Now, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but there’s been a resurgence of the Titanic story.  Fine by me, it’s one of maritime’s finest blunders but, do we really want to listen to the same old facts being dragged up again?  Answer – no!  Not since I was approached by The Institute of Cock-ups at Sea.

They bestowed upon me the honour of dredging for the real facts surrounding the ship’s sinking.  And, I’m glad to say, after well under four minutes of fervent research, and half a kilo of Colombian marching powder, I’ve worked out how I could’ve kept her afloat and saved all of the passengers.  Oh yes matey-boy, I’d never steer you wrong.  (See, nautical humour and we haven’t even got under- way yet!)  Right, strap yourself to a bollard, and splice your sheepshank…

Now, it seems to me that the experts missed the most obvious danger in sailing a hollow metal object in huge quantities of water.  In parts it’s very, very, very deep.  My solution; concrete the seabed over, making it a blanket depth of 150ft.  Ships may sink to a degree, but on the whole they’ll just run aground. 

Another plus of the ‘Walton’ effect is it will raise the sea level of certain countries that would otherwise be land-locked.  With my plan in place they’ll be closer to a coastline and tourism will flourish.  Also, rainfall will increase due to the bonus water in the area and the extra clouds.   It’s a win-win situation all round.

The hull of the Titanic wasn’t watertight!  Now call me old fashioned, but surely someone, the designer perhaps, should’ve noticed this glaringly obvious flaw?  It seems not.  Well anyway, I feel with vast amounts of blotting paper aboard, this would’ve gone some way to soaking up the extra sea water.  The merry crew could’ve easily run up to the top deck, wrung it out, and returned to the hull.      

Next, jettison the sausages.  Well there were 2,500lbs of the little blighters!  Then I would’ve dismantled the fourth funnel and pushed it overboard.  It was only there for decoration and the loss of weight would, I think, have kept the Titanic afloat longer.  The lifeboat scenario was a 1st class problem; they didn’t want to travel with the riff raff.  My solution: extending lifeboats, rather like your dining room tables.  Once fully open, the boats will be marked for the correct classes.            

So there we are, the full report will be published next year just after my summer break on the Costa Concordia II, I think it’s called.  We know it’s easy, of course, to have the benefit of hindsight, but at the very basic end of the scale it boils down to this.  Spend a few more Bob/dimes on rivet heads and at all costs avoid smashing into the great big floaty things in the water…

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2012 at 3:11 am and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.