Hi Jim,
Thank you for the above. Not sure I exactly follow what you allude to. Can you perhaps expand please?
Ergo if The Californian had only enough coal to get to Boston at a reduced speed, it did pretty well that awful night and the following morning in the sense that Captain Lord ordered to keep steam up (and not conserve coal) and there was quite a bit of extra mileage the next morning until after noon that wasn't planned for. The Californian had quite an easy crossing of The Atlantic in very favourable conditions.
I don't think The Californian went as fast as Captain Lord suggested after the official CQD message from The Virginian was received early that morning.
If his vessel went faster, it implies a longer distance travelled in the rescue attempt that morning, and if he went slower, he was closer than he let on!
Either way, I don't think The Californian was short of coal, and it left from the Port of London which might be of significance.
The allied question is why the Leyland Line sent it at all to Boston if there was a coal shortage, and what on earth was aboard as a cargo or being loaded on at Boston. I have yet to find any evidence of either.
Also, why no passengers on the trip to Boston when lots of passenger ships were laid up in the UK due to the coal shortage?
Cheers,
Julian
Hi Julian...good to see you back...missed you DA input and testing questions. Allow me to clarify bits of the previous post.
Back in my day and in the time of the
Californian, there was a little formula whereby Ship Masters could regulate the amount of coal they used. i.e. they could choose an optimum speed that would allow them to arrive in port in good time but at an economic speed and with a desired amount of reserve coal. The latter was necessary since a delay caused by fog in that part of the world would need maximum speed when it cleared to catch up. Obviously, this was nothing to do with the coal strike but very handy when there might be a shortage of bunker top-up at your next port. or indeed if and when there was a coal strike.
The records I have seen show that
Californian was a 12 .5 knot ship. As built, she had two Scotch Boilers feeding a single triple expansion steam engine. Her consumption of coal at her full service speed of 12.5 knots would typically have been about 32 tons/day. To find out how much fuel he could save at 1 knot slower, Captain Lord would have worked the following calculation.
New Consumption C =
new speed squared
old consumption c...........old speed squared.
C =
32 x 121 = 24.8 tons..
It follows that Lord was, as the 3rd Officer Pitman of
Titanic said.."studying the coal" and had reckoned that if he reduced speed by 1 .5 knots, he would save 7.2 tons of coal a day.
During the time
Californian was stopped. the Deck and Engine Room Crews carried on with their normal watch routine. Therefore. the full complement of the boiler room would be on duty at any one time. Getting underweigh would be a matter of minutes from the time
Standby Engines was rung down by Captain Lord.
When Captain Lord was first asked in the US about the speed he was making as he headed for the distress position, he replied
"Oh, we made 13 and 13 1/2 the day we were going down to the Titanic.
In the UK he stated :
"We were driving all we possibly could. The chief engineer estimates the speed at 13 1/2. I estimate it at 13."
So there is a consistency there.
However, the question should be asked: How how did Lord estimate his speed? The
Californian was operating in ice, she would not have streamed her patent log, so Lord had only one method of determining speed...engine RPM speed over a period of time.
If the theoretical speed was 13.5 as per the Chief Engineer then Lord thought the actual speed was nearer to 13 knots. we can check this against independent evidence.
In his evidence, Lord implied that he cleared the heavy ice at 6-30 pm and we know that 10 minutes after that, when Groves was called, the engines were running at Full Ahead.
We also know from Captain Rostron that
Californian arrived alongside Carpathia at 8-30 pm, 2 hours later. it follows that Californian's engines had been running at full for 2 hours then she covered a distance of 26 miles during that time.
From Captain Rostron, we know that
Californian was about 5 or 6 miles away on the far side of the ice at or near to 8 pm. Let's say this uses up 6 miles of the 26 steamed from 6-30 am. leaving 20 miles steamed from 6-30 pm.
From Captain Moore of the
Mount Temple, we know that
Californian passed going southward at about 7-30 am. At 13 knots, this used up another 6.5 miles, leaving 13.5 miles steamed from 6-30 am when Californian cleared the ice at 6-30 am. Given that Captain Rostron thought
Californian was 5 or 6 miles away when he first saw her, it looks to me that Captain Lord's estimate of his ship's speed was remarkably accurate.
