Talk:Empress of Ireland

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[edit] Design Changes

"The disaster led to a change in thinking among naval architects with regard to the design of ships bows. The backward slanting bow design of the day (see picture above) caused, in the event of a collision, immediate massive fatal damage below the waterline. The effect of the Storstad's bows on the Empress of Ireland's has been likened to that of a "chisel being forced into an aluminium can" Designers began to employ the raked bows that we are familiar with today, ensuring that much of the energy of a collision is absorbed by the point of the bow impacting above the waterline of the other ship ensuring less damage under the surface."

This sounds suspicious to me, firstly because the bow does not "slope backward" -- it's vertical (this is obvious on the plans of many ships) -- and secondly, ships were built right up until the thirties with vertical stems (the Empress of Britain being an example). I've always thought raked stems were sea-handling feature. John.Conway 11:24, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number lost source?

See note at Talk:1914#Empress of Ireland where a different number of dead is quoted. KenWalker | Talk 02:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)