Speed Coal etc

[George Behe]

(I thought I'd create a new thread -- the old one was becoming too slow to download.)

Hi, David:

>Since history does not reveal its alternatives, I have no idea of what
>Ismay might have done on Monday. However, if the ship had only 1080
>miles to steam from "the corner," ...........

The 1080 mile figure was not from "the corner," though -- it was supposedly the distance from the *disaster site* to New York.

>.......at 22.25 knots it would have arrived
>in New York at 4:00 pm on Tuesday.

Again, my math ability is not the greatest, but my calculator shows that, at 22.25 knots, Titanic would have covered the 1080 miles (between New York and the disaster site) in 48.5 hours. Since Titanic stopped moving at roughly midnight on April 14, that means she would have arrived in New York at about 12:30 a.m. on the morning of Wednesday, April 17. At 22.5 knots (which is the figure I used in my book), she would have arrived at midnight. With a Monday speed trial etc., she would have arrived late Tuesday night. To have travelled the 1080 miles and arrived at 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, however, Titanic would have had to steam at 27 knots.

>That happens to be the time printed
>by the New York Times on Monday, April 15, quoting a wireless message
>from Titanic through the White Star Line.

Diana Bristow presented that tidbit in her first book in 1989, but I've always had trouble with the info. The NYT article says the message was sent to Sandy Hook, that Titanic was 1,284 miles east at 2:15 a.m. (presumably April 14), and that she was due to arrive at 4 p.m. Since Titanic was incapable of steaming at the necessary 27 knots to reach New York by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, though, could the Marconigram have actually meant that Titanic would pass **Sandy Hook** at 4 p.m.?

All my best,

George

 

[Parks Stephenson]

George,

I am not aware of any other example in the pre-wireless DF days where a ship would report its Closest Point of Approach (CPA) to a wireless station; therefore, I don't believe that the wireless report listed in the NYT was confusing a NYC arrival time with a CPA off Sandy Hook.

That being said, however, I share your concern with the expected arrival time, due to the various reasons covered in this and the previous discussion thread. I'll add one more consideration:

Ships move in a medium that is separate from the earth itself. The calculated time to cover a certain distance through the water is different from that over the surface of the earth. It actually required more speed on Titanic's part to complete the final leg of her westbound run on time than a simple measurement of her projected track would indicate.

However, unless Titanic's message was spoofed by an amateur wireless operator or misprinted in the NYT, the ship evidently reported a 4pm arrival time. The challenge is how to explain the reason why that report would have been made. Someone has to be incorrect...either those of us nowadays who contend that Titanic could not have made a 4pm arrival, or the unknown person (and without a signature, there is no evidence that that person had to be a Titanic crewman) who authored the message claiming that Titanic could.

Parks

 

[David G. Brown]

George --

Beg your pardon on the 1080 miles. I read your message correctly, but had a "senior moment" when my brain processed it. I still think the ship was a bit farther from New York, but the amount is really insignificant for this discussion.

I have a copy of the New York Times page on which the wireless message is printed. My copy comes from a microfilm in the Cleveland (Ohio) public library. Some of it is smudged, but it plainly says Titanic will arrive 4 pm on Tuesday.

If the 1080 miles distance is correct, Titanic had about 41 hours 20 minutes to race from the accident site to New York. (11:40 pm accident + 40:20 steaming + @ 1 hr time difference.) As you calculated that would have required a speed of 26.25 knots.

Speculation is risky business. However, let's tread on thin ice. If Titanic had begun its 24 knot burst of speed at "the corner" approximately 5:00 pm on Sunday, what then? My numbers show that it could have arrived New York as early as 6:20 pm on Tuesday. This makes me think that Ismay wanted to begin full-speed on Sunday afternoon, not Monday, and was dissuaded by Captain Smith. The Baltic memo contains the two reasons for being cautious: Ice and Coal.

Ismay waffled to the U.S. hearings about the planned arrival time, stating only the official scheduled time on Wednesday and "forgetting" the Tuesday arrival printed in the New York Times. In that part of the questioning he was trying to give the impression that the ship was fast (needed to sell tickets on the two remaining Olympic Class ships) without admitting any excess speed for the conditions. That's a narrow tightrope since the sinking of the ship proved it was going too fast for conditions. By placing the high-speed run on Monday, Ismay avoided discussion of speeding through the known ice on Sunday evening. Again, he didn't quite lie because all possibilities are true about events that didn't happen.

