David G. Brown
RIP
There’s a lot of rewriting of history going on here in the defense of conventional wisdom. Let’s start out from the beginning. Beauchamp and Barrett had to be in the passage between the after furnaces of the boilers and bunkers lining bulkhead E. Given the narrowing beam caused by the warp of the bow, they would have been at most 45 feet apart. If that’s not close enough to “the same place” on a ship the size of Titanic, what does qualify. In each others boots? Not hardly. The two men were close enough to have had virtually identical experiences.
The above drawing of the boiler room listing is misleading because it is for later in the evening after the compartment contained significant water. At the moment of impact, however, the ship was not listing, or perhaps had a bit of list to port. Water coming into the ship would have sought its own level, meaning at first it would have spread rather evenly across the space except where impeded by percolation around the boilers. It is illogical to think that two men standing in stokehold #10 would not have experienced the flooding described by Barrett. There is no doubt from his testimony, however, that Beauchamp did not see the side of the boiler room open up nor did he feel the need to flee for his life.
Beauchamp recognized the engineer and his leading stoker’s voices. In ships like Titanic it was not the custom to have the same crew members in the same jobs trip after trip. Beauchamp did not have to know by name who spoke, only that they did speak. What he heard was exactly what Barrett said under oath that he shouted about closing the doors. What’s so hard to understand that we have two men giving both sides of the same story – one as the speaker and the other as the listener. Beauchamp heard Barrett, proving that at that point they were still in the same compartment – which both agreed was boiler room #6.
Beauchamp was clear in his testimony that he remained at his post in stokehold #10 of boiler room #6 until being sent on deck. He never spoke of climbing into boiler room #5 or anywhere else. Barrett, on the other hand, testified that he did go into boiler room #5 from #6 on at least two separate occasions that night. The first time was when he made his famous slide to safety beneath the closing watertight door. And, the second when he re-entered the compartment with engineer Shepherd on an unspecified errand. Trying to place Beauchamp in boiler room #5 is nothing less than rewriting history to fit a preconceived opinion. On the other hand, saying that Barrett did leave boiler room #6 is supported by the man’s own testimony. So, if we are going to believe either man about the flooding of #6 during the first 20 minutes after impact Beauchamp is more likely to have known and thus testified the complete story.
In BOT questions #675 through 681 Beauchamp described his actions starting with drawing the fires out of the fireboxes beneath the boilers. “I’ve done it a good many times. It took about a quarter of an hour, I suppose. When the order was given and everything was shut up, someone shouted “That will do,” and I went to the ladder then, the escape ladder,” Beauchamp testified. Nowhere did he mention wading through waist-deep freezing water before he climbed out of the compartment. That’s not the sort of detail to go unnoticed even during an emergency.
Sam’s computations (above) give us the average size of the flooding over the first 45 minutes. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt his work. That said, his computations may not give an accurate picture of the minute-by-minute flooding during that 45 minute time span. Beauchamp’s eyewitness account of half that time – the first 20 minutes – indicate the initial flooding was much smaller than Sam’s numbers suggest.
Then, boiler room #6 was evacuated. It was empty of eyewitnesses for up to ten minutes. There was nobody in the compartment to notice any change in the speed of flooding. We have some circumstantial evidence that the flooding did increase in the story of engineer Shepherd and Barrett being surprised to find so much water in the compartment when they went back that they had to abandon their mission.
“It was not a quarter of an hour, just on ten minutes,” Barrett said, referring to the time between when boiler room #6 was abandoned and when he and Shepherd went back. They probably expected more water than before, but Barrett’s words seem to imply they did no expect what they found. “Mr. Shepherd and I went up an escape and down into the boiler room. We could not get in. There were eight feet of water in it,” the stoker said.
A century on, Sam’s numbers confirm what the two men found. His only mistake was to assume that water ingress was a straight line value that did not fluctuate over time. (I am certain he has taken into account the natural slowing of flow as the level inside the compartment rises to match the level of the ocean outside.) Yet, Beauchamp’s testimony which indicates slow flooding is historical fact. And, so is the amount of water found by Barrett and Shepherd. Something isn’t right unless the rate of ingress into boiler room #6 dramatically increased just after the compartment was abandoned.
I can hear someone e-shouting, “Brown’s re-writing history. He has no proof the flooding increased.”
