6 Titanic Lessons for Graduate / Early Career University Researchers
The sinking of the White Star liner Titanic in 1912 is a critical punctuation mark in human history. The analysis of the disaster yielded profound lessons in engineering, science and human nature, and the incident has - often unfairly from a technical perspective - become the go-to metaphor for a broad range of failures. 105 years later, however, the core lessons from Titanic are as important to autonomous-drive vehicles or modern spacecraft as they were to 20th Century shipbuilding.
Contrary to popular opinion, the loss of Titanic – with a toll of more than 1,500 lives – was not the worst event in maritime history. In the 13th Century, more than 100,000 people died when a typhoon wiped out the Mongol fleet. More recently, in 1940, nearly 6,000 perished on board the liner Lancastria when it sank while evacuating allied troops. In 1945, almost 10,000 German refugees perished with the sinking of the liner Wilhelm Gustloff.
Titanic's fame wasn't just about the ship either, because it was neither the first of its kind, nor unique. Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania were earlier (smaller) examples of the floating palace concept. Of the three sister mega-liners, launched by Belfast shipbuilders Harland and Wolff (Olympic, Titanic and Britannic), only the first (Olympic) survived into old age – the youngest sister, Britannic, also sank, albeit due to an enemy mine in 1916.
The preeminence of Titanic as a drama derives partly from its passenger list – the first class passengers represented a sizeable proportion of the entire planet's wealth. Some survived but, in a class-conscious early 20th Century society, the fact that money couldn't save all of them caused considerable consternation. Even the US owner of Titanic (International Mercantile Marine) – J.P. Morgan – who missed the fateful Atlantic crossing – was devastated personally and financially by the loss, and died shortly thereafter. The Managing Director of White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, became the archetypal, black-moustached villain of the melodrama, for getting into a lifeboat early, and although he survived physically, his reputation and future life were permanently destroyed.
In history, context is everything. Nowhere more so than in relation to Titanic. Three deeply-religious nations were involved in its creation (Ireland, Great Britain and the USA). The ship emerged within a historical juxtaposition of Christian beliefs, and the coming of age of engineering and science, through the industrial revolution. The failure of Titanic came to be viewed through the prism of a failure of engineering and science – literally drowning in its own hubris, in the face of religious doctrine. Whether or not this hubris was manifest in the engineers and scientists themselves is debatable, but hubris and overconfidence there certainly was. In 1907, Edward Smith, the (later) captain of Titanic, was quoted as saying in relation to his earlier ship (Adriatic):
“I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”
Observers were all too aware of the maritime hubris of the era, and the inevitable comeuppance had been predicted for some time.
In the book entitled, The Wreck of the Titan / Futility, written by Morgan Robertson in 1898 – a full ten years before William Pirie of Harland and Wolff and Bruce Ismay of White Star had even met to discuss the possibility of building Titanic – the author wrote of an ill-fated, fictional ship called the Titan. The Titan was a massive ship, with triple-screw propulsion, some 800 feet long, with 19 watertight compartments, each with automatic, electric bulkhead doors. The Titan had electric controls from the bridge and was capable of 25 knots. Robertson described the fictional Titan as follows:
"Unsinkable – indestructible, she carried as few boats as would satisfy the laws...She carried no useless, cumbersome life-rafts... in the event of an end-on collision with an iceberg – the only thing afloat that she could not conquer – her bows would be crushed in... and at the most three compartments would be flooded – which would not matter with six more to spare."
The technological hubris behind the Titan led to its demise, and it sank after hitting an iceberg on its trans-Atlantic crossing. Robertson's fiction and lessons were soon forgotten. However, ship technology, which was science fiction in 1898, became engineering and science reality in 1911, when the Titan's ill-fated namesake Titanic was launched. The Irish Times of the day noted that, in Titanic,
“The Captain can, by simply moving an electric switch, instantly close the doors throughout, practically making the vessel unsinkable.”
The same expression (practically unsinkable) had also been used in Robertson's fictional description of the Titan. Nevertheless, complete with triple-screw propulsion, a capability of 24 knots, watertight compartments and state-of-the-art, automatic, electrically-operated, hydraulic bulkhead doors, the 882 feet long Titanic became a physical manifestation of the Titan. And, as the fictional Titan struck an iceberg and sank when all its watertight compartments were breached, so too did Titanic.
Harland and Wolff's brief for building the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic was not unduly constrained by finances or artificial technical constraints. Harland and Wolff was paid costs plus 5% for the three vessels, and White Star made it clear that speed was not a first priority, so weight was not an issue. This was a dream contract – spend as much as needs to be spent, and equip as much as needs to be equipped to make the vessel the best and safest afloat.
The Harland and Wolff design and engineering offices became one of the world's most advanced engineering and scientific research and development facilities, in terms of materials science and metallurgy, applied mechanics and dynamics, structural mechanics, metal forming, hydrodynamics, large-scale construction, electric control systems, hydraulic controls, electrical power systems, steam turbine design, hydraulic-ram riveting, heating and ventilation systems, wireless communications, refrigeration systems, and so on. Harland and Wolff was, arguably, to the early 20th Century what NASA became to the mid-20th Century - a technological hub which beckoned the latest and the greatest from around the world.