Now, to walk on water with no ice for support. Here's how speculation can get you into trouble. If Titanic had been capable of 26 knots, it could have gone from "the corner" to New York in time for a 2:30 pm arrival, or about a 4:00 pm docking. Weight and beam are the two factors that most affected Titanic's speed. In fact, the ship was narrow (roughly 1:10 beam to length), and it was lightly constructed. We know the latter because discussion of its scantlings (weight of materials used) was an issue during the British hearings. Add to that Ismay's obvious expectation of some sort of high-speed flourish to end Titanic's maiden voyage. Could it be...(eerie music here)...that Titanic was really a 26 knot ship? Ah, that way madness leads. But then, we don't really know the true indicated horsepower of the engines. We only know the published horsepower. Ask any Navy man the diference between what's published in the public press and the truth about warship speed.

Back to reality. I'm still convinced that based on the facts, Captain Smith should have been concerned by the status of his bunkers. And, the Baltic memo regarding Deutschland being out of fuel was a perfect opportunity to bring Ismay into focus on this matter without offending "the boss."

To me, the importance of this whole issue lies in the relationship between the ship's de facto co-captains. Smith was master of Titanic, but Ismay was master of Smith. That was not a good combination on the bridge of a damaged ship without enough lifeboats in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Pat Cook]

David wrote: > Could it be...(eerie music here)...that Titanic was really a 26 knot ship?

As you mentioned, David, sometimes the publications may boast a bit but here's something I found recently. I picked up aome aquaprints of the 'De Luxe Atlantic Service', circa 1920's. In it there are prints and descriptions of Majestic, Homeric and Olympic. According to this, the Olympic has a normal speed of 23 knots. This, after all the refittings (thanks for that note, George!). This was faster than I thought the Olympia style ships were capable of, as a normal speed that is.

Thought I would pass that along.

Best regards,
Cook

 

[Pat Cook]

It just occured to me this may have been after the Olympic had converted from coal to oil (don't have my references handy on that).

Best regards,
Cook

 

[Markus Philipp]

Hi Dave, hi Parks

You wrote about gulfstream:

Then add a variable...Titanic was running against the Gulf
Stream, which usually runs 0.5-2.5 knots.

Right.

I made similar calculations last year. When you start from the place of the desaster you have about 1 knot stream against the direction for 800 miles. When you continue aproaching NY Harbour you leave the gulf stream. Instead you have a Labrador current of about 0.5 knots in your back for the remaining 300 miles.

One can estimate roughly an average of
(-1 * 800 + 0.5 * 300) / 1100 = -0.7 knots against ships direction.

2 .. 2.5 knots are found between Miami and Cape Hatteras.

source:
Monatskarten für den Nordatlantischen Ozean Nr. 2420
Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie
Hamburg 1998 Rostock

Markus

 

[George Behe]

David wrote:

>I have a copy of the New York Times page on which >the wireless message
>is printed. My copy comes from a microfilm in the >Cleveland (Ohio)
>public library. Some of it is smudged, but it >plainly says Titanic will
>arrive 4 pm on Tuesday.

Hi, David!

I didn't mean to imply that I questioned the existence of the article itself -- I just meant that the *information* it contains has given me a few sleepless hours. (That doesn't happen much any more, though -- nowadays I doze off at the drop of a hat; as Geoff Whitfield can testify, that's what happens when a person gets old.)

All my best,

George

 

[David G. Brown]

George--

I certainly did not mean any offense with my wording about the New York Times article. Its existence has known for years.

Sherlock Holmes said that when you remove all of the likely possibilities, what remains even though it seems highly unlikely must be the truth. Our problem is to remove all of those likely possibilities. Ah, the game is afoot. The real attraction of Titanic is the enigma wrapped inside all the mysteries.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Parks Stephenson]

In reference to the speculation about the Olympic class really being 26-knot ships, let's look at the record of the lead ship of the class:

Olympic completed the westbound leg of her maiden voyage in 5 days, 16 hrs, 42 minutes, at an average of 21.7 knots. She bested that time on the return leg (helped by a following current and with all 29 boilers lit), averaging 22.5 knots. By comparison, the converted oil-firing Olympic made her fastest crossing in 1922: 5 days, 12 hours and 39 minutes.

If Olympic was a 26-knot ship, then she took that secret with her to the grave.

To match Olympic's maiden voyage crossing time, Titanic would have had to dock on the afternoon of the 17th. To better it, a morning docking on the 17th would have been sufficient.

Parks

 

[Parks Stephenson]

Dave,

I had never before considered that the face on Mars was tied in to the JFK assassination, but thanks to your post, I now see the connection! Quick, somebody call the Discovery Channel!!

Parks

P.S. This joke was in no way meant to be disrespectful to our late President, who died 37 years ago today. I'm poking fun at the myth, not the actual event.

P.S.S. I also meant no disrespect to Dave, an author whose ideas I respect greatly. If Dave has any failings, it's in his unreasonable belief that people apply common sense to resolving problems. I thought newsmen were more cynical than that.

