The Disaster, Which Should not Have Happened.
             On April 14, 1912 one of the great disasters in the history of the world occurred, the sinking of the Titanic. The press had dubbed her unsinkable, but history has proven that to be untrue. Why did the Titanic sink with so many lives lost? Some say because of the iceberg, some the engineering, but I say it was due to greed and the human desire for prestige.
             When the Titanic was constructed, the minimum safety requirements of the time were followed. Since the committee that made the regulations for lifeboats for the British Board of Trade was dominated by shipbuilders, there was a complex formula that called for so many cubic feet of boat space per thousand tons of ship the Titanic was only required to have enough lifeboat space for 926 passengers (Brander). The Titanic actually had more lifeboats that technically required for a ship of her size. Her lifeboat davits (the lifting and lowering devices for the lifeboats) were designed for up to four full size lifeboats each. The original design for the Titanic included this many, but was later changed to only include one per davit with the exception of station 1 and 2 that also had
             collapsible boats (Encyclopedia). The extra lifeboats were excluded to allow for more deck space and a less cluttered appearance.
             When the Titanic was built, it was constructed with a reinforced bow, but only a single vertical hull. The bottom of the liner was a double hull. This greatly reduced the cost, and increased the amount of useable space inside the ship. Prior to the time of the Titanic, ships were constructed with a double hull. When the Titanic struck the iceberg, it penetrated her single hull and compromised the engine room. "By contrast, 50 years earlier on August 27, 1862, the Great Eastern had scraped on an uncharted rock off the coast of Long Island. It ripped a gash in her skin some 9 feet wide and 83 long, worse in some...