ONCE IT IS full steam ahead, changing a ship’s direction is no easy feat. When a captain decides to alter an ocean liner’s course, it takes an astonishing level of engineering and power to steer the vessel in a new direction. Take, for example, the mechanisms that steered the Titanic, which was the world’s largest ship during its time. Its rudder measured nearly eighty feet high, weighed more than one hundred tons, and was cast in six separate pieces. To move the massive rudder itself, engineers installed two steam engines. The ship had three propellers: two had a twenty-three-foot diameter,
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