When Engineering Goes Wrong: Three Badly Designed Ships

Designing a ship is no easy task! Through history simple oversights or mistakes have had a range of impacts - from silly, quirky characteristics to outright deadliness. Today we'll look at three ships, each with inherent design issues; Royal Mail Lines' Asturias and Alcantara, Hamburg America Line's Imperator and Canadian Pacific's Empress of Ireland and Empress of Britain.

Oceanliner Designs explores the design, construction, engineering and operation of history’s greatest vessels– from Titanic to Queen Mary and from the Empress of Ireland to the Lusitania. Join maritime researcher and illustrator Michael Brady as he tells the stories behind some of history's most famous ocean liners and machines!

[jameswebb]

I was fortunate to have sailed as a passenger on the 1956 Empress of Britain in Feb 1957 from Liverpool to St Johns New Brunswick . Beautiful ship, wonderful voyage.

[PplEtr]

Costa Concordia raised my awareness about the recurring issue of too much heeling over. Next time you're on a cruise ship, try to picture how you would escape one of those huge indoor areas when the floors turn into walls.

[nomarspaulding]

The story of the Emperess of Ireland is exactly why modern ships are required to close all watertight doors when doing thigns like making the transit into or out of port, or in a place like the Saint Lawrence River. That used to be one of my jobs on multiple ships. Personally verify that the doors were closed, and I got reamed out once by a captain for just looking from like 30 feet away and seeing that the door was clearly shut and properly dogged closed. The rule was that if you didn't put your hands on the door and make sure it was dogged by shutting it yourself, the door was not considered secure for sea because it had not been properly verified.

[NonsensicalNauticalRambings]

Your rapid production of these high quality documentaries is amazing, to say the least. Can’t wait to finish this one!

[Jack_Torrance.]

As a caretaker of an enormous, empty hotel, with little to break the monotony of seeing to the workings of the hotel, this channel breaks the maddening solitude and keeps Mr. Grady from telling me to do bad things.

[boonmbach]

It's really incredible to see your development. Your animations, the storytelling and the whole structure of the videos are now at a first-class level. The development over the last few months is really great to see! Never stop - thank you and your team!

[trichellsmith]

I just want to say I’m newer to the whole maritime history subject but after deep diving for almost a year I can say I’ve learned so much from you !!! This subject is so fascinating to me and I really enjoy your videos so thank you!

[Sagart]

Retired naval architect here. Great explanation and video production qualities. Longitudinal bulkheads also contributed to the sinking of IJNS Shinano, a WW2 Japanese aircraft carrier. A severe list developed which prevented voids on the other side of the ship to be counter-flooded - their intake valves had quickly been raised above the new (heeled) waterline.

[ravensrevenge]

I was on the Eurodam of Holland America for vacation when I was 14. I was invited to get a tailor to make me a suit (my mom was very close with the GM of Holland America West Coast), and they took me down to C deck which was permitted only to crew and engineers. The tailor was located on the otherside of a watertight door, So they had to notify the rear control chief, and we waited for a few seconds and the door slid open. They then closed it which took about 17 seconds and Hart, the GM, asked Sergei, the forward control chief, how much the door weighed. He said, "Eh, something like 5000 American pounds." Best souvenir. Crew uniform.

[lukasz]

Well done again 👏 Especially the part about the design fails of Empress of Ireland's watertight compartments was very interesting

[alanbennett]

Great work Mike. I like how you get on with the story without too much preamble. Always informative and so well documented. Cheers.

[danielrollin]

Very good episode. I learned something rarely told about the Empress of Ireland (I live in Eastern Canada and the sinking of the Empress is still a frequent topic in the media). One detail though : at the location of her sinking, the Empress of Ireland was in the estuary of St-Lawrence. Water is predominently salty and subject to tides. So the water rushing in her hull was not river water but sea water.

[MsSteelphoenix]

I was on a safety training course years ago, but one thing the instructor said has stuck with me: "Safety regulations are written in blood." So true in these cases.

[philiphumphrey]

The diesel engines were just a bit ahead of their time. The three German navy Panzershiffe (heavy cruisers sometimes called pocket battleships) built between 1929 and 1936 worked well with diesel engines. 28 knots max and the ability to accelerate to full speed very quickly compared to a steam turbine ship, extremely useful in a fight.

[andrewbrendan]

Another outstanding Mike Brady production! Thank you, Mike, for all t he time and work that go into your videos. These videos are of such high quality they could be on television networks. --- I once read a book called "Fourteen Minutes", about the sinking of the Empress of Ireland. Something that stood out for me from the book was how the Canadian Pacific line after Titanic sank had a policy that crew members were to be so familiarized with the layout of their ship that they could find their way out onto the open deck in complete darkness. My recollection is that many of the survivors were crew members rather than passengers who had boarded the ship only hours before. Because of the conditions of the sinking, the crew could do little beyond trying to save themselves. I'd like to encourage viewers/readers to thoroughly familiarize themselves with the layout of their homes, workplaces, schools, etc. so that they know how to get out in an emergency and maybe get other people out as well. Even in stores and malls and other public spaces, it could be good to look around and have an idea about how to quickly get out in a crisis situation. I'm not talking about living in fear, and parnoia, but about being realistic and having a sensible plan of action.

[DarkBaum]

Thank you very much for your great stories about the design of great ships :) it would have been one of my other career choices to go into shipbuilding

[michaelimbesi]

The problem of longitudinal watertight bulkheads causing asymmetric flooding which capsizes the ship is now considered a well-known issue and isn’t done anymore unless provisions are made for cross-flooding devices to ensure that if too much of a compartment is flooded, the opposite side of the compartment will also automatically flood.

Also, floodability is termed floodable length, at least here in the US.

And we now calculate damaged stability to make sure that as a ship floods, it remains upright, and use a thing called V-lines to ensure that neither heel nor waves will cause down flooding that would sink a ship the way the Empress of Ireland did.

[murryburnett]

I have worked in the maritime industry for many years. This is the first time i have found your site and I think we're well researched and presented.

[giggiddy]

Mike, this is a "what are you wearing?" question. I do many Zoom meetings from home and although I'm wearing a suit jacket, shirt and tie. I wear gym shorts instead of slacks because its more comfortable. Are you wearing slacks, shoes, etc or something more comfortable? Either way, you always look crisp and your videos are top- notch. Cheers!

[crazyguy]

The longitudinal bulkheads used as coal bunkers weren't unique to the Empress, the Lusitania had them too. Both ships suffered catatrophic damage to their sides and developed a heavy enough list lifeboats couldn't be lowered. The main differences is Lusitania was struck closer to the bow, was operating with its watertight doors shut and had more time before the flooding reached parts of the ship with longitudial separation. A converse example is the SS Justica, a ship worthy of a comparision video in its own right. The 2nd largest ship lost in WWI (after Brittanic), built by Harland & Wolff at the same time as Brittanic, launched 5 months after Brittanic, registered in Liverpool, operated by White Star and is marginally larger than Lusitania. She took 3 torpedos to the midship over the course of 2 days to put on the bottom and sank on an even keel, the Lusitania took 1 torpedo, 18 minutes and went down in a spiral. I feel if Lusitania had been struck amidship the result would have been nearly identical to the Empress and the loss of life even larger.