How can you survive a sinking ship?

While traveling by sea is usually very safe today, the unexpected can, and will, happen. But, don't let that put you off booking your next cruise.

According to some statistics, your chances of dying on a cruise ship are roughly 1 in 6.25 million - i.e. vanishingly small. However. unlike some bold claims of the past, like the unsinkability of the SS Titanic, no ship ever built, or that will ever be built, will be truly unsinkable.

So, what can you do if the ship you are traveling on finds itself in some very serious trouble? Much like traveling on an aircraft, your preparation should start long before you are even in trouble.

First and foremost, and not to sound flippant, learn to swim. This is not only good exercise, but it may well save your life one day. But, even that won't help you if you can't escape the sinking ship.

Learn where everything is, from where the emergency exits are, to where the lifeboats and lifevests are stowed, and know how to use any survival gear you will likely be given. Any ship that takes passengers will always have a safety briefing and you should definitely pay attention to this. But just because a ship is in trouble is doesn't necessarily mean you should be racing to jump overboard.

If a ship is truly in trouble, you will likely hear a series of 7 short bursts from the ship's horn, followed by a longer one — this is the "general alarm" signal, meaning something serious is up — in this case, the ship is floundering. Any order to abandon ship will also be verbally given by the ship's crew as well, so don't do anything until requested.

If you are on a commercial vessel, the crew are well trained for just this event and will guide you where necessary, but the way people act during life-threatening events is very unpredictable, to say the least.

The most vital piece of equipment is your life jacket. Make sure you put this on as soon as possible. Remember, you may be a strong swimmer in a pool, but the ocean is a very different beast. If you have to take the plunge, you will be stressed, fatigued, and probably in a state of shock.

For this reason, try to remain calm and breathe. Look to your own and your family's well-being before helping anyone else.

If the ship is taking on water, the lowest parts of the ship will begin to flood first. Get up to the deck as quickly as possible. If you become disoriented, take a moment to calm yourself. If present, you may be able to follow rats to guide you. They are known to have an innate ability to escape danger when a ship is going down.

And, never use electrical equipment like elevators either! You could end up trapped if the power is lost.

If the sinking vessel is your own, you should call for help as soon as you are able. While you may not receive any assistance for hours, if nobody knows you are in trouble, you can't be rescued. Anyone licensed to operate a ship will have had mandatory training in exactly how and when to issue a mayday call, and instructions on how to do this are kept next to the radio.

Generally, the safest course is to stay on the ship for as long as possible. Unless it is substantially on fire or exploding, a boat is safer and more visible than a life raft. Staying onboard also gives you more time to gather emergency provisions. This is why the last resort in any sinking scenario is to abandon the ship. If you do need to abandon ship, it is important to stay calm and plan ahead.

On a small ship, the captain will assign jobs to passengers, such as gathering all the flotation devices, radioing for help, getting the life raft ready to launch, and gathering up emergency items. On a cruise ship, you may be instructed to get up on deck to your assigned area or lifeboat, and then await further instructions. The guidelines of the International Maritime Organization requires that all cruise ships be able to get passengers lowered into the ocean in lifeboats within 30 minutes of passengers being gathered on deck.

Once instructed, you should get into a lifeboat (with your lifejacket on) calmly and without pushing or shoving. Women and children usually take precedence, so bear this in mind. This is called the "Birkenhead Drill". Take the time to read the story behind this and bear it in mind should you find yourself in a similar situation!

However, most modern ships are required to have enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew on board.

That being said, some studies have shown that the willingness of allowing women and children to board first is entirely dependent on the speed at which a ship is sinking. The SS Titanic, for example, took around 2 hours and 40 minutes to go down.

Most of the survivors, as we probably all know, were, indeed, women and children. Her sister ship, the SS Lusitania, on the other hand, was torpedoed during WW1 and went down in about 20 minutes. Most of the survivors of that sinking were young men and women, most in their early-30s, whose powerful survival instincts and fitness allowed them to respond more rapidly to get to safety.

If, however, you find yourself in the water without a lifeboat, you will want to find anything that floats to cling on to. This is especially true if the water is very cold, as your body will quickly go into a state of shock, making treading water very difficult in a fairly short period of time.

Anything that floats will do, but try to get your hands on material like wood, or other highly buoyant things that won't lose buoyancy as they get waterlogged.

