Engineering after the collision

[Stephen Carey]

G'day Codad 1946,
I like your use of the word 'redundancy' which is more common to USN parlance. Over here in the UK it is a euphemism for the sack.. In the film 'Crimson Tide' Denzil Washington speaks of the redundancy of the different systems in the US nuclear submarine. You ask where Sam (Samuel Halpern) gets his illustrations from; he actually draws the schematics up himself and they are very comprehensive and informative
I would like your start up procedure for the Olympic and if possible the Mauretania, they will add further knowledge to the engine room workings, but there is no panic. Thank you in anticipation. RdeK.

Richard, I have your book on the Black Gang - very informative and a damn good read! I used it to cement my knowledge of the Black Gang and all their workings - it was good to find someone who thought the same way as I do. I didn't plagiarise anything as far as I know...
As a marine systems designer by trade, I intend to draw up as many schematics as I can for these ships (where there is enough information), but it's not easy without the original ship's drawings, which is why I don't know where Sam got his original ones from. In the Mauretania doc attached you'll see a hand sketch of the seawater and feed system, which I intend to flesh out with flow rates and piping sizes, and draw up in CAD at a later date - if I can find the time... I guess as far as the piping goes, I will just rely on experience of the systems I've built in the past for modern ships.
I am also a Brit, and the term "redundancy" is used in the Oil & Gas industry, (which I worked in after leaving the sea, designing warships etc) which is of course American oriented. After 13 years in O&G I suppose terms like "3x50% or 4x33% redundancy" become common parlance to me, but as you say, it means getting the boot in UK. As I have jumped from melting ice-floe to melting ice-floe from Canadian Pacific, via a computer company, via Swan Hunter, via Vosper, I know all about it...
Attached are Titanic/Olympic and Mauretania starting docs. I would appreciate your comments.

Stephen

 

[Stephen Carey]

W

I'd have to agree with David that for myself the battle to keep the ship afloat as long as possible and keep the power going until the last few moments are some of the most interesting and undertold aspects of the tragedy. There is the 2012 'Saving The Titanic' telemovie that paints a pretty good picture of what could have taken place, notwithstanding the talk of the turbine providing electrical power for the ship.

Given no one from the engineering crew survived we will never know exactly what happened but it is interesting to speculate and I look forward to reading what the many experts on the forums here may think.

Thanks!

What surprised me was that they didn't get the Chief Engineer from Olympic in to the Enquiry - he could have cleared up many of the questions asked of the surviving firemen, most of whom were barely literate and certainly wouldn't know much about the engineering of the ship. Or was it deliberate to exclude him?
I enjoyed the movie "Saving the Titanic", despite a few obvious dramatic touches which I considered were unnecessary.
As an ex seagoing Chief Engineer, it's interesting for me to think what I would have done. Whilst I was still under the impression that we could save the ship, all available pumps would have been going on the water coming into Nr5 boiler room in an attempt to keep her afloat, up until Andrews told me that she couldn't float with Nr6 flooded, let along 5 as well. It was then a case of damage litigation and shutting down any systems (mainly those for the main engines which I would have known would never run again) and conserving what steam was in the boilers for running the minimal equipment, which was a generator, the auxiliary seawater pump and the auxiliary air pump to serve the auxiliary condenser. I would have then sent the 2nd engineer and most of the other engineers up top as they would not be needed, just myself, a 3rd and 4th engineer, an electrician, a couple of fivers and maybe a greaser or two. As Bell did, most of the stokehold staff would be sent up top as no longer needed with all fires drawn. I doubt I would have thought that my life was going to end until there was no hope of getting out at the angle the engineroom was at by the time of the final plunge. Hold your breath and hang on...
This is borne out by one of the firemen (Dillon?) saying he saw most of the engineers, including Farquarson the 2nd, up top before she went down.

I'm intrigued about using the turbine for electrical power, I never noticed that in the movie? I'll have to watch it again...