With this in mind, one necessarily has to ask what lessons have come from such a well resourced research and development exercise, unconstrained by finances and political interference, and staffed with the world's best experts – which still ended in tragedy?
Lesson 1 – Good Engineering and Science Does Work
The engineering and science associated with the Titanic did not fail. The ship's designers at Harland and Wolff were exonerated by both the US and UK enquiries into the sinking. The ship functioned largely the way that designers had planned – they just couldn't plan for every eventuality. Practical assumptions and compromises were made. A ship which was 100% unsinkable from an engineering and scientific perspective would have been 100% useless as a commercial vessel. Every additional watertight compartment made the vessel significantly less functional.
Titanic's electrically-operated, hydraulic bulkhead doors all worked as planned. The careful design and strategic positioning of the 1.6MW electrical generators at the rear of the vessel (away from potential collision points) enabled power to be maintained until the last few seconds – thereby enabling pumping work to continue to slow the foundering, and lighting to function to reduce panic and loss of life.
The question wasn't whether the Titanic foundered because of its design but whether any other technology of the day would have fared better – the answer was no – the Titanic was the best and safest that engineering and science could offer until immediately after the sinking – at which time a great deal of new information was gleaned in order to make improvements – with 20/20 hindsight.
Lesson 2 – Paradigm-Shifting Advances Require More than Just Individuals
Olympic, Titanic and Britannic were engineering and scientific masterpieces of their era. Given the available technology of the day they were arguably far more significant as an engineering quantum leap than the modern Airbus A380. And, they could only ever have been brought into reality by a complex team of interdisciplinary engineers and scientists, working cohesively to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. That is something which rarely happens in the context of university research, where individual excellence tends to restrict cohesion and collective excellence.
More than this, however, Harland and Wolff, like many other organizations, had corporate memory – individuals did not have to spend time rummaging through research papers to learn how to build a paradigm-shifting new ship. The company had a vast store of intrinsic knowledge, as well as a collective, esoteric intelligence brought about by the complex interactions between skilled individuals over decades. This shipbuilding knowledge organism had grown over two generations before Titanic had even launched.
In the university world, early career researchers may have individual excellence at the forefront of their thinking – only a very rare few will achieve it. But it needs to be understood that, more generally, complex paradigm shifts in a complex world can no longer be based upon individuals. They require sophisticated and diverse knowledge organisms, composed of many individuals and disciplines, working cohesively as a unified entity.
Cohesion and collective intelligence do not preclude individual excellence. Even in the case of Titanic, lead designer, Thomas Andrews, was likely the world's most knowledgeable person in his field. In fact, when Titanic struck its iceberg, Andrews was able to calculate accurately, within minutes, the likely flotation time of the vessel. Andrews calculated 2 hours – the ship actually floated for 2 hours and 25 minutes. Andrews' incredible personal ability enabled life-saving evacuation decisions to be made quickly.
Lesson 3 – Understand the Broader Environment and Not Just the Science
At the time of Titanic's launch, the British Board of Trade regulated lifeboat capacity based upon a ship's mass, not passenger numbers. The commonly reported/dramatized view of the Titanic sinking was therefore that loss of life was due to insufficient lifeboats. This was correct arithmetically but it was an altogether simplistic narrative from a maritime perspective.
Previous attempts at using lifeboats aboard sinking passenger vessels had proven disastrous, and led to significant loss of human lives. Ship crews were not trained in launching lifeboats – particularly off listing ships. The trans-Atlantic shipping lanes were the busiest in the world – generally ships were only minutes or hours apart. The prevailing maritime view was that it was much safer to remain aboard a sinking vessel until a rescue vessel arrived than to risk passengers' lives on launching lifeboats – in the case of Titanic by lowering passengers 10 storeys down by unskilled operators. Unsurprisingly, many passengers refused to enter lifeboats until it was too late to launch them anyway.
The lesson here is that engineering and scientific research cannot take place in a vacuum – it needs to take place in the context of the broader environment. If engineers and scientists are to create meaningful outcomes they need to understand much more than just the basic science. Engineering and scientific research may be pure endeavors of themselves, but without a detailed understanding of the broader operating environment – and of human practice and human nature – it is very difficult to arrive at an optimal solution.
Lesson 4 - Knee-Jerk Engineering and Science Are Not Necessarily Good Engineering and Science
As with all large-scale disasters, the sinking of Titanic prompted calls for immediate action. Cool and reasoned logic would dictate that if there had been any quick, fundamental solutions then the shipbuilders - unconstrained by finances - probably would have already incorporated them into the original design. Beyond the ship technology, a dramatic change in maritime practice to adequate lifeboat provision, training and drills proved to be a major operational shift that eventually led to the saving of countless lives.
In order to placate a skeptical public, however, Titanic's shipbuilders instituted a range of quick-fix technical changes, including retrofits to the Olympic, involving raised bulkheads, as well as design changes to the upcoming Britannic. These included a twin-wall construction on the ship's hull. The real engineering and scientific solutions, involving materials/metallurgical improvements and ice detection technologies were still decades away.
