Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (877 page)

It is amusing, if anything connected with this stupid catastrophe can be amusing, to see the secretly crestfallen attitude of technicians.  They are the high priests of the modern cult of perfected material and of mechanical appliances, and would fain forbid the profane from inquiring into its mysteries.  We are the masters of progress, they say, and you should remain respectfully silent.  And they take refuge behind their mathematics.  I have the greatest regard for mathematics as an exercise of mind.  It is the only manner of thinking which approaches the Divine.  But mere calculations, of which these men make so much, when unassisted by imagination and when they have gained mastery over common sense, are the most deceptive exercises of intellect.  Two and two are four, and two are six.  That is immutable; you may trust your soul to that; but you must be certain first of your quantities.  I know how the strength of materials can be calculated away, and also the evidence of one’s senses.  For it is by some sort of calculation involving weights and levels that the technicians responsible for the
Titanic
persuaded themselves that a ship
not divided
by water-tight compartments could be “unsinkable.”  Because, you know, she was not divided.  You and I, and our little boys, when we want to divide, say, a box, take care to procure a piece of wood which will reach from the bottom to the lid.  We know that if it does not reach all the way up, the box will not be divided into two compartments.  It will be only partly divided.  The
Titanic
was only partly divided.  She was just sufficiently divided to drown some poor devils like rats in a trap.  It is probable that they would have perished in any case, but it is a particularly horrible fate to die boxed up like this.  Yes, she was sufficiently divided for that, but not sufficiently divided to prevent the water flowing over.

Therefore to a plain man who knows something of mathematics but is not bemused by calculations, she was, from the point of view of “unsinkability,” not divided at all.  What would you say of people who would boast of a fireproof building, an hotel, for instance, saying, “Oh, we have it divided by fireproof bulkheads which would localise any outbreak,” and if you were to discover on closer inspection that these bulkheads closed no more than two-thirds of the openings they were meant to close, leaving above an open space through which draught, smoke, and fire could rush from one end of the building to the other?  And, furthermore, that those partitions, being too high to climb over, the people confined in each menaced compartment had to stay there and become asphyxiated or roasted, because no exits to the outside, say to the roof, had been provided!  What would you think of the intelligence or candour of these advertising people?  What would you think of them?  And yet, apart from the obvious difference in the action of fire and water, the cases are essentially the same.

It would strike you and me and our little boys (who are not engineers yet) that to approach — I won’t say attain — somewhere near absolute safety, the divisions to keep out water should extend from the bottom right up to the uppermost deck of
the hull
.  I repeat, the
hull
, because there are above the hull the decks of the superstructures of which we need not take account.  And further, as a provision of the commonest humanity, that each of these compartments should have a perfectly independent and free access to that uppermost deck: that is, into the open.  Nothing less will do.  Division by bulkheads that really divide, and free access to the deck from every water-tight compartment.  Then the responsible man in the moment of danger and in the exercise of his judgment could close all the doors of these water-tight bulkheads by whatever clever contrivance has been invented for the purpose, without a qualm at the awful thought that he may be shutting up some of his fellow creatures in a death-trap; that he may be sacrificing the lives of men who, down there, are sticking to the posts of duty as the engine-room staffs of the Merchant Service have never failed to do.  I know very well that the engineers of a ship in a moment of emergency are not quaking for their lives, but, as far as I have known them, attend calmly to their duty.  We all must die; but, hang it all, a man ought to be given a chance, if not for his life, then at least to die decently.  It’s bad enough to have to stick down there when something disastrous is going on and any moment may be your last; but to be drowned shut up under deck is too bad.  Some men of the
Titanic
died like that, it is to be feared.  Compartmented, so to speak.  Just think what it means!  Nothing can approach the horror of that fate except being buried alive in a cave, or in a mine, or in your family vault.

