I'm working on a TL in which the main POD is the Titanic not sinking, allowing a certain historically obscure passenger to make some big changes ATL. However, as the rest of the TL has nothing to do with ocean liners and it's not my area of expertise, I am a little stumped on what precise change could stop the Titanic incident.
The most compelling POD I found through searches was the Titanic hitting the iceberg head-on instead of sidescraping it which could have sunk fewer compartments (2-3 instead of 5). However, others have said that could have resulted in an engine fire, so I'm looking for any alternate suggestions/ideas on how to avoid the accident.
You've got a few different ways you can go. Do you want her to not get damaged at all? Or is surviving the near sinking integral to your character?
Have somebody screw up some paperwork or something and the ship departs half an hour late.
Plausible. Or alternatively, have
Olympic not throw a propeller blade, this requiring a stay in dry dock. That moves up
Titanic's maiden voyage by a few weeks and PRESTO! No sinking.
Have the key to the locker that had the binoculars in it not be forgotten so someone can look ahead and see “oh shit an iceberg” in time to avoid it.
Eh. That's honestly questionable. The night was nearly pitch black with only starlight for illumination. Binoculars have a less than 50% chance of increasing your warning time.
Make White Star Line Company more responsible in security issues and not enforce Titanic going as fast as possible. They knew that on the area was icebergs. And avoid fire in the ship which there was while earlier or at least fix damages caused by the fire.
Both of these are hogwash. The ship wasn't even at full speed. She was doing about 21 knots at the time, top speed was 23. And there was no corporate policy forcing their ships to run at full speed. It was a clear, flat calm night. If there's a better time to run full speed (or close to it), I don't know what it is. And there fire thing
really needs to die. Coal bunker fires were
extremely common in that era. Not to mention, for the fire to have actually caused damage to the ship or weakened her hull, it would have had to have been blazing red hot. It wasn't. Like most coal bunker fires, it was just kind of smoldering.
Avert the bunker fire that had been burning since the ship left Liverpool. It’s heat fatally weakened some of the bulk heads. Plus what
@MKD said.
See my above reply. The coal bunker fire had absolutely
zero impact on the sinking.