We hear stories of sailors surviving ships sinking due to being inside compartments filled with air. Why can’t we just build ships with compartments designed to do this in case of sinking?
In: Engineering
For ships to do their job, they need large clear areas that they can fill with cargo, clear areas where people can work, open spaces that people want to be in. For resistance against sinking, you want lots of tiny spaces all sealed off from each other, making it hard for people to work, claustrophobic spots where no one wants to be
Balancing those two different needs is challenging.
We sort of build ships that are designed not to sink, but that’s not working out too great…
Ships *do* have many sealable compartments. The air won’t exactly last indefinitely, and rescue won’t come very fast. I’m not sure what exact stories you’ve been hearing, but I suspect that they’re unique circumstances, like shipwrecks near shore.
We do.
Ships are built with bulkheads and watertight compartments which let’s them take damage in certain spots and stay afloat
RMS Titanic is probably the most famous ship with good compartmentalization. It had 16 watertight compartments and could stay afloat if up to four were flooded, but damage to more than four results in too much weight and not enough buoyancy and then sinking.
Warships had much more extensive compartmentalization because they were expected to have a good number flood during action.
But in the end, some of your compartments will flood and you can’t make useful unfloodable compartments, only unless ones filled with foam like on really small boats
We do this, within limits. Most ships have compartments with watertight doors. Just sealed compartments is a huge waste of space.
The result of this would be that you die slowly, over many hours, from carbon dioxide poisoning as the air runs out in your nice watertight sealed space, rather than drowning. I’m not sure it’s an improvement. Also, if you’re able to make it to this sealed space, why were you unable to make it to a lifeboat so you actually had a reasonable chance of survival?
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