Agreed. No eyewitness described such an event, or at least not directly. What exists is just circumstantial evidence that the flow did increase after Beauchamp left boiler room #6. For one thing, I think we can all agree that a damaged metal structure has less strength than it did when it was undamaged. We also know that Titanic was not impregnable. It not only succumbed to the iceberg, but also eventually broke apart as it sank. No, Titanic was not poorly designed. Nor was it built of inferior materials. But, even the best work of Harland & Wolff had a breaking point.
When your vessel is sinking, your thoughts immediately turn to the bilge pumps. I can’t imagine that somebody did not start using the ash ejector pump in its secondary role as a dewatering pump for boiler room #6. But, that pump was steam driven. Likely, it drew power from the boilers in #6. If so, its efforts would have slowed and stopped when steam was vented out of the pipe on funnel #1.
Also, over the years I’ve pointed out that the burned-out bunker could only have been bunker “b” at the head of boiler room #6. If so, Barrett saw an open seam there before closing that bunker door. Beauchamp noticed an odd delay between Barrett’s shout to close the dampers and orders being passed to clear burning coal out of the furnaces. “I could not say when,” he told the BOT hearing, “It was a few minutes afterward. The order was given to draw the fires. I could not say how many minutes, but the order was given to draw the fires.”
Perhaps the delay was caused by Barrett’s bunker discovery. He would have undoubtedly reported it to an engineer who would have checked the situation for himself. Realizing the compartment was flooding, the engineer’s next response would have been to make the steam plant safe from explosion. Cold water may not have caused a boiler failure, but flooding might have cracked a steam pipe or joint. Prudence demanded raking out the furnaces and dumping the steam from boiler room #6.
The amount of water Barrett saw gushing into the buker cannot be quantified. Still, his description seems to tally with the flooding Beauchamp described as he raked his fires before leaving the compartment. “The water was just coming above the bunker plates then,” he said. “Coming through the bunker door and over the plates.”
The implication of an open seam is often overlooked. It represented a weakness in the hull. Not a designed-in weakness, but rather one created by the iceberg. As the bow flooded it would have become dead weight supported by the buoyancy of the compartments farther aft. This would have “bent” the hull with the focus of the bend in way of the still-buoyant boiler room #6. At some point the bending force might well have exceed the remaining strength of the already-opened seam. Zip! A small gush of water would have become major flooding. Taken overall, however, the average flooding rate during the first 45 minutes was obviously very close to Sam’s computations.
-- David G. Brown
The above drawing of the boiler room listing is misleading because it is for later in the evening after the compartment contained significant water. At the moment of impact, however, the ship was not listing, or perhaps had a bit of list to port. Water coming into the ship would have sought its own level, meaning at first it would have spread rather evenly across the space except where impeded by percolation around the boilers. It is illogical to think that two men standing in stokehold #10 would not have experienced the flooding described by Barrett. There is no doubt from his testimony, however, that Beauchamp did not see the side of the boiler room open up nor did he feel the need to flee for his life.
Beauchamp recognized the engineer and his leading stoker’s voices. In ships like Titanic it was not the custom to have the same crew members in the same jobs trip after trip. Beauchamp did not have to know by name who spoke, only that they did speak. What he heard was exactly what Barrett said under oath that he shouted about closing the doors. What’s so hard to understand that we have two men giving both sides of the same story – one as the speaker and the other as the listener. Beauchamp heard Barrett, proving that at that point they were still in the same compartment – which both agreed was boiler room #6.
Beauchamp was clear in his testimony that he remained at his post in stokehold #10 of boiler room #6 until being sent on deck. He never spoke of climbing into boiler room #5 or anywhere else. Barrett, on the other hand, testified that he did go into boiler room #5 from #6 on at least two separate occasions that night. The first time was when he made his famous slide to safety beneath the closing watertight door. And, the second when he re-entered the compartment with engineer Shepherd on an unspecified errand. Trying to place Beauchamp in boiler room #5 is nothing less than rewriting history to fit a preconceived opinion. On the other hand, saying that Barrett did leave boiler room #6 is supported by the man’s own testimony. So, if we are going to believe either man about the flooding of #6 during the first 20 minutes after impact Beauchamp is more likely to have known and thus testified the complete story.
