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A GENERAL SEMANTICS ANALYSIS OE THE RMS TITANIC DISASTER MARTIN H . LEVINSON

...And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue. In shadowy silent distance

grew the Iceberg too. From The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy

Introduction

RMS Titanic, the largest moving object of its time, began its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City on Wednesday, April 10, 1912. On Sunday, April 14, the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean fell to near freezing; the night was clear and calm. The ship's captain had received various ice warnings from other vessels, some of which reached him while others did not.

At 11:40 PM, while sailing about 400 miles south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts spotted a large iceberg directly in the Titánicas path The ship turned left to avoid the berg, but the massive chunk of ice openec mortal holes on the vessel's starboard side. The captain ordered lifeboats deployed and distress signals sent out.

Many of the lifeboats were launched at less than full capacity and a woman-and-children-first policy was the rule for coming aboard. At 2:20 AM.

Martin H. Levinson, PhD, is the president of the Institute of General Semantics, vice presi- dent of the New York Society for General Semantics, and a member of the Titanic Histori- cal Society. He is the author of numerous articles and several books on general semantics and other subjects. His latest book is Brooklyn Boorher: Growing Up in the Fifties (2011). He can be contacted at mandklevin@aol.com.

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the Titanic sank beneath the waves, a sinking that ended in the deaths of over 1,500 people and the start of a public fascination with a disaster filled with hubris, heartbreak, and heroism. This article will examine many significant aspects of that disaster through the formulations of general semantics.

/. The Map IsJVot the Territory

An Unsinkable Ship—Not Really

In 1912, the year it sank, the Titanic was known as the finest ship afloat. It weighed over 46,000 tons, was as high as an 11-story building, and was 883-feet long from bow to stem (about a sixth of a mile). It had 29 boilers, 159 furnaces, and a maximum speed of 24 knots. The Titanic was consid- ered so well constructed that many nautical experts thought the ship vir- tually unsinkable.

The Titanic was reported to be watertight. It had a double bottom (the hull was built with two coats of steel) and was divided into 16 watertight compart- ments separated by bulkheads pierced by a series of doors that were controlled either by automatic floating switches or by command from the bridge.

On the night of April 14, when the Titanic hit the iceberg, water begun flooding into at least five of its "watertight compartments" that were any- thing but watertight as the bulkhead walls did not rise appreciably .above the waterline. Water coming over the bulkhead walls could cascade into other compartments, which is what happened the night the Titanic went under. (The Titanic was designed to stay afloat with any two watertight compartments or its first four bow compartments flooded, but that number was exceeded in the collision. As its forward compartments filled, the Titanic began to go down at the head, and water rose and spilled into successive "watertight" compartments, much like water spilling into adjoining sections of a tilted ice-cube tray. Sinking became inevitable.)

Another factor that contributed to the Titanic'?, foundering was that the ship's builder had not used the highest quality wrought-iron rivets in welding the vessel's steel plates, so when the Titanic hit the iceberg, its rivet heads were more easily sheared off causing the plates that the rivets were holding to sepa- rate. Also, the expansion joints (mechanical assemblies that allow a ship's cas- ing to flex in heavy seas) on the Titanic were poorly designed, which, even if the vessel had not struck an iceberg, made the ship vulnerable to stresses on its superstructure. Unsinkable the Titanic defiinitely was not, and sink it did.

Following the Titanic disaster, the company that operated the Titanic, the White Star Line, modified the design of the Titanic's sister ships in two

A GENERAL SEMANTICS ANALYSIS OF THE RMS TITANIC DISASTER 145

ways: the double bottoms were extended up the sides of the hull, and the transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised.

All the News Isn't Necessarily Fit to Print Radio communication was in its formative years in 1912, and there was a great deal of confusion in England and the United States over the fate of the Titanic. Because of garbled messages, several newspapers published sketchy information as unvarnished truth by reporting that all the passengers had been saved and that the ship was being towed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Both the New York Evening Sun and the Boston Evening Transcript made this error. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which had the boldest headline of any newspaper, declared "ALL SAFE ON THE TITANIC."

But one paper put out information that was highly accurate from the start. The New York Times headline on April 15, the day of the sinking, read "NEW LINER TITANIC HITS ICEBERG; SINKING BY THE BOW AT MIDNIGHT; WOMEN PUT OFF IN LIFEBOATS; LAST WIRELESS AT 12:27 A.M. BLURRED" and its enure front page was devoted to as many of the details as were known. The Times went on to earn national and international notice for its meticulous and comprehensive coverage of the "story of the century." The April 15th edition is considered by many media mavens to be the most important single issue leading to the creation of the Times as a global authority.

Seeing Should Not Always Be Believing Although only three funnels were needed, a fourth "dummy" funnel was added to the Titanic by the White Star Line, so the public would not perceive the four-funnel ships Mauritania and Lusitania, which were faster than the Titanic and the pride and joy of the Cunard Line, as being more powerful.

//. The Value of Delayed Reactions Slapdash Supervision Binoculars were issued to the lookouts on the Titanic on its trip from Belfast to Southampton. But during a last minute shakeup of personnel, they were removed from the crow's nest and not replaced for the transatlantic voyage; thus, the lookouts were unable to scour the sea for icebergs with field glasses during the crossing. When the ship's Second Officer, Charles Lightoller, was questioned at an inquiry about the lookouts not having binoculars he down- played the matter saying that binoculars can be a liability in maintaining a

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sharp vigil. However, other experts, including the renowned Arctic explorer Admiral Robert Peary, disagreed.

While it is impossible to go back and test the binoculars that were issued to the T