ON THE POSSIBILITY OF BUILDING A LARGE PASSENGER LINER 

 THAT WOULD NOT UNDER ANY OF THE KNOWN MISHAPS AT 

 SEA LOSE HER BUOYANCY OR STABILITY AND SINK. 



By George W. Dickie, Esq., Vice-President. 



[Read at the twenty-first general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in 



New York, December 11 and 12, 1913.] 



This problem has occupied the minds of many, if not all, prominent naval 

 architects since the disaster that overtook the Titanic in 1912. A great deal of 

 legislation followed this calamity, nearly all of which dealt with means of escape 

 for everyone on board a sinking ship. In a smooth sea and with all conditions 

 favorable it might be possible to handle and load 80 or 90 boats and, if they could 

 remain in the vicinity of the disaster and intelligence had reached other ships 

 within a radius of 200 miles, a large proportion or perhaps all of these boats might 

 be picked up. In order that this condition be possible, however, we must assume 

 exceptional conditions. 



I am writing this paper on board the Congress, a new vessel on her maiden 

 voyage from Philadelphia to San Francisco. This vessel was designed by myself 

 for the passenger and freight service on the Pacific Coast and is to run between 

 Seattle and San Diego, the principal stops en route being San Francisco and San 

 Pedro, the port of Los Angeles. Changes in the laws relative to life-saving appa- 

 ratus added about 25 tons to the designed weight to be carried on the boat deck of 

 the Congress and, in order to maintain the designed stability, I had to increase her 

 beam from 53 feet to 54 feet 9 inches, the boats being carried 35 feet above the 

 load line. With passenger list full this vessel carries 850 people and, should it ever 

 be necessary that they leave the ship during that part of her voyage north of San 

 Francisco, I can hardly conceive of its being accomplished without serious loss of 

 life. The ship itself, even with half the. freeboard gone, would be so much safer 

 and more comfortable than small boats or rafts that it is worth much thought, 

 careful planning, some compromises and considerable money to accomplish the de- 

 sign of a hull which would not lose its buoyancy or stability when subjected to the 

 known disasters of the sea and which at the same time would not be open to any 

 serious financial or commercial objections. 



The question of designing a ship that cannot be sunk by any of the known ac- 

 cidents which befall vessels at sea cannot be treated in a general way. The condi- 

 tions are so varying in diflferent types of vessels that the only way to handle the 

 subject is to assume a certain type and work out the problem in its relation to the 

 assumption, which is what I propose doing in this paper. I have taken a typical 

 large passenger steamer of the following dimensions: — 



