A Titanic Idea

[Dartz]

Here I am wondering it it'd be possible to make a new sister to Titanic. I mean, they were a fairly efficient design for the era on fuel - about 2/3rds of what Mauretania burned but a ship a third larger.

You can't build steam reciprocating engines anymore , so you'd have to go with diesel, but then your boiler rooms can be replaced with other 'modern' machine spaces like auxiliary generators, air conditioning, laundries, waste processing and larger entertainment venues. Those big slow-rolling marine diesels are incredibly efficient of fuel and burn anything black and liquid that'll inject. Centre engine is electric, driven by the main generators.


As a modern ship, you'd have to run plumbing to all the cabins - not just the first class - and the high quantity of interior cabins would not be popular with modern cruisers, but the Three-Class layout gives you public areas of the ship with distinct character - with 'Third' class being more like a buffet and a low cost bar, second class being a casual restaraunt that's comfy but informal , and first-class areas having a fancy dresscode and shit for the nights you want to be glamourous.
You can't panel the interior with timber - hello Morro Castle - but veneers may be possible to at least replicate the effect and the decor of the 1912.

Lifeboats - you can get an exemption (QM2 has it) to the 15 meter maximum limit. You have to have enough for everyone, but that's already possible.

But modern ships are less class-driven - most areas and amenities are available to most passengers. The difference between first, second and third class now being the amount of time you spend in public spaces on the ship. Third class cabins are beds with shitters and showers, with the expectation that you spend most your time in public areas of the ship (Like a car ferry cabin), and first class cabins are spaces where you can spend time privately and - in theory - never actually leave your cabin (Like Grills suites on QM2). Second class are sort of, in between, like Britannia class on the QM2

And maybe, second and third class, some amenities are extra charge - or the fancy restaraunt is an extra cost that needs booking for a night or two.

I mean, maybe people would get a kick on sailing on an imitation of an early 20th century ocean liner. And, fully packed, she'd be more environmentally friendly that an equivelant quantity of flights which might be a big thing in the near futures.

Taxes on aviation may make ocean travel viable once more.

Find a billionaire. Cook up some bullshit. Get 'em to build it.

[Bob Schroeck]

IIRC, someone already is, or at least was seriously proposing it a few years ago. I'll have to go look it up later.

[Dartz]

Clive Palmer, I think - but it's more of a floating theme park. They started cutting steel, but I think the idea was sort of sunk by overambition.

[Labster]

A while back I watched "High Seas" on Netflix, or so they localized a Spanish show called "Mar Alta". It was a ridiculous soapy melodrama, with people flinging around a suitcase of Nazi gold as if the MacGuffin was actually humanly portable. But the elaborate sets of the cruise ship were amazing. Filled with luxury. If I were in one of those first class staterooms, there'd be no way I'd get norovirus — though the way that series goes something worse would probably happen to me. It's worth watching if you like looking at pretty things and people.

I assume they built the sets on land, sadly.

[Matrix Dragon]

Yeah, Palmer's idea was bullshit from the start, and mostly a scam, as most of that fuckers ideas are

[Dartz]

But at the same time, half the reason I'd like to try a trip on the QM2 is because it's like going on the Titanic - only without getting wet.

There's probably a market for both that sort of traveller - and people who want to get somewhere and aren't too worried about taking 5 days to get there, if it's not as big a dent to the planet as flying (Or isn't sin-taxxed into the realm of the rich and wasteful) .

And the Olympic-class design is basically sound and very stable in the sea. We know how well it sinks, anyway. And how rugged it can be - Olympic herself hit a lot of things without sinking. Marine engineers have theorised that if the Olympic hit an iceberg, the iceberg would likely have sunk.

You're kinda tapping the romantics who want to travel on 'The Titanic', and the people who just want to get there. So you get both.

And it's probably as close as we could get with modern technology and shipbuilding techniques - we don't know how to rivet hulls or make reciprocating steam engines anymore - but shipbuilding has advanced a lot so it'd be a lot cheaper to build a ship that is - today at least -realtively smol for a passenger liner.

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I mean, these ships were fucking nuts. There's a lot more technology in them that people think.

Titanic's engines were relatively efficient for her era - especially compared to the Turbine ships. Her compartmentalisation made her a lot harder to sink (Not impossible - as we discovered). and while the circumstances that would cause her to sink were known, they were calculated to be unlikely and - arguably - actually were pretty bloody unlikely. She had a proper HVAC system, capable of turning over the air in the ship seven times an hour - and heating and steam humidifying it. The ventilating air was conditioned - as much as possible in 1912. Her steering gear was basically steer by hydraulics - a shuttle valve at the wheel triggered a hydraulic flow which activated a steam engine to drive the rudder to the correct angle. She had electric power - and contrary to modern ships her generators were located high enough that they strayed dry and operational right up until the final destruction of the ship - most ships these days loose power the moment they get breached because the gennys are right at the bottom of the hull.

Even the dearth of lifeboats was considered in the design, and was based on the prior experience of the RMS Republic - where a combination of wireless communication and a busy shipping line had allowed the entire passenger compliment of two liners to be rescued following a collision, in weather conditions that were sub-optimal for a rescue. The ship took hours to sink, and there was time to shuttle all those onboard onto nearby ships that arrived to answer a wireless call. The foundering ship sank in a stable manner - and acted as her own lifeboat.

Modern cruise ships topple when they flood. More would've died on the Concordia if she hadn't settled on the rocks - they were lucky.

The irony of Titanic is not that she was a bad design, and a watchword for hubris - she was just bloody unlucky.

[Matrix Dragon]

Yes, but Clive Palmer isn't going to make a good titanic. He's a scam artist, and any cruise liner he makes us going to embody that. And probably sink. Assuming it doesn't just get shut down for safety violations beforehand.

[hazard]

I doubt we will see a sister to the Titanic rise from the docks. But it's important to remember that the modern day cruise ship may descend from the passenger liner, but it's not itself one.

A cruise ship is designed to cruise around carrying passengers in luxury. They're called 'floating hotels' for a reason, and 'floating vacation resort' is not inaccurate either. But that's the thing, they're not really supposed to go anywhere fast, exactly. They're just supposed to go somewhere while the passengers enjoy themselves on board, and the harbours they get to are just really temporary diversions from the main attraction to do some touristing in an exotic location.

A passenger liner like the Titanic is not that. A passenger liner is a ship that is designed to move people in reasonable comfort. They're very much long range ferries with trips expected to take more than the day or so ferries normally expect. And even at a steady 20 knot pace, it takes about a week to cross the Atlantic, not accounting for the ports of call on either side.


I do not see passenger liners being economically viable in the near future, but if the costs of air travel rise fast enough in comparison to the cost of sea travel, a business case may be made that when compared with cruise ships relatively austere passenger liners are a potential method for moving people between continents.