In BOT questions #675 through 681 Beauchamp described his actions starting with drawing the fires out of the fireboxes beneath the boilers. “I’ve done it a good many times. It took about a quarter of an hour, I suppose. When the order was given and everything was shut up, someone shouted “That will do,” and I went to the ladder then, the escape ladder,” Beauchamp testified. Nowhere did he mention wading through waist-deep freezing water before he climbed out of the compartment. That’s not the sort of detail to go unnoticed even during an emergency.
Sam’s computations (above) give us the average size of the flooding over the first 45 minutes. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt his work. That said, his computations may not give an accurate picture of the minute-by-minute flooding during that 45 minute time span. Beauchamp’s eyewitness account of half that time – the first 20 minutes – indicate the initial flooding was much smaller than Sam’s numbers suggest.
Then, boiler room #6 was evacuated. It was empty of eyewitnesses for up to ten minutes. There was nobody in the compartment to notice any change in the speed of flooding. We have some circumstantial evidence that the flooding did increase in the story of engineer Shepherd and Barrett being surprised to find so much water in the compartment when they went back that they had to abandon their mission.
“It was not a quarter of an hour, just on ten minutes,” Barrett said, referring to the time between when boiler room #6 was abandoned and when he and Shepherd went back. They probably expected more water than before, but Barrett’s words seem to imply they did no expect what they found. “Mr. Shepherd and I went up an escape and down into the boiler room. We could not get in. There were eight feet of water in it,” the stoker said.
A century on, Sam’s numbers confirm what the two men found. His only mistake was to assume that water ingress was a straight line value that did not fluctuate over time. (I am certain he has taken into account the natural slowing of flow as the level inside the compartment rises to match the level of the ocean outside.) Yet, Beauchamp’s testimony which indicates slow flooding is historical fact. And, so is the amount of water found by Barrett and Shepherd. Something isn’t right unless the rate of ingress into boiler room #6 dramatically increased just after the compartment was abandoned.
I can hear someone e-shouting, “Brown’s re-writing history. He has no proof the flooding increased.”
Agreed. No eyewitness described such an event, or at least not directly. What exists is just circumstantial evidence that the flow did increase after Beauchamp left boiler room #6. For one thing, I think we can all agree that a damaged metal structure has less strength than it did when it was undamaged. We also know that Titanic was not impregnable. It not only succumbed to the iceberg, but also eventually broke apart as it sank. No, Titanic was not poorly designed. Nor was it built of inferior materials. But, even the best work of Harland & Wolff had a breaking point.
When your vessel is sinking, your thoughts immediately turn to the bilge pumps. I can’t imagine that somebody did not start using the ash ejector pump in its secondary role as a dewatering pump for boiler room #6. But, that pump was steam driven. Likely, it drew power from the boilers in #6. If so, its efforts would have slowed and stopped when steam was vented out of the pipe on funnel #1.
Also, over the years I’ve pointed out that the burned-out bunker could only have been bunker “b” at the head of boiler room #6. If so, Barrett saw an open seam there before closing that bunker door. Beauchamp noticed an odd delay between Barrett’s shout to close the dampers and orders being passed to clear burning coal out of the furnaces. “I could not say when,” he told the BOT hearing, “It was a few minutes afterward. The order was given to draw the fires. I could not say how many minutes, but the order was given to draw the fires.”
Perhaps the delay was caused by Barrett’s bunker discovery. He would have undoubtedly reported it to an engineer who would have checked the situation for himself. Realizing the compartment was flooding, the engineer’s next response would have been to make the steam plant safe from explosion. Cold water may not have caused a boiler failure, but flooding might have cracked a steam pipe or joint. Prudence demanded raking out the furnaces and dumping the steam from boiler room #6.
The amount of water Barrett saw gushing into the buker cannot be quantified. Still, his description seems to tally with the flooding Beauchamp described as he raked his fires before leaving the compartment. “The water was just coming above the bunker plates then,” he said. “Coming through the bunker door and over the plates.”
The implication of an open seam is often overlooked. It represented a weakness in the hull. Not a designed-in weakness, but rather one created by the iceberg. As the bow flooded it would have become dead weight supported by the buoyancy of the compartments farther aft. This would have “bent” the hull with the focus of the bend in way of the still-buoyant boiler room #6. At some point the bending force might well have exceed the remaining strength of the already-opened seam. Zip! A small gush of water would have become major flooding. Taken overall, however, the average flooding rate during the first 45 minutes was obviously very close to Sam’s computations.
-- David G. Brown