T.S.S. Triple Screw Ship

 

[David G. Brown]

Bill --

Your eye caught more than mine, but I have not looked as critically at the book.

In defense of authors...there are several errors in the first editions of my book that "appeared" between the time the text left my computer and when it went to press. These will be corrected in the second edition, along with some plain boneheaded mistakes by the author. Everyone is human and some us more so than others.

Photo captions seem to be the biggest target for errors because they are usually last-minute details in the production. Once, a publisher asked me to write captions for an entire "coffee table" photo book. I had about a week to get the job done. The only problem was that the publisher had no details about the photos and the man who shot them was on safari in Africa! Now, that was creative writing.

There is a serious side to this. Anyone who is doing research has to realize that just because something is in print, that does not mean it is correct. And, even if something has been repeated in every book since the world began, it can still be wrong.

--David G. Brown

I don't believe people always act rationally. If they did, Titanic would be a hotel in Long Beach. My belief is that people follow the patterns of their lives even during emergencies.

 

[Markus Philipp]

Lightoller, Pitman, Ismay - are they telling the truth ?

Hello George,

This post is not quite up todate. Last Sunday or Monday i saw with pleasure that your final
results about the arrival time in New York came quite close to my own results, so i saw no
necessity to interfere.
Last year i had hard fights with Susanne Stoermer about the Tuesday-Afternoon-Hypothesis,
which seemed after rough calculations unbelievable to me. It took me all my strength and my
power to calculate this down without mercy.


Now about the questions in your post, which are still waiting for answer:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>1. I am not sure about 21.5 knots. Lightoller said at any opportunity
>that the speed
>was 21.5 to 22 knots. (no specification whether over ground or through
>the water)

Yes, I know. For what it's worth, though, Pitman testified that Titanic had been making 21.5 knots for most of the 24 hours prior to the collision.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As long as a ship is actually on its way the skippers cannot tell precisely the speed.
This depends on revolutions, current, wind, smooth sea or rough sea.
So they rely on their experience and say, considering all that items mentioned:
Probably the speed is somewhere between this and that. This is what Lightoller said.
To find out what the speed was indeed they need stellar and solar observations. They knew
afterwards how much they did, but never how much they were doing.

To assess whether Lightollers and Pitmans testimonies are correct i propose to look on the
daily runs of the Olympic as given by Simon Mills. To calculate the speed out of these
one has to be aware that the clock was set back every night by about 48 minutes.
Reason: The Titanic stepped forward 12 degrees longitude every day.
12° * 4 minutes = 48 minutes.

..........===Olympic===
..........mileage speed....time for speed calculation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. day....483.....20.6.....23.5
2. day....534.....21.5.....24.8
3. day....542.....21.9.....24.8
4. day....525.....21.2.....24.8
5. day....548.....22.1.....24.8

..........===Titanic===
3. day....546.....22.0.....24.8


I will set aside the first day, because this was not a full noon-to-noon day. The clock was
changed in a different way. (I am going to explain this in detail on another place.)

The average speed out of 2..5 is 21.7 knots, as Simon Mills has written.
Lighttollers statement 21.5 .. 22 knots is all right. At last we know that he is talking
about speed over ground.

What about Pitman, 21.5 knots during the last 24 hours ?
--------------------------------------------------------
What the Titanic exactly was doing he could not tell unless he knew the result of the
astronomical observations taken in the future.
I don't know whether he knew Lightollers position from 7.30 p.m. Sunday evening.
I don't know even whether he was on the Olympic on former trips.
May be he referred to the experience he gained from the Olympic and figured like this:
The Titanic made 22 knots from midnight til Sunday noon. The remaining 12 hours he relied
on the runs of Olympic, which made 21.2 knots. The average of 22 and 21.2 is 21.6 knots and
there we are. One cannot blame a sailor because he missed the speed by 0.1 knots.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All i can say is that your figures do seem to make sense but that I'm having a lot of trouble reconciling your numbers with the testimony of the Titanic's
officers (who seem to have thought -- or at least *claimed* -- that Titanic was travelling slower than your figures indicate she actually did.) On the
other hand, though, none of the surviving officers breathed a word about any speed increases that Titanic underwent during those last few hours, so I
guess we shouldn't necessarily take their word about anything as gospel.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I perfectly agree with you. In the opposite, one should consider why the officers said
what they said. Susanne once told me: "One has to be careful with Lightoller, because he is
not always telling the truth. On the other hand he takes much care not to lie."

