THE DESIGN OF TITANIC’S RELATIVELY UNCLUTTERED DECKS WERE PARTLY DUE TO HER LACK OF LIFEBOATS, WHICH, LIKE MANY LARGE SHIPS OF HER TIME, COULD CARRY LESS THAN HALF OF THE PASSENGERS ON BOARD
The Titanic, despite what some film accounts implied, was not built for speed. The Titanic’s intended speed would have brought her from Southampton, England to New York in five and a half days.
LIFEBOATS ON THE SS UNITED STATES WERE ALUMINUM HULLED AND COULD SEAT 40 PEOPLE EACH
Many lessons learned in Titanic’s sinking influenced the design of the SS United States. Both ships had double bottoms, but the United States’ extended up along the sides of her hull so that an incident like Titanic’s iceberg collision would only cause minimal damage.
The SS United States had watertight compartments that extended an unprecedented 40 feet above the waterline, and she had 20 compartments as opposed to Titanic’s 16. The SS United States even had a “redundant” engine room, so that if one of her engine rooms flooded, the other could still operate and generate electricity for the ship.
If the SS United States had ever suffered comparable catastrophic damage to the Titanic, the ship would not have broken apart because her superstructure was made of aluminum — much more flexible than steel and not requiring any expansion joints.
Many ships of Titanic’s era were also destroyed by fire, rather than collision damage. Taking this into account, the SS United States was built almost completely fireproof. Utilizing many new materials invented for use in World War 2, it was said that the only wood aboard the SS United States were the “pianos and the butcher’s blocks”. William Francis Gibbs, the vessel’s designer, only allowed mahogany pianos on board after Theodore Steinway succeeded in demonstrating his pianos’ fire-resistant qualities by dousing one of them in gasoline and setting it alight.