Be sure to also swim away from the sinking ship as best you can. While there is some debate as to whether a sinking ship can suck you under with it, actual survivors of sinking ships attest to this sometimes occurring.

Should you be one of the unlucky ones to be in the water without any kind of floatation device, you can make a makeshift one out of your pants. Take them off, tie off each leg, hold them in the air and yank them into the water legs up to trap as much air as possible.

It is not an ideal scenario, but anything is better than nothing!

All well and good when on a sinking ship already at the surface, but how one Earth can you escape from something like a sinking submarine?

How do submariners escape from sinking submarines?

Submarine warfare is one of the most dangerous, and nail-biting, choices of a career in the world. Designed to evade detection from the surface, submarines are notoriously bad places to be should the vessel falter.

Whether damaged from combat, or by a tragic accident, when a submarine is in trouble the options for its crew to escape a very limited compared to surface vessels. So how, in fact, do submariners get to the surface in the event of an emergency?

Well, they actually have a few options as it happens.

The first issue to overcome is how to actually escape the submarine when at depth. Since the pressure outside the submarine is usually much higher than inside, it is usually nye-on-impossible to open any hatches should the need occur. For this reason, submarines will incorporate special chambers called "escape trunks" that act as a kind of airlock.

Escaping submariners need to make a beeline for these chambers, equalize the pressure inside them, and then open the hatch to make a break for the surface. In WWII, these were just a hood that trapped a bubble of air or contained a small air supply, combined with a lifejacket. In modern submarines, the chambers include "escape suits" which offer full-body protection against drowning, hypothermia, and decompression sickness.

If the submarine is too deep to make an escape possible, these same chambers are often the target for a specialized rescue craft called Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles (DSRVs).

A kind of small submarine, these crafts are specially designed, as the name suggests, for the deep-sea rescue of stricken submarine crews.

That is all well and good, but escaping submariners need to be able to breathe once outside the submarine. This is where specialist breathing apparatus comes in very handy.

One of the oldest options is something called the "Steinke Hood". Named in honor of its inventor Lieutenant Harris Steinke, this device is effectively an inflatable life jacket with a special hood that completely encloses the wearer's head.

The jacket adds much-needed buoyancy to the submariner to allow them to reach the surface relatively quickly, while the hood traps a bubble of air so they can breathe — at least for a short time. First invented in the early-1960s. Successfully tested during an escape from the submarine USS Balao from a depth of 318 feet (97m), it became a standard issue for U.S. submarines during the Cold War.

Another early piece of survival gear was the so-called "Momsen Lung" or "Davis Lung". A primitive form of underwater rebreather, this piece of equipment was provided to submarine crews leading up to, and during the Second World War.

A more modern piece of emergency equipment for submariners is something called the Submarine Escape Immersion Equipment, SEIE for short. A fully enclosed suit, this piece of equipment is specially designed to allow submariners to escape from relatively deep waters.

Early versions of it were developed in the 1950s, and more modern versions, like the Mark 10 and current Mark 11, incorporate protection against hypothermia. These suits have, more or less, replaced the Steinke Hood as the standard escape gear for submarine crews.

Should a modern submarine get into trouble, sailors will, in theory, dutifully don their SEIE suits, climb into the escape trunks, and make for the surface. If, however, the submarine sinks too deep, this option is not really viable and the crew needs to wait for rescue — if it ever comes.

In some circumstances, if the submarine sinks beyond its hull crush pressure, then the crew will likely be killed outright.

What life-saving equipment should ships have today?

Any ship at sea must have a variety of life-saving appliances on board to be legally sea-worthy. This is mandated by various international conventions and regulations, but foremost among them today is the International Conventions for the Safety of Life at Sea or SOLAS for short.

SOLAS and other maritime-related standards were all drafted to protect human life, as far as reasonably practicable, in the event of the loss of a ship on the high seas. With regards to SOLAS alone, life-saving appliances are mandatory as per the wording of Chapter 3 of the convention.

First adopted in 1914, following the loss of the Titanic, SOLAS also mandates the specific technical requirements for the manufacture, maintenance, and record-keeping of life-saving appliances. The number and type of life-saving appliances differ from vessel to vessel, and the code gives a minimum requirement to comply in order to make a ship seaworthy.

All well and good, but what options exist today? To be clear, we'll restrict this list to the most commonly available and interesting examples on surface vessels.

https://interestingengineering.com/how-can-you-save-your-life-when-your-ship-goes-down