 

[Stephen Carey]

Looking at photos of the Olympic there certainly was a lot of water being fed out. Was this a common procedure to make the ship lighter when in port? Were the engineers busy turning gears and valves when these photos were taken? Would Titanic's engineers have utilized these valves to pump out as much water as they could as some of them may have bailed the water out of the Olympic in the same manner when she began to flood during her accident in 1911?


Courtesy of 'Britain from Above'.

View attachment 38658

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That's a nice picture. To answer your question, there is indeed a lot of water coming out of a ship of this vintage, and these can be summarised as follows -
Grey water and black water drainage (toilets and bathrooms - black water these days has to go through a sewage treatment unit, though grey water can still be discharged overboard. That's likely to change in the near future). In those days it all went over the side, sometimes into the tenders...
Bilge water: Not normally discharged in port even in those days, though it wasn't prohibited (even in my early days at sea we had a connection to overboard from the fuel oil transfer pump!)
Ballast: Not a lot of ballast on these ships, though water tanks in the double bottom could be used to trim the ship (ie fore and aft, not port and starboard), though such small quantities would not make a lot of difference. As far as I know, there were no ballast tanks on Titanic apart from possibly the fore and after peaks.
Scuppers: Scuppers are deck drains which drain directly overboard either through freeing ports or short tubes to a discharge in the ship's side. They discharge rainwater and washing down water.
Auxiliary seawater overboard: This is a fairly large overboard, and is the discharge from the auxiliary condenser which was used in port by ships such as Titanic, Mauretania and Aquitania, with the main condenser shut down as it was mainly for propulsion. Later hp steam ships such as Empress of Britain (1931) had steam turbine generators, which exhausted into a main condenser, necessitating the main seawater pump(s) to be run all the time, including in port.
Main seawater overboard: This is the large volume of seawater that can still be seen today issuing from the side of steamships (and motorships for that matter), which is in the order of 5,000t/hr through a 1.2m diameter overboard discharge. That's pretty big and is quite obvious. Titanic had two of these, one each side for the tandem main seawater pumps.
Anchor wash: The deckwash system (often the firemain in earlier ships) was used for washing down, and also had a connection to the hawsepipes in order to wash mud off the anchor and chain as it was brought home. Often the mud was oblivious to the anchor wash, resulting in a smelly muddy chain locker, which could also be washed out and pumped overboard at a later date as it had a perforated steel floor. The anchor wash is often left on in port if the water is from the firewater pump, in order to avoid dead-heading the pump. It's useful especially on a tanker where you don't want to crack open a firemain valve as that will flood the deck and any oil spills will wash over the sides as the scuppers on the main deck are plugged in port on tankers.
Winch Cooling: Not on Titanic, but ships with hydraulic deck machinery have an oil cooler fed with seawater which has an overboard forward and aft for the windlass and mooring winches.

Can't think of any more offhand, but apart from ballast pumps, none of the above are used to "lighten" the ship. Cargo ships have large ballast pumps (nominally around 2000t/hr) in order to ballast the ship down when no cargo is carried. The pumps also discharge the ballast as the ship is loaded.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Cheers. I have not seen the transcripts for the 1911 Olympic collision Inquiry. Possibly the chief engineer was questioned about the pumps as her compartments took on water? The British Titanic Inquiry mentions the inspection of the Olympic by the Attorney General where he was shown a controlled flooding of her turbine room. Does that mean they could turn certain valves and allow water to flood into a dry compartment?


UK Titanic Inquiry


Edward Wilding - Naval Architect for Harland and Wolff

Q - There was one matter about the float. You know the float which operates all the watertight bulkheads?
A - Yes.
(Mr. Laing) There was some little difficulty about explaining that, and Mr. Wilding has a very good photograph of it which I should like your Lordship to have.
(The Commissioner) The watertight door of the bulkhead?
(Mr. Laing) Yes; this is the picture. (Handing photograph to the Commissioner.) The engine room floor you will notice, your