Boiler rooms during sinking

[David G. Brown]

Sam's calculations are accurate, but he has one wrong fact -- the duration of the sinking. It was about 20 minutes shorter than the conventional time used in his paper. So, he effectively undercalculated the rate of flooding. So what? The result was going to be the same.

Boiler room #4 probably did start flooding as soon as the berg passed that part of the hull. This water has been largely ignored over the years because it seems so harmless compared to what was happening in the holds. In fact, the water in boiler room #4 may have played a larger role in the demise of the ship than the flooding post office.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Sorry David, but you are NOT allowed to have your own set of facts. The ship sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes.

 

[Robby House]

I keep forgetting that there was an approximate 2 foot space between the Tank Top and the stokehold plates. Until more recently I've always assumed that the Tank Top was pretty much the surface that the crew would be walking on and that these Stokehold plates were more or less like a "stoop" or an elevated platform of sorts immediately in front of the Boilers which somehow aided the stokers in their coal shoveling endeavors. Does anyone know how these plates were laid out? Was it like a fully complete 2nd floor from end to end with tight seams between each plate or was it more patchy? Given the period of time (45 minutes to 1 hour?) it took before detection was made of flooding in Boiler Room 4 I am guessing these stokehold plates pretty much constituted a solid 2nd floor above the Tank Top.

Compared with the forward WT compartments I've not given BR #4 much attention but in that we know there was no water ingress above the bilge keel and yet water was certainly coming from somewhere, the bottom is the only thing left. This in itself would seem to fully validate the theory of Titanic riding up onto and over some sort of Ice ramp the only feasible possibility. Exactly how that allowed water to compromise her double bottom hull configuration I haven't a clue but would tend to think perhaps too much of Titanic's full weight was resting on too small an elevation within this theoretical ice ramp's surface when she was steaming over it.

I finally got to read Sam Halpern's excellent article "Where was that water coming from?" regarding flooding of BR4 as initially observed by Cavell and Dillon. Water was first seen above the forward stokehold plates around 01:10 am in BR4 at a time when BR5 had not completely flooded. Until now I was assuming by what I read 30 years ago that this might have been due to the Titanic 'riding' the berg and sustaining damage to the double bottom but can see that this would require very substantial damage involving both layers and so highly unlikely. Sam Halpern's conjecture is that BR4 could have started flooding due to a tiny seam no more than around 11 square inches in area in the side shell plating of BR4 causing a water ingress of about 3.7 cubic feet per second. Calculating the volume of space it had to fill before appearing above the stokehold plates as it did about 95 to 100 minutes after the collision, Sam's calculations seem very accurate.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Sam's calculations are accurate, but he has one wrong fact -- the duration of the sinking. It was about 20 minutes shorter than the conventional time used in his paper.

-- David G. Brown

There is no such thing as a "wrong fact" but since it is mentioned, that is one "fact" that I most certainly do not believe in. For some reason a few people are doing their utmost to try and force this issue down other's throats. The Titanic sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes.

 

[Rob Lawes]

And that is why Arun, establishing if there had been a full, partial or no set back of clocks is important to the events of the evening.

For what it's worth I believe that the sinking took 2hrs 40mins but David has different ideas. He is courageous enough to bring those ideas forward and expose them to not only the critique of these boards but in wider print.

As for Boiler room 4, having done a scratch calculation it would take a surprisingly little amount of water to start coming over the plates given the bow down angle of the Titanic at the time. The water in question could have been the standard build up of condensation etc that gathers in the bilge on a daily basis.

 

[David G. Brown]

We are all entitled to our opinions and I will defend that right. But, nobody is entitled to his own facts. I will now demonstrate using only unaltered April 14th time that Titanic floated 2 hours 16 minutes (or so) after impact and not the conventional 2 hours 40 minutes.



Fact #1: The crew said the moment of impact came five minutes before the one bell signal calling out the off-duty Port Watch.

Fact #2: The one bell call-out signal came 15 minutes before change of watch.

Inference Based Upon Facts: The accident took place 20 minutes prior to the crew's change of watch.



Fact #3: The day of April 14th was to be 24 hours plus 47 minutes long due to the westward motion of the ship.

Fact #4: The crew expected a nearly equal division of those extra minutes between the Port and Starboard Watches.

Fact #5: The Port Watch could not have worked off its half of the extra duty because it had been below.

Fact #6: At the midnight change of watch the crew members expected that the on-duty Starboard Watch would go below having worked off its extra 24 minutes of time.

Fact #7: Civil "Midnight" (ship's time was a special case of civil time) comes exactly 12 hour prior to noon. Thus Civil Midnight would have been the start of April 15th, not the end of April 14th. (Per Bowditch)

Fact #8: The ship's clocks were to be adjusted to April 15th hours at "midnight."

