`In reply to Rambler 24 -  There have been a several instances of ships capsizing due to free surface effect - despite the fact that they were in 'dead calm' conditions. (One notable example was the liner ``France`` which capsized while she was moored in New York harbour in 1942.) It's extremely difficult to keep a floating vessel absolutely upright and if a ship heels over - even very slightly - large areas of free surface water, inside the ship, will indeed slop to the low side and cause the ship to heel over more and more. There were varying eyewitness reports on the Titanic with regard to heeling. Some reported the ship was heeled to port slightly. At different times others reported a five degree heel to starboard. As I said above, it would require some lengthy calculations to prove that a large free surface would not have had an adverse effect on the operations to abandon ship. Flooding the engine compartments concurrently might not have caused the Titanic to capsize but, if the consequent free surface effect caused the ship to heel over by twenty or thirty degrees then the organization and lowering of the lifeboats would have become very much more difficult. Leaving the speculation aside - it would be an interesting addition to the article if some really dedicated editor was willing to do the calculations to prove the case!! With regard to the other point - about the untenability of the engine room - this has nothing to do with the main engines - the important thing was that the electrical generators in the engine room were providing lighting throughout the ship. The engineering staff of the Titanic have rarely received the credit due to them for their efforts in maintaining the ship's lighting for such a long period. As I noted above it's hard to say if flooding all the boiler compartments would have caused catastrophic damage but, it seems a possibility that generator power would have been disrupted much sooner.  `