So, once more: continuous bulkheads — a clear way of escape to the deck out of each water-tight compartment.  Nothing less.  And if specialists, the precious specialists of the sort that builds “unsinkable ships,” tell you that it cannot be done, don’t you believe them.  It can be done, and they are quite clever enough to do it too.  The objections they will raise, however disguised in the solemn mystery of technical phrases, will not be technical, but commercial.  I assure you that there is not much mystery about a ship of that sort.  She is a tank.  She is a tank ribbed, joisted, stayed, but she is no greater mystery than a tank.  The
Titanic
was a tank eight hundred feet long, fitted as an hotel, with corridors, bed-rooms, halls, and so on (not a very mysterious arrangement truly), and for the hazards of her existence I should think about as strong as a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin.  I make this comparison because Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tins, being almost a national institution, are probably known to all my readers.  Well, about that strong, and perhaps not quite so strong.  Just look at the side of such a tin, and then think of a 50,000 ton ship, and try to imagine what the thickness of her plates should be to approach anywhere the relative solidity of that biscuit-tin.  In my varied and adventurous career I have been thrilled by the sight of a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin kicked by a mule sky-high, as the saying is.  It came back to earth smiling, with only a sort of dimple on one of its cheeks.  A proportionately severe blow would have burst the side of the
Titanic
or any other “triumph of modern naval architecture” like brown paper — I am willing to bet.

I am not saying this by way of disparagement.  There is reason in things.  You can’t make a 50,000 ton ship as strong as a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin.  But there is also reason in the way one accepts facts, and I refuse to be awed by the size of a tank bigger than any other tank that ever went afloat to its doom.  The people responsible for her, though disconcerted in their hearts by the exposure of that disaster, are giving themselves airs of superiority — priests of an Oracle which has failed, but still must remain the Oracle.  The assumption is that they are ministers of progress.  But the mere increase of size is not progress.  If it were, elephantiasis, which causes a man’s legs to become as large as tree-trunks, would be a sort of progress, whereas it is nothing but a very ugly disease.  Yet directly this very disconcerting catastrophe happened, the servants of the silly Oracle began to cry: “It’s no use!  You can’t resist progress.  The big ship has come to stay.”  Well, let her stay on, then, in God’s name!  But she isn’t a servant of progress in any sense.  She is the servant of commercialism.  For progress, if dealing with the problems of a material world, has some sort of moral aspect — if only, say, that of conquest, which has its distinct value since man is a conquering animal.  But bigness is mere exaggeration.  The men responsible for these big ships have been moved by considerations of profit to be made by the questionable means of pandering to an absurd and vulgar demand for banal luxury — the seaside hotel luxury.  One even asks oneself whether there was such a demand?  It is inconceivable to think that there are people who can’t spend five days of their life without a suite of apartments, cafés, bands, and such-like refined delights.  I suspect that the public is not so very guilty in this matter.  These things were pushed on to it in the usual course of trade competition.  If to-morrow you were to take all these luxuries away, the public would still travel.  I don’t despair of mankind.  I believe that if, by some catastrophic miracle all ships of every kind were to disappear off the face of the waters, together with the means of replacing them, there would be found, before the end of the week, men (millionaires, perhaps) cheerfully putting out to sea in bath-tubs for a fresh start.  We are all like that.  This sort of spirit lives in mankind still uncorrupted by the so-called refinements, the ingenuity of tradesmen, who look always for something new to sell, offers to the public.

Let her stay, — I mean the big ship — since she has come to stay.  I only object to the attitude of the people, who, having called her into being and having romanced (to speak politely) about her, assume a detached sort of superiority, goodness only knows why, and raise difficulties in the way of every suggestion — difficulties about boats, about bulkheads, about discipline, about davits, all sorts of difficulties.  To most of them the only answer would be: “Where there’s a will there’s a way” — the most wise of proverbs.  But some of these objections are really too stupid for anything.  I shall try to give an instance of what I mean.

This Inquiry is admirably conducted.  I am not alluding to the lawyers representing “various interests,” who are trying to earn their fees by casting all sorts of mean aspersions on the characters of all sorts of people not a bit worse than themselves.  It is honest to give value for your wages; and the “bravos” of ancient Venice who kept their stilettos in good order and never failed to deliver the stab bargained for with their employers, considered themselves an honest body of professional men, no doubt.  But they don’t compel my admiration, whereas the conduct of this Inquiry does.  And as it is pretty certain to be attacked, I take this opportunity to deposit here my nickel of appreciation.  Well, lately, there came before it witnesses responsible for the designing of the ship.  One of them was asked whether it would not be advisable to make each coal-bunker of the ship a water-tight compartment by means of a suitable door.

