Coal loading

[Anders Mansfeldt]

Was it loaded trough the hatches to the baggage rooms and then in sacks / on trolleys to the bunkers ?

I would expect to find some kind of 'coal shafts' from the shelter deck or something, but i can't find anything that reminds me of such things...

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Anders,

Port and starboard in the area of the Boiler Rooms there are Coal Shutes along the sides of F-deck.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Adding to what Lester said, these coal chutes went directly down to the bunkers where men would move the coal to wherever it was needed to fill them up and level out the load, all of it manually. If you have the impression that this was one dirty, nasty, backbreaking swine of a job, your impression is dead bang on the money. It was. This was what's known to seamen as an "All hands evolution" and even the hotel staff got into the act by way of cleaning up coal dust which settled everywhere.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

From "Comparative Naval Architecture of Passenger Ships," Philip Sims (M), Naval Sea Systems Command:

"The use of side coaling ports explain why the almost universal hull color of 1900 vintage ships was black. Since the sides would be inevitably streaked with coal dust, black was the best color. Photos of the WWI hospital ships, such as the Britannic, show smudges along their white sides. Modern white hulls are possible only with oil fuel. The water tightness of side coaling ports after years of service would be questionable. Coaling chutes would continually bang the port lid. The red lead joints would have lumps of coal crushed into the soft material every time that it was closed. The crew had to reach into the dark and dirty trunk through a
small hole to attach hooks and screw them tight and had no means of inspecting or testing the tightness of the closure.

The Titanic has been widely criticized for having
low (although closely spaced) transverse bulkheads
forward. Note that the loading doors are just below “E Deck” at the top of “F Deck”. The Titanic’s formula of low-height but closely spaced
bulkheads was in order to protect the coal ports. In a bit of irony, probably because she was such a new ship, the Titanic’s coal ports appeared to have been essentially watertight during the ships actual sinking since there was not a rapid increase in flooding rate when the waterline reached them."

 

[Noel F. Jones]

The Shipbuilder is silent on the matter of the actual bunkering methodology. I assume this emulated Cunard practice of the day in which case, if the vessel was alongside she would have to be ‘breasted off’ on booms so that the bunkering barges could be brought alongside both port and starboard; I assume it was impracticable to bunker from one side only.

I believe coal was supplied in bags. Staging would be rigged outboard of each coaling port and two men stationed thereon. The coaling ports consisted of hoppers which opened outwards from the shell plating.

Auxiliary electric winches would be rigged on the promenade decks with gear to elevate the (slings of?) bags from the barges to the coaling hoppers where the men on the staging would bleed the bags into the hoppers.

When the operation was complete the hoppers would be closed up and made sea-fast. Because these apertures impinged on the vessel’s reserve buoyancy I think the Carpenter was tasked to do this, reporting to the Chief Officer.

As for ash scavenging:

At sea, ash was tipped into a hopper set in the stokehold plating from which it was ejected on a stream of seawater exiting through the shell plating in way of the middle deck. In port, four steam driven ash hoists were used, but it’s not clear where these fetched up. I presume the detritus was worked to convenient shell doors.

Noel

 

[Ben Lemmon]

How big were the coal chutes that were used on the Titanic? Would a kid be able to fit into one? If so, would they hurt themselves falling into one? If you could respond to this message, that'd be great.

[Moderator's Note: This message, originally a separate thread, has been moved to this pre-existing thread discussing the same subject. MAB]

 

[Samuel Halpern]

quote:

How big were the coal chutes that were used on the Titanic?

3 feet 4 inches square.​

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Ahhhh...so this is where Ben's post went to last night. Ben, you might find http://titanic-model.com/articles/tech/TechFeatureSept2005.htm to be of some use. As far as research into Titanic tech goes, the Titanic Research and Modeling Association is an incredible resource.

The homepage is at http://titanic-model.com/

 

[Samuel Halpern]

I forgot to upload a cropped version from an F deck print that shows the details of one of the coal scuttles on the port side leading down to the bunkers. Here it is:

 

[Ben Lemmon]

Since the coal chutes are obviously not going to work

, is there anyway that a child on the Titanic could have gotten into something dirty, like the coal? Or was that not likely?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Or was that not likely?<<

The only way would be to sneak down into the boiler rooms and from there, into the coal bunkers. With several guys in each shoveling coal, and trimmers constantly at work in the bunkers themselves, the chances of a child getting down there and into any of these spaces unnoticed are effectively zero.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Forget the coal, but there was plenty of oiled machinery, like winches and cranes, on the upper deck areas where passengers took their exercise. Very attractive to exploring children. Frank Goldsmith mentioned an occasion when he got his hands very dirty just swinging from a cable.

 

[Anders Mansfeldt]

and why the #%¤@ was Frank G. swinging from a cable?

I assume that the coal-shafts are those I've highlighted in red on this F-deck blueprint?

 

[Derek Kaye]

Yes, they're the coal chutes.

 

[Ben Lemmon]

Because he was a kid, why else?? Do you really have to have a reason when you're that age?

The reason I have been asking is this: Would it be possible for a 2nd class passenger to be mistaken for a 3rd class because they got dirty? And where exactly were these cables? On the boat deck? A Deck? B Deck? C deck? D Deck? E deck? OK I'm going to stop now.