One thing to consider is that it was an incredibly unlucky and unlikely bit of damage. It wasn’t a smash, like the Olympic-HMS Hawke incident, causing a large but localised hole. It was instead the lightest of grazes, with the ship bouncing off the berg as it passed.

Though the total area exposed to the sea was only around 12 sq ft, it was spread along 250ft of the hull. But that wasn’t fatal. What it came down to was less than 1.5 sq ft of the damage extended into Boiler Room 6. If this hadn’t happened, the waterline would have never reached the top of the forward bulkheads.

With all safety measures, a limit has to be reached based on reasonable expectations. On the other end of things was Brunel’s massive Great Eastern of 1859, which had not only cross bulkheads like Titanic, but also two longitudinal ones running the length of the ship, and a double skinned hull. This was a bit impractical for passengers and crew who had to go up to the top and back down again to get anywhere. It also bankrupted the company which built it.