Inference Based Upon Facts: Civil (or, as I have called it "true") midnight was to come at 12:47 o'clock for titanic. Dividing the 47 extra minutes in half gives one watch (Starboard) 24 and the other (Port) 23 extra to serve. Therefore, the crew's midnight had to come at `12:24 o'clock in unadjusted April 14th hours.

Inference Based Upon Facts: Crew change of watch 12:24 o'clock - 20 minutes (based on #1 and #2 above) equals 12:04 o'clock in unaltered April 14th hours.



Fact #9: The time of sinking was very close to 2:20 o'clock in unaltered April 14th hours, which equals 14:20 o'clock

Inference Based Upon Facts: 14:20 - 12:04 = 2 hours 16 minutes As is plainly demonstrated using only unaltered April 14th time and the facts described by the crew in both the U.S. and British inquiries it is quite easy to disprove the conventional wisdom that the ship floated 2 hours 40 minutes after impact with the iceberg. In reality, Titanic floated only 2 hours 16 minutes or so. This changes all computations that require a time reference, including the rate of flooding or navigation.




Fact #10: The time of impact was recorded as 11:40 o'clock and not 12:04 o'clock.

Inference Based Upon Facts: The crew clocks were retarded by 24 minutes which equalled the Starboard Watch's extra duty that night. By retarding the crew clocks 24 minutes sometime before the accident, 12:04 in unaltered April 14th time became 11:40 o'clock. The two times refer to exactly the same moment in history, so this changes nothing in the narrative of the tragedy.

Prediction Based Upon Facts: At crew midnight all of the clocks in Titanic -- passenger and crew alike -- would have been set back to 11:37 o'clock. This would have allowed the Port Watch to work off its extra duty prior to 12:00 Civil Midnight and the start of April 15th

-- David G. Brown.

 

[David G. Brown]

Rob -- You are correct that given the trim by the bow and the list it would not have taken a lot of water to pile up on the starboard bilge and come up over the stoker plates. Somehow, I don't think Chief Bell would have allowed such sloppy housekeeping in his new boiler room. Then again, Titanic was new enough that her seams were not fully tightened by internal rust. So the hull may have made more water that it might have later in its career, had it survived. Naval Architect Wilding seems to have believed that water was ingress from damage, but he had no more access to the wreck than we do, so we can't take what he said as gospel.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Prediction Based Upon Facts: At crew midnight all of the clocks in Titanic -- passenger and crew alike -- would have been set back to 11:37 o'clock.
-- David G. Brown.

A lot of passengers that night went to bed by 10 pm. Unless people went around waking all of them at midnight asking them to set their watches and clocks back, this idea is ridiculous IMO. Also, if they started at midnight, the entire process of setting passenger and crew clocks and watches back, even if they all complied, would take a lot longer than 4 minutes, if the Titanic really had struck the berg at 12:04 (which I do not believe).

I am sure a lot of passenger survivors would have remembered being asked to set their watches and clocks just before the collision occurred. Since this did not happen and most of the passenger watch wearers recalled the impact at approximately 11:40pm and the ship disappearing beneath the waves at approximately 02:20 am, the sinking took 2 hours and 40 minutes.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

I do believe David's so called 8 Facts above need to be addressed. We'll take them one by one.

>>Fact #1: The crew said the moment of impact came five minutes before the one bell signal calling out the off-duty Port Watch.<<

Unlike many passengers, who were quite specific about the exact time of collision that they saw on a clock or watch, most if not all of the deck crew in the forecastle did not carry individual watches. At the time of the impact, many came topside to see what had happened, and as lookout Hogg said, there was a great deal confusion in the forecastle. The clock in the mess room would show about 20 minutes to twelve. The crew expected a change of watch at midnight. It doesn't take much to assume by those who bothered to look at the clock that they were due on watch in about 20 minutes time. Here is a good example of what you, David, referred to as 'herd instinct' which causes people to think and act in the same way as the majority of those around them.

>>Fact #2: The one bell call-out signal came 15 minutes before change of watch.<<

That is true except nobody said they heard that signal given at that time.

>>Fact #3: The day of April 14th was to be 24 hours plus 47 minutes long due to the westward motion of the ship.<<

That is approximately correct counting how much the clock was put back in the first hour of the AM of April 14th from the last clock change (about 22 minutes), and how much the clock was to be put back (23 minutes) in the last hour of the PM of April 14.

>>Fact #4: The crew expected a nearly equal division of those extra minutes between the Port and Starboard Watches.<<

True. On that Sunday night, the clock was to be put back 23 minutes in one watch and 24 minutes in the other watch.

>>Fact #5: The Port Watch could not have worked off its half of the extra duty because it had been below.<<

Neither had the starboard watch which was the watch on deck before any of the clocks were put back that night.

>>Fact #6: At the midnight change of watch the crew members expected that the on-duty Starboard Watch would go below having worked off its extra 24 minutes of time.<<

True, if they had worked off the extra time and midnight change of watch had taken place. There was no midnight watch change that night because of the accident.

