1- Introduction.
It was the night between the 14th and the 15th of April 1912. The British ocean liner Titanic, described as " unsinkable " by the builders and the ship-owners, sank due to a collision with an iceberg in the Atlantic ocean , ending with a tragedy that cost the lives of 1517 people
( 2223 in total ) [1].
What went wrong ? How can an “unsinkable” ship sank after only five days ? The event was so dramatic that an inquiry by the British Wreck Commissioner was convened to discuss safety in shipping; the result was the first concept of the SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea ) International Convention [2], that prescribed numbers of lifeboats and other emergency equipment along with safety procedures, including continuous radio watches. This was one of the first international initiative to improve the safety in the maritime sector; another important step was the adoption of the ‘Convention on the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO) by the United Nations Maritime Conference[6].
The Titanic was in fact equipped with only 20 lifeboats ( that could carry barely 1178 out of the total 2223 passengers on board ) [3]. How can such a vessel have a flaw present in the rescue system and still operating with human life on board ? From an economic point of view it was estimated that reducing the number of lifeboat could have increase the view for the “first class passengers” without any other changes in the design of the ship . However in the beginning of the