have gone down.

While the possibility that the bulkhead betwen the two boiler rooms may have been weakened cannot be easily dismissed, the only way anybody will ever be able to prove it is if somebody can get an ROV into the boiler rooms and get to the effected area to take back samples for analysis.