We have evidences from Beesley, Stengel and Barrett that the speed was increased. I do not stick
on the time. It doesn't matter whether the revolutions where increased after noon or at 7 pm.
Why did Lightoller not mention it ?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...none of the surviving officers breathed a word about any speed increases that Titanic
underwent during those last few hours.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May i be allowed to ask a question to you:

Why should Lightoller breath words about things which nobody asked him for.
Lightoller said in the american testimony that he relieved the captain at 1 o´clock.
Asked about the speed at that time he said 21,5 .. 22 knots.
By my own calculations i found the average speed from noon to the disaster 22.1 knots
over ground or 23 knots through the water. Nobody asked Lightoller to specify this detail.


Eighty eight years of discussions show clearly that the increase of speed was suitable to
arouse high suspicion.
In german we say: "Keine schlafenden Hunde wecken!"

That means:"Do Not alert unnecessarily sleeping dogs!"

......(Hello Maureen, Tracy, i noted you understand German. Maybe you can give us a better translation.)

I can understand Lightoller.

Ismay
-----

Ismay said in his american testimony:
... as far as I am aware, she never exceeded 75 revolutions.
Senator Newlands asked: "What speed would 75 revolutions indicate ?" Ismay: "I should think
about 21 knots."

With my own calculations out of the first three day mileages and revolutions (70,72,75 rpm),
and taking into consideration the currents i found that 75 rpm correspond to 22.4 knots.

Asked for a statement whether Ismays testimony is correct i would answer (in german): "JEIN!"
Don't get a dictionary, you won't find it. It is a combination out of "Yes" and "No".
It means: Frank and from the first point of view 21 knots is not correct.
But thinking hard and putting enough interpretation upon one can find it is quite reasonable.

Ismay was neigther an engineer nor a sailor. He was a merchant, and he wanted to provide a
service with these requirements:

Departure ..Daunt Rock: .........Thursday, 3 p.m. english time, 10 a.m. New York time
Arrival ....New York Ambrose: ...Wednesday 5 a.m.
Time for passage: 6 days less 5 hours = 5 days 19 hours = 139 hours.
Speed = 2889 seamiles / 139 hours = 20.8 knots, round 21 knots.

Because of the gulf stream the minimum speed through the water is about 21.5 knots.
(daily currents estimated: -0.2, -0.4, -0.4, -1.0, -1.0, +0.5)
This applies for fine weather. Nobody can guarantee 6 fine days while crossing the atlantic.
Waves and storm are suitable to slow down the ship.
Solution: Use the fine days to save time by fastening 1 or 2 knots
(Olympic: 21.7 knots average over ground, 22.2 knots average through the water).
If all days are fine, than one can slow down the revolutions at the end of the journey.
If the last two days are rough, waves and storm will eat up the saved time, and hopefully
the ship arrives timely at 5 a.m. at Ambrose.

So the engineers will tell Ismay they have to design a machinery for at least 22 knots,
or better 22.5 knots to guarantee the average service speed of 21 knots. This machinery
makes 22.3 .. 22.5 knots through the water at smooth weather conditions.

And Ismay keeps in mind that he needs 75 rpm for 21 knots service speed.
So from his point of view his statement is correct.

On the other hand, Ismay gave all mileages and revolutions for the first three days.
The sum of his numbers and the 260 miles from the log (which IMO should have counted 270
miles ) meet exactly the distance from Daunt Rock to the wreckage. Presumed the information
about the clock was available as well (it was, Hitchens gave 47 minutes for the fourth night),
nothing more was necessary than take the mileage, divide by time and the knots will fall out.

Ismay gave all the information i needed to reconstruct mileages and speed as if i had found
the logbook.


all my best


Markus

P.S. Saw that you all left the engine room to go to Californians bridge to take some fresh air.
Probably because of coal dust and heat unbearable. Let's see how much time it takes to get you back here.

 

[Parks Stephenson]

Markus,

Die Luft an Bord Californian ist muffig, so habe ich hier zurueck gekommen.

I do not exactly understand what your argument is. If you're saying that the message sent via Sandy Hook with the Tuesday 4pm arrival time might have been sent by Ismay, without direct input from either Smith or Boxhall, then I would agree with you. In my opinion, that is a possibility. I believe Smith was attempting a Wednesday morning arrival.

Parks

 

[Tracy Smith]

Markus,

A better translation would be:

"Let sleeping dogs lie".

 

[Maureen Zottoli]

Dear Markus,

Am very pleased that you feel that I know german based on my feeble attempt. I have only about 2 years of high school German, while tracy has had much more than I. But I stand amazed at your ability to write such detailed posts.

Tracy's version is probably the more common usage by Americans at least for what you wrote above "Let sleeping dogs lie."

Thanks again for your posts.
Enjoy your day.
Maureen.