The answer to such a question should have been, “Certainly,” for it is obvious to the simplest intelligence that the more water-tight spaces you provide in a ship (consistently with having her workable) the nearer you approach safety.  But instead of admitting the expediency of the suggestion, this witness at once raised an objection as to the possibility of closing tightly the door of a bunker on account of the slope of coal.  This with the true expert’s attitude of “My dear man, you don’t know what you are talking about.”

Now would you believe that the objection put forward was absolutely futile?  I don’t know whether the distinguished President of the Court perceived this.  Very likely he did, though I don’t suppose he was ever on terms of familiarity with a ship’s bunker.  But I have.  I have been inside; and you may take it that what I say of them is correct.  I don’t wish to be wearisome to the benevolent reader, but I want to put his finger, so to speak, on the inanity of the objection raised by the expert.  A bunker is an enclosed space for holding coals, generally located against the ship’s side, and having an opening, a doorway in fact, into the stokehold.  Men called trimmers go in there, and by means of implements called slices make the coal run through that opening on to the floor of the stokehold, where it is within reach of the stokers’ (firemen’s) shovels.  This being so, you will easily understand that there is constantly a more or less thick layer of coal generally shaped in a slope lying in that doorway.  And the objection of the expert was: that because of this obstruction it would be impossible to close the water-tight door, and therefore that the thing could not be done.  And that objection was inane.  A water-tight door in a bulkhead may be defined as a metal plate which is made to close a given opening by some mechanical means.  And if there were a law of Medes and Persians that a water-tight door should always slide downwards and never otherwise, the objection would be to a great extent valid.  But what is there to prevent those doors to be fitted so as to move upwards, or horizontally, or slantwise?  In which case they would go through the obstructing layer of coal as easily as a knife goes through butter.  Anyone may convince himself of it by experimenting with a light piece of board and a heap of stones anywhere along our roads.  Probably the joint of such a door would weep a little — and there is no necessity for its being hermetically tight — but the object of converting bunkers into spaces of safety would be attained.  You may take my word for it that this could be done without any great effort of ingenuity.  And that is why I have qualified the expert’s objection as inane.

Of course, these doors must not be operated from the bridge because of the risk of trapping the coal-trimmers inside the bunker; but on the signal of all other water-tight doors in the ship being closed (as would be done in case of a collision) they too could be closed on the order of the engineer of the watch, who would see to the safety of the trimmers.  If the rent in the ship’s side were within the bunker itself, that would become manifest enough without any signal, and the rush of water into the stokehold could be cut off directly the doorplate came into its place.  Say a minute at the very outside.  Naturally, if the blow of a right-angled collision, for instance, were heavy enough to smash through the inner bulkhead of the bunker, why, there would be then nothing to do but for the stokers and trimmers and everybody in there to clear out of the stoke-room.  But that does not mean that the precaution of having water-tight doors to the bunkers is useless, superfluous, or impossible.
{7}

And talking of stokeholds, firemen, and trimmers, men whose heavy labour has not a single redeeming feature; which is unhealthy, uninspiring, arduous, without the reward of personal pride in it; sheer, hard, brutalising toil, belonging neither to earth nor sea, I greet with joy the advent for marine purposes of the internal combustion engine.  The disappearance of the marine boiler will be a real progress, which anybody in sympathy with his kind must welcome.  Instead of the unthrifty, unruly, nondescript crowd the boilers require, a crowd of men
in
the ship but not
of
her, we shall have comparatively small crews of disciplined, intelligent workers, able to steer the ship, handle anchors, man boats, and at the same time competent to take their place at a bench as fitters and repairers; the resourceful and skilled seamen — mechanics of the future, the legitimate successors of these seamen — sailors of the past, who had their own kind of skill, hardihood, and tradition, and whose last days it has been my lot to share.