[Age of Reason]

Another thought would be to transfer as much weight from the bow to the stern raising the damaged areas out of the water. If the average weight of the people was 150lbs, the people alone would have shifted 150tons.

I always wondered if they could have stopped the flooding of additional forward compartments by counter-flooding the stern.

But even if that would have kept the water in the forward compartments from spilling over more bulkheads, there's still a possiblitiy the ship would have broken in half.

[supercat]

But even if that would have kept the water in the forward compartments from spilling over more bulkheads, there's still a possiblitiy the ship would have broken in half.

Compared with the guarantee that it would sink otherwise.

I have been curious about how much weight could have been offloaded from the bow and either moved astern or jettisoned. An iron ship is going to be pretty amazingly heavy, so there will be a lot of weight that can't be moved, but counterflooding might have helped things somewhat.

[Travis McGee]

I read a report of a contest by a class of engineering students, asked to prepare their best Titanic solutions. The winner was using their existing lifeboats as makeshift catamarans. In the very calm water that night and the following day, lashing two boats together with scavenged timbers would have allowed the lifeboats to carry the entire number of passengers and crew. They would not have capsized, and the reduced freeboard would not have mattered in the flat sea.

20-20 hingsight.