Still a newbie but would like to ask PLz

[AL Glover]

Did the White Star offer any compensation to anyone of the wives,children that lost their loved ones,
also the way "modern ships' are built today,with all the tracking device's ect,but are the passenfer ships today design to stay a float longer,thanks againAA

 

[William Ajello]

Now i hope I get this right but according to the A&E 4 part documentary, Walter Lord said that the only thing they could be compensated for, with the laws being the way they were back then...anything that was recoverable, which at the time was nothing more than 13 lifeboats, he said something about a formula that was worked out for compensation of families but the aamount was nowheres near what they should have gotten. I KNOW there is someone out here that understands where I am going with this and maybe they can explain it better.....Michael?, Parks?, David?

Regards,
Bill

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I don't know much about the compensation formula at all unfortunately. It's not something that's really caught my interest. Regarding the safety of passenger ships, this is a very good question. I'm sure Erik Wood will have more to offer on this, but from what I've gleaned to date, in some fashions, modern ships are somewhat inferior to the Olympic class liners in regards watertight subdivision and also margins for growth. The Olympics could remain afloat with up to four sections flooded, while current vessels are designed to stay afloat with two flooded.

Having said that much, modern navigation aides and instruments stack the deck much more in favour of ships today then yesterday, and modern ships are required to carry lifeboats for all.

Befor anyone get's too comfy with lifeboats for all, remember that just having enough or even extra in no way assures that they'll be all be usable. Look at the Andrea Doria which took on a 22 degree list withing a few minutes of being T-boned by the Stockholm, rendering half of her lifeboats useless. Were it not for a hoard of rescue vessels showing up contributing their own boats to the evacuation of the ship, the story would have had a far grimmer ending.

Cordially,
Michael H. Standart

 

[Erik Wood]

I think if you where to look as a whole you would find that ships today (when they are built) are far more safer then those of yesteryear. Watertight sub division is a hottly debated issue in the passenger industry. Some folks around here have asked questions as to Titanic. Did Ismay order the shortening of bulkheads to create more creature comforts? If he didn't do it in 1912 I can say with a far amount of certainty it is done today.

But the factor used to formulate how to continue to make the ship safe, comes in modern technolgy. Ships have the ability to plot and track targets up to 200 miles away. The computer will tell you how fast the ship is going, what it's heading is and when you will pass the ship and how far off, based of your course and speed.

They now have auto pilot systems that can dock the ship.

Charts (the paper kind) are still used. But the age of computer navigation is slowly taking over.

The evacuation of ships is still a tricky evolution. In some ways more tricky today then yesterday. In Titanics day they tried to cram 2500 passengers and crew into 882 feet. Today they crame 3500 passengers into 980 feet with boat decks twice as small as Titanics. Anyone who has gone on a cruise in the past 2 decades knows that there is now a mandatory boat drill within 24 hours of leaving the first port.

Crew training is much more in depth then it was 90 years ago. Both of the World Wars taught the maritime industry that the key to keeping a ship afloat and lives alive was training. I am not exactly sure what else to say. If you have any more in depth questions post them here I and I will try to answer them.