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“Titanic” Disaster: Report of the Committee on Commerce, US Senate (1918) [pdf]

89 pointsby miobrienover 2 years ago

12 comments

haunterover 2 years ago
I actually like the recommendations parts and already talks about encryption!<p>&gt;The committee finds that this catastrophe makes glaringly apparent the necessity for regulation of radiotelegraphy. There must be an operator on duty at all times, day and night, to insure the immediate receipt of all distress, warning, or other important calls. Direct communication either by clear-speaking telephone, voice tube, or messenger must be provided between the wireless room and the bridge, so that the operator does not have to leave his station. There must be definite legislation to prevent interference by amateurs, and to secure secrecy of radiograms or wireless messages. There must be some source of auxiliary power, either storage battery or oil engine, to insure the operation of the wireless installation until the wireless room is submerged.<p>Also the HTML version is here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.titanicinquiry.org&#x2F;USInq&#x2F;USReport&#x2F;AmInqRep01.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.titanicinquiry.org&#x2F;USInq&#x2F;USReport&#x2F;AmInqRep01.php</a>
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itcrowdover 2 years ago
My little trivia for the Titanic has always been that Violet Jessop was on board, surviving three accidents from sister ships: Titanic, Olympic and Brittanic!<p>Go read the wiki, it&#x27;s amazing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Violet_Jessop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Violet_Jessop</a>
thamerover 2 years ago
The report mentions the ship making a C.Q.D. call, which I wasn&#x27;t familiar with.<p>The name comes from the earlier telegraph &quot;CQ&quot; call for alerts, named after the French word &quot;sécurité&quot;, abbreviated as &quot;sécu&quot; which is how the letters C and Q are pronounced in French. &quot;D&quot; is added to indicate distress. Sending a CQD call means sending the letters C,Q,D in Morse code; this practice was later supplanted by SOS.<p>Wikipedia has a page with more information: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;CQD" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;CQD</a>. It mentions the Titanic disaster: &quot;Harold Bride, the junior radio operator, suggested using SOS, saying half-jokingly that it might be his last chance to use the new code.&quot;
dwheelerover 2 years ago
What I especially appreciate are the recommendations at the end. The Titanic was a disaster, but the good news is that it was carefully analyzed and changes were made to greatly reduce the impacts of problems in the future. For example, laws were changed changed so that there had to be enough lifeboats for everybody on the ship.<p>Currently software developers are often not learning from previous security disasters. I hope that will change in the future. There are already efforts to start writing up about important problems, and that will be a start.
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varencover 2 years ago
You can find the full report, along with the appendices with the list of crew and passengers, here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=twnY7_eFDuQC&amp;pg=PA7287&amp;lpg=PA7287&amp;dq=%22INVESTIGATION+INTO+LOSS+OF+STEAMSHIP+Titanic%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=I9qvMjV9py&amp;sig=ACfU3U0qtlQTObWdqyaCy6VxH_mDn-0azw&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwie6JGgzJz6AhWiLkQIHSILCrwQ6AF6BAgFEAM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=twnY7_eFDuQC&amp;pg=PA7287&amp;lpg...</a><p>The tables are also more nicely formatted in this version. And Google has kindly performed OCR as well.<p>You can download a PDF of the entire 1912 congressional record, of which report is a small part, here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;download&#x2F;Congressional_Record.pdf?id=twnY7_eFDuQC&amp;output=pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;download&#x2F;Congressional_Record...</a>
jasonhanselover 2 years ago
A classic case of correlated failures. If you have multiple redundant systems, but anything that damages one system is <i>also</i> likely going to damage others, then a failure is much more probable than you would expect based on the level of redundancy.<p>In this case the redundant systems were the watertight compartments. The engineers thought the ship wouldn&#x27;t sink because it was unlikely for <i>five</i> of them to fail at the same time. But they forgot just how likely it was that any incident (e.g. an iceberg collision) that damaged one compartment would likely also damage many others.
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arbugeover 2 years ago
Page 3 states that the cost of the Titanic, &quot;fully equipped&quot;, was 1.5m pounds sterling.<p>According to:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bankofengland.co.uk&#x2F;monetary-policy&#x2F;inflation&#x2F;inflation-calculator" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bankofengland.co.uk&#x2F;monetary-policy&#x2F;inflation&#x2F;in...</a><p>this equates to around 120m pounds sterling today.<p>It seems to me that there&#x27;s no way you could construct anything like her for that amount of money today. I wonder what gives.
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russfinkover 2 years ago
The sister ship, Olympic, was refitted after the accident and had a long career to 1935. It had its own set of illustrious fatal incidents. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;topic&#x2F;Olympic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;topic&#x2F;Olympic</a>
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tamaharborover 2 years ago
I have always wondered why the General Slocum incident (955 dead) in NYC in 1904 has never received more attention.
kazinatorover 2 years ago
I tried to Ctrl-F search for &quot;DiCaprio&quot;, but it&#x27;s just scans.<p>Why did he have to die, you know?
billforover 2 years ago
&quot;Woman and children first&quot;, but especially first class :-)
toinewxover 2 years ago
the report says<p>- the titanic did not beak in two parts<p>- there was no substantial suction<p>So the movie is inaccurate
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