The quick-fix design solution was put to the ultimate test, after Britannic's hull was ruptured by a mine, and the damaged twin-wall hull cavity rapidly filled with water. The ship capsized and foundered within minutes (see image below). Attempts at launching the lifeboats quickly - as per the new approach - led some of them to being sucked straight into Britannic's massive, spinning propellers and destroyed. Had the same quick-fix engineering changes been applied to Titanic, then what was already a tragedy would have become a total catastrophe - with few, if any, survivors.
The lesson here is that engineering and science should not be rushed needlessly - especially to quell unreasonable public demands for solutions that require considerable investigation - or for which the technology/knowledge simply does not presently exist. Sometimes, no solution is better than a bad solution.
Lesson 5 – Engineering and Science Need to Understand Unknown Unknowns
In 2002, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was ridiculed for his statement that it was unknown unknowns – that is to say, things that we don't know that we don't know, that cause difficulties. The statement is more profound than it seems. In engineering and scientific research we create (mental or physical) flowcharts that map possible scenarios and outcomes. No matter how rigorously we define these flowcharts in our research methodologies, there is always a flowchart branch with unknown unknowns – in other words, an "all-of-the-above-is-incorrect" possibility.
In the case of Titanic, the possibility of striking an iceberg was a known known. Icebergs were a common cause of maritime calamities. The practice of evacuating to another nearby, passing ship was a known known. The possibility of using lifeboats as a temporary measure was a known known. The unknown unknown was what to do in the highly unlikely scenario of striking an iceberg; having the iceberg cause terminal damage to the vessel, and not having passing ships sufficiently close for rescue. In Titanic, as in much 21st Century research and development, the unknown unknown was relegated into the too hard basket – ignore it and hope it never happens. Of course it does happen - time and again.
Unknown unknowns have arisen regularly through knowledge gaps in engineering and science. Famously, this occurred in the 1940s with US Liberty Ships that experienced brittle metal fractures, due to stress-concentrating, rectangular hatches in the structures. Some of the Liberty Ships split in half only a day after launch (see below).
Similar problems arose in the 1950s with the de Havilland Comet passenger jets – with three catastrophic air crashes within the first year of service – due to the unknown unknown of metal fatigue, exacerbated by rectangular aircraft windows (see below).
In the medical field, in the 1950s, the worldwide Thalidomide drug disaster made the sinking of the Titanic look insignificant by comparison – 5,000 infants died as a result of the drug being administered to their mothers, and another 5,000 had greatly shortened, tragic lives.
In the 1990s, the global Kapton aircraft wiring insulation failures, which led to airline disasters in TWA, Swissair and military jets, became a very recent example of unknown unknowns. Aircraft designers knew about the positive aspects of the Kapton insulator, but deployed it without understanding that there were potentially catastrophic, negative consequences as the insulation material deteriorated.
105 years after Titanic, unknown unknowns are still ever-present. The number of unknown unknowns involved in releasing millions of autonomous vehicles onto national roads is the current day example. The potential consequences of sensors and actuators that wear, degrade and fail intermittently, and inconsistently - in climates that range from freezing cold to searing heat - and where unskilled human tampering is a given - are orders of magnitude greater than those that faced Titanic's designers. The engineering philosophy around these sensors, actuators and controlling software is commonly referred to as fail-safe - an approach which works reasonably well in a tightly controlled, professional (e.g., aviation, maritime) environment but is still largely untested in the uncontrolled, unprofessional environment that is a public road network. Time will tell us the consequences of these unknown unknowns.
In research as in life one cannot practically address the unknown unknowns beyond developing the professional maturity to be wary of perceptions of perfect engineering, perfect science, and the perfect solution. Always consider the consequences of the "all-of-the-above-is-incorrect" scenario. That is, when the underlying premises, upon which engineering and scientific calculations are founded, are themselves flawed.
Lesson 6 – Hubris, Engineering and Science Don't Mix
The most important lesson that we must take from Titanic is that there is no place for overconfidence and hubris in engineering and scientific research. Modesty is not just a virtue in research, it is a scientific recognition of reality. Human analysis and human synthesis are always flawed - because they are always constrained by human nature, politics, bias and, critically, the lack of a complete understanding of our vastly complex universe and operating environment. None of these contributing factors to catastrophe have changed in the past 105 years, and neither will they change in the next 105 years.
At the very least, however, we can take some comfort that the more self-awareness we acquire of our own limitations as engineers and scientists, the better equipped we will be to undertake research and development which solves existing problems rather than creates new disasters.
Nowhere was the sentiment of unwarranted hubris better expressed than in the Thomas Hardy poem (The Convergence of the Twain) written on the occasion of the sinking of the Titanic:
"...as the smart ship grew in stature, grace, and hue, in shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too".
105 years later, if that doesn't send a chilling taste of reality into autonomous vehicle and spacecraft research, then nothing probably ever will.
Dr. Dario Toncich
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Dr. Dario Toncich is author of the complementary texts, Key Factors in Postgraduate Research Supervision - A Guide for Supervisors (2017) and Key Factors in Postgraduate Research - A Guide for Students - both now Available direct from Amazon.com
