Essay Example on Titanic Technology and Security

Maritime treasure innovation occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. Most water vessels innovation began in 1900 when steamboats were the introduced. During this time, there was a significant change in how naval vessels were made and operated. As a result complex and efficient vessels were built to transport goods and people fast but sometimes lead to deadly tragedies. One of the largest steamboats that have been ever made was the R.M.S Titanic. Everyone believed that the Titanic was unsinkable because of the high skills and resources used to construct it. On April 15th, 1922, this myth was proven wrong when it touched the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage. The accident caused almost 1500 passengers to lose their lives making it the most famous maritime tragedy in history (Gaudin, para 2). The sinking of the Titanic ship was caused by the technology used at that time. Although the ship was constructed using the best technology it sank as a result of design flaws and material failures. Security staff in the ship were not trained hence they did not know what to do when the disaster happened. If the ship was constructed using the modern technology, modern equipment and sensors would be installed to alert when the ship was approaching the iceberg. Moreover, the current century is worth of technology making maritime travel these days to be one of the safest ways to get around these days. Security, training, and combo regulations have also played a significant role in making maritime travel safe. Using the modern technology and security measures would have saved the Titanic ship from sinking hours later after it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Titanic was said to be unsinkable because of her size, design, and strong structure. She had a double bottom and hull subdivided into sixteen waterproof compartments. This structure of titanic could support it and keep her floating for over three days but this was not the case that night. It had luxurious dining rooms, a squash court, pubs, elevators, a swimming pool, massive kitchens and opulent staterooms. Titanic ship is at the leading edge of technology and the people who constructed assured that it was unsinkable. The ship was the most advanced one at the time and the team that constructed her believed that they employed high technology making them overconfident about its strength. The crew was bragging that the ship was unsinkable and to them, trouble was unthinkable. In the ship, there were experts who attended various technical problems that would occur in the ship but they only waited for the physical problem to occur. These individuals include plumbers, engineers, and electricians who did their best using the technology and security of that time (Gaudin, para 3). There were no sensors to detect any mechanical failure of the ship at that time.

Using current technology the Titanic's watertight bulkheads would have been extended and fully sealed to minimize the risk of flooding.

Titanic was built with transverse wall or bulkheads to sub-divide the ship into sixteen watertight compartments, which could be closed using doors that operated either manually or remotely from the bridge.

When constructing the ship, the crew did not extend up the height of all bulkheads, and were not sealed at the top.

Using today's technology only small number of compartments would flood because the crew would be alerted by computers and seal them up immediately. Titanic sank because of too much flooding when the ship hit the iceberg. Water reached the top of the bulkheads and flooded to the rest of the compartments causing the ship to sink. Thomas Andrews, the ship designer was on board and realized that five compartments were flooded because the iceberg dragged ship. The ship could not contain the flood hence it sank three hours after the accident. When captain smith contacted him, he convinced him to prepare for evacuation and save lives because there was nothing else they could do. Using the modern technology engineers and designers would have come up with a plan to stop the floods and eventually save the ship from sinking. Bulkhead designs on modern ships are more improved to reduce flooding in case of a disaster.

When the Titanic set sail, the electrical control board in the bridge was a high-tech marvel unique to the ship. Currently, maritime vessels are monitored and controlled with computers in all aspects. Technology advancement in maritime continues to make tremendous progress and in few years there will be fully computerized container ships. They will soon be turned into sea-going drones. When the Titanic was constructed, there were no computers to check the compatibility of different materials. Using the modern technology, computers play an important role because they are used to aid model and test the ship prior to its construction.

In addition, computers are incorporated into all the various safety features because of they tend to respond faster than any human. If the ship has few crewmen they can detect problems all over from a central location. The reason why the ship sank was that the watertight compartments that were designed to close and help her make it float for more than three days. If the crewmen were using computers to monitor the ship, they would have it and maybe try to close them manually. With modern technology, the ship the number of people who perished would be fewer because the ship would have floated for three days allowing the staff to request for help.

Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) is another method used to detect iceberg and other underwater materials. The Titanic sank after its voyage landed on an iceberg indicating that the staff did not have the equipment to detect it.

Using today's technology and safety measures all ships are installed by numerous SONARs all around them to automatically alert the staff crew about iceberg coming in front before they land on it. This prevents such accidents from occurring. To melt the iceberg, the current ships use lazors or berzerk to prevent any accident from occurring. Another security measure may include a missile which crushes the iceberg into pieces. Considering today's technology the Titanic incident would never occur again. Automating the path which ship follows with help of GPS would be very important because it would inform the people outside the ship its directions and whether they were stuck at the same place for a moment. The crew would have known that the ship encountered a problem and immediately come up with measures to reduce death.

If it would be modern equipment, 1500 peoples would not have died in the fateful accident. Schwartz investigations revealed that the type of steel used to make the ship was of low quality. This made things worse when the ship hit the iceberg because it was affected by the iceberg temperatures making it to condense (Schwartz, par 3). Modern material technologies have been adopted to improve the quality of steel used to construct ships. The modern steel had some additional metals such as manganese that makes it resistant to temperature changes. On the other hand, the early 20th-century method for making steel led to lots of phosphorous and sulfur contamination, among other metals. When steel made with contaminated elements gets too cold, which mostly occurs in the waters of the North Atlantic, it tend to become brittle and eventually leads to stress cracking. However, thanks to the modern technology that made steel strong and resistance to weather changes. Unlike Titanic modern ships are built with a double hull because the technology to make double hull is now available. Although the technology was not new when titanic was been constructed, there were no research indicating the importance of double hull. In 1858 there was a launch of SS Great Eastern which was built with a complete double hull. Most shipbuilders and Titanic's manufacturers argued that a double hull was unnecessary expense. After the disaster this idea changed and liners were being refitted with full double hulls. This time the manufacturer did not think that it was unnecessary expense.

The old method of riveting the steel plates was poor but there are better modern ways of performing this process. In the modern world,

Ship's plates are welded together using oxyacetelene torches an innovation that was not available when the titanic was been constructed. During the time of titanic, rivets were used to hold together the overlapping hull plates made of steel. The rivets were then hammered by hand which delayed the construction process. The ship took three years to complete because most work was done manually.

Oregan explained that most rivets were steel; however some were made of wrought iron. He stated that some rivets contained lags and were of poor quality. The actual holing of the ship was caused when she dragged over the surface of the iceberg, with the berg snapping or popping the rivets along the hull, allowing water to enter in between the hull plates. The hull plates were not strong because they were made from poor quality steel that bean fracturing when the dread over an iceberg surface.

The ship was divided into classes such as 1st class, 2nd class, and 3rd class. When comparing between 1st class passenger and 3rd class passenger the first class passengers were rich and then they were treated by qualitative respect but 3rd class passengers were poor and they don't even ware fascinated clothes that's why the 1st class or 2nd class passengers were not secured. Numerous movies and videos have been produced to explain the fate of this unique ship. James Cameron directed that a most effective and realistic movie called "Titanic". The movie is not only the highest-grossing movie of all time but has also received 11 Academy Awards in 1998. Cameron urges that the incident show class division between the rich and the poor. It also indicates gender roles in fighting death or disaster. Men were active in saving women and children who were the first to die. According to Cameron the disaster also show the stoicism and nobility of a bygone age, the magnificence of the great ship matched in scale only by the folly of the men who drove her hell-bent through the darkness. And above all the lesson: that life is uncertain, the future unknowable. . . the unthinkable possible" (James Cameron's Titanic).

The incident that happened on April 1912 made the idea held by many that the ship was "unsinkable" appear like a myth from those who designed and constructed it. The management did not want to carry enough boats for everyone because they felt that they were not needed. Moreover many perished because the crew was not trained to deal with such a disaster. They reacted slowly to the accident and were reluctant to take lifeboats to save the passengers. They were overconfident that the titanic would never sink. Although marketing the titanic as unsinkable was undoubtedly good salesmanship and would have made them a lot of money, the consequences were disastrous.