The Titanic: Engineering Ethics Of The Titanic

Kwabena Wiafe Ababio

Engineering Ethics

December 8th 2014

Engineering Ethics

Final Paper

The Titanic In 1912, the world’s largest ship at the time, on its initial voyage carrying some of the world’s richest people had an accident with terrible loss of lives. The Titanic was conceived in 1907 and ultimately met its demise six years later in the North Atlantic seas (Gunner). The ship was the biggest of its kind according to historians. It was 882 feet 8 inches long, and 92 feet 6 inches in breadth, also the ships waterlines were 34 feet and 7 inches above the keel and weighed over fifty two tons (Gunner).

The turn of the twentieth century brought many wonderful inventions due to competition among the world powers including the United States and Great Britain especially in

From rushing the project to limiting life boats as well as making uncalculated assumptions are some of the wrong decisions made that we can address. Taking the rush completion of the project which ultimately led to shortcuts being taking from initial design as well as in the Engineering of the ship resulting in the loss of lives. It became apparent that Harland & Wolff, builders of the ship lacked a plethora of virtues: compassion for the crew and passengers, responsibility and courage. On the other hand, they possessed both vices of deficiency including negligence, greed and selfishness as well as vices of excess including over confidence, rash, extravagance and overbearing. To put the above in to context, would Jesus have put passengers on a ship with inadequate lifeboats, knowing well that in an event of an accident there would be people left without lifeboats? Also would Buddha rush the design of a Ship as well as cut corners to save money while ignoring safety concerns? The answer to both questions according Virtue Ethics would be a big No, hence making above decisions