Well, since the question seems to admit of the possibility that the ship has already hit the berg, the question is how to slow or stop sinking altogether.

I think would have been better not to have restarted the engines, at least not "ahead"...this forced more water into the ship and hastened the failure of the bulheads...the pumps probably would have been able to deal with the leakage in Boiler Room Six, but not with all the water that eventually entered the ship whilst underway, and then after. Running the engines slowly astern might have helped keep her afloat until

A story here might be germain here:

During WwI, the British ship [i:8463ab2e4a]HMS Garry[/i:8463ab2e4a] was severely wounded in her bows after ramming and sinking a German U-Boat. The following message was sent to the Admiralty by her commander. "Am proceeding to port...stern first...8 knots"-- in other words, "slow-astern". She made it to port safely, over 100 miles away.[i:8463ab2e4a]Carpathia[/i:8463ab2e4a] arrived.

Here is a post from another Titanic site, forgive me if you've heard all this before, but I didn't notice some parts of this ever brought up on this site so decided to bring it here. This is actually more of an illustration that the officer's and crew of Titanic (a peacetime cruise ship) were insufficently trained for disaster as compared to that of a naval crew which would expect their ship to be damaged.
Here it is:


The mention of the 'what ifs' made me think to bring this up.
My brother was a naval officer. He was damage control officer of a
heavy cruiser (one step below the biggest battleship). But he is
also a maritime history nut, studying it ever since I can remember.
Naturally he and I have had many discussions about the Titanic
disaster and he had some interesting observations. He believes the
ship may not have had to sink at all if any of the officers had been
naval officers--that naval techniques OF THE TIME were already in
practice that enabled a ship of size to withstand such trumatic
damage as Titanic did and still have a fair chance of survival. The
fact that many in the soon to come Great War did bears this out (of
course many did go to their watery graves too).
Some of these ideas really threw me, but I have since heard of them
being used on other ships of the time with good effect.
So here goes:

FIRST-- Put the Titanic at full astern speed. I have since heard
that this is standard Naval practice and did in fact save many ships
even prior to the Titanic disaster. What this does is reduce
pressure on the damaged part of the hull and even reverse it in a
case of the actually minimal damage (holewise) that Titanic's hull
sustained.
Much like dragging an ordinary waterglass bottom first along the
water...it doesn't really fill up fast.

SECOND-- Attempt to rig 'collision mats' Of course the Titanic
wouldn't have such things as a Naval combat ship would, but perhaps
something could have been rigged. A collision mat can be nothing
more than canvas spread outside over as much of the holed area as
possible. He tried to explain to me how it was done--it was standard
practice for hundreds of years and no mystery to a sailor, but he
lost me. What it does is merely slow the water's entrance, but is
apparently more effective than one might guess.

THIRD-- (and are you ready for this?) OPEN the watertight doors.
Andrews and Smith knew that the water would rise over the
compartments at E deck; causing Titanic to go down at the bow thus
tilting the ship so that even more compartments would flood
until...well, you know. So there was no hope. However; what was
happening was because all the water was concentrated in the first
five (or six) compartments for as long as possible, only a fraction
of her pumps could be working--to level the water in her bottom
would have allowed ALL her pumps to kick in...and have had a very
good chance to have been enough to equalize the water intake and
kept the boilers above water. Of course HAD he boilers gotten
submurged, the pumps would have stopped and all bets would have been
off...but this most likely would have taken quite a bit longer than
what indeed did happen...maybe time enough for the Carpathia to have
overtaken her (as she steamed toward her in reverse). But the
stokers would have suffered greatly sloshing around in the freezing
water.

Who knows if all this would have worked, but Naval techniques sure
would have given Titanic a much better chance than she had. Many
combat ships having taken catasrtophic damage have survived worse.

Interesting thought?