>>Fact #7: Civil "Midnight" (ship's time was a special case of civil time) comes exactly 12 hour prior to noon. Thus Civil Midnight would have been the start of April 15th, not the end of April 14th. (Per Bowditch)<<

Ship's "midnight" comes when 8 bells are struck for the midnight change of watch. At that time, the logbook page for April 14th is closed, and a new page for April 15th begins. In westbound vessels, the time of the last hour of the PM is more than one hour because of the partial setback of the wheelhouse clock. The same is true for the first hour of the AM of the next day.

>>Fact #8: The ship's clocks were to be adjusted to April 15th hours at "midnight."<<

True. There were some passengers waiting up especially for that event to happen in the smoking rooms and the Café so they could set their personal timepieces to the new time, but the accident took place before that could be done.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

>>>>>>>Fact #8: The ship's clocks were to be adjusted to April 15th hours at "midnight."<<<<<<<<

True. There were some passengers waiting up especially for that event to happen in the smoking rooms and the Café so they could set their personal timepieces to the new time, but the accident took place before that could be done.

Thanks Sam. That is interesting to know. But Mr Brown claims that ALL clocks (and presumably watches) of passengers and crew alike were set back to 11:37 pm at midnight. That defies common sense in a major way IMO.

Let us divide the passengers into 3 groups (ignoring the crew for a moment) a minute before the collision:

1. Those relatively few who were awake in various public rooms to set their timepieces back at midnight.
2. Those that were still awake but in their rooms, mostly in bed; Lawrence Beesley is among those. Some of them might have been waiting for the same reason as the first group but the majority simply because they had not yet gone to sleep.
3. Those who were in bed and asleep (the overwhelming majority, I imagine).

If the collision occurred at 12:04 am as some people claim that it did, those awake and waiting should have put their clocks back 4 minutes previously. Why did no passenger "remember" having done so?

Those asleep were roused either by the collision itself or by others soon afterwards. Allowing for very few stragglers, most passengers were awake by 30 minutes after the collision. Since they had not adjusted their watches and clocks, there should have been a major discrepancy and confusion among the passengers about the time. Yes, there were some disagreements about what event occurred when, which is natural under such circumstances. But if a sizeable number of passengers, irrespective of whether they survived or lost, had put their clocks back at midnight and a greater number had not, there would have been a good deal of time confusion during the long sinking process, something that would have been remembered and mentioned by at least some of the surviving passengers. Yet, this did not happen - most likely the man waiting to put his watch back in the smoking room had the same time as the watch worn by his wife asleep in their cabin when the collision occurred.

Therefore, it seems logical to accept the 'conventional' timeframe - that the Titanic struck the iceberg at approximately 11:40 pm and eventually sank completely at approximately 02:20 am.

That is my opinion anyway. Of course, I am sure that someone will soon claim that every passenger remembered to put their timepieces back by 23 minutes before they went to bed so that their time coincided with those awake when the collision occurred.

 

[Aaron_2016]

1st class Assistant Cook John Collins

"I fell asleep, and was sound asleep, and exactly at a quarter past 11 I was wakened up. I had a clock by me, by my bed, and my clock was five minutes fast, and it was exactly a quarter past 11 when the ship struck the iceberg, and it wakened me....The clock was 20 minutes pass 11, and the accident took place at a quarter past 11, if my clock was right. I could not exactly say."

This might be important -

Q - How long have you followed the sea?
A - This was my first voyage, on the Titanic.
Q - Your first voyage, then, was on the Titanic?
A - Yes.

If that was his first ever voyage would he be aware about the clocks and when to set his to the correct time?

.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

1st class Assistant Cook John Collins

"I fell asleep, and was sound asleep, and exactly at a quarter past 11 I was wakened up. I had a clock by me, by my bed, and my clock was five minutes fast, and it was exactly a quarter past 11 when the ship struck the iceberg, and it wakened me....The clock was 20 minutes pass 11, and the accident took place at a quarter past 11, if my clock was right. I could not exactly say."

.

Interesting. Did Collins ever tell anyone if he turned his clock back before going to bed that night? If he had done that, then his clock time of just after 11:15 pm would bring the actual time (since it was still before midnight) very close to 11:40pm, the time that the collision took place.

 

[Rob Lawes]

Looking at how water could enter the boiler rooms in another thread, I've been reading up on Ash Ejectors. Is it possible that the ejector outlets om F Deck had submerged and allowed water to flow down the ejector tube and out of the hopper into the stokehold?

 

[Samuel Halpern]

There was a flap valve near the ejector outlet which prevented water from backflowing into the stokehold. These ejectors were equipped on many steamshipsof the period including Mauritania and Lusitania. The discharge port was in all cases just a few feet above the vessel's waterline.

 

[Rob Lawes]

Blast. I thought I was on to something but then again it would have been picked up by someone before. At least it's ticked that off the list as a contender.

Much obliged Sam.

Rob