7th Officer,
I do not know that much about ships and how they operate, but those "training observations/procedures" sound sensible to me.
Betty

[quote:d65120b1c9="7th officer"]Here is a post from another Titanic site, forgive me if you've heard all this before, but I didn't notice some parts of this ever brought up on this site so decided to bring it here. This is actually more of an illustration that the officer's and crew of Titanic (a peacetime cruise ship) were insufficently trained for disaster as compared to that of a naval crew which would expect their ship to be damaged.
Here it is:




THIRD-- (and are you ready for this?) OPEN the watertight doors.
Andrews and Smith knew that the water would rise over the
compartments at E deck; causing Titanic to go down at the bow thus
tilting the ship so that even more compartments would flood
until...well, you know. So there was no hope. However; what was
happening was because all the water was concentrated in the first
five (or six) compartments for as long as possible, only a fraction
of her pumps could be working--to level the water in her bottom
would have allowed ALL her pumps to kick in...and have had a very
good chance to have been enough to equalize the water intake and
kept the boilers above water. Of course HAD he boilers gotten
submurged, the pumps would have stopped and all bets would have been
off...but this most likely would have taken quite a bit longer than
what indeed did happen...maybe time enough for the Carpathia to have
overtaken her (as she steamed toward her in reverse). But the
stokers would have suffered greatly sloshing around in the freezing
water.

Who knows if all this would have worked, but Naval techniques sure
would have given Titanic a much better chance than she had. Many
combat ships having taken catasrtophic damage have survived worse.

Interesting thought?[/quote:d65120b1c9]

Scary thought, actually. One group actually built a scale replica of the [i:d65120b1c9]Titanic[/i:d65120b1c9] in a tank and rigged it with compartments, doors, scaled down water calculations, the whole like. The first test they conducted was to recreate the sinking. Right on schedule, the model sank by the head.

Then they opened the watertight "doors" (rubber corks), to see what would happen if the ship was allowed to flood evenly from bow to stern. What seemed like a success early on turned into disaster. I believe the ship lost its power one hour into the ordeal. About a half-hour later, the water in the lower decks of the ship (from fore to aft peak at this point) made the ship unstable. She capsized about one hour before the [i:d65120b1c9]Titanic[/i:d65120b1c9] actually sank. At this time, lifeboats were still on deck.

This would have left even MORE passengers without lifeboats, and exposed for an additional hour. According to this study, leaving the watertight doors open would have doomed nearly everyone on the ship.

wow..tha'ts probably the most interesting thing I've heard on here in a long time. :D

I saw that experiment with the model done on a documentary. But, that model was horribly built. As LCoulbourn said, they had water tight doors as rubber plugs. And they were flooding the five damaged compartments with little hoses comming through the cargo hatches. Most of you should see the problem with that. Each compartment suffered its own unique damage and flooded unevenly.
I find the theory of having the ship run astern interesting. Although I doubt it would work on Titanic. And with the ship flooding it would be hard to evacuate. Look at Lusitania and Britannic.............
If there was a way to save the ship, Andrews would have come up with it. He knew the ship better than anyone, if he says she's goin down, then she's goin down.

As some have already stated the fact that the vessel was damaged in so many compartments it meant that the ship would sink.
However I have never read or heard if ALL the watertight doors were shut. As we know the only doors that could be shut from the bridge were those at 'tank top' level alll the other doors on the other decks HAD to be closed manualy either at the doors themselves or from the deck above. If any of those doors were left open then the watertightness of the bulkheads would obviously be compromised thus speeding the inevitable.
With regards to the pumps as far as I can tell even if all were running they wouldn't have been able to cope with the thousands of tons of water that was pouring into the ship. :(

I doubt that all of the WTD's were closed. They probobly wouldnt have had time. Some of the doors were in passenger areas and if closed would seal people inside. Then again, in an expedition where they tried to gain access to the swimming pool they thought a WTD would be in the way. Sadly they had to leave without even making it to F-deck.

Besides the amount of damage that was done, some of the watertight doors were aparently damaged, or wouldn't shut - and it didn't really matter anyway, as the ship's watertight compartments themselves weren't watertight - that's why the water sloshed over into one and then another until the ship tipped so far she broke. The [i:2f35f55c12]way[/i:2f35f55c12] she was damaged is what insured her sinking.

Teamtuna,
I always wondered about this. Now how far was Titanic from Halifax. If they kept going could they have made it? I know it may sound like a crazy question but I did read somewhere Titanic kept going for a while, right?

You know we are always looking for questions of what if and maybe and I just wondered about this one. Is it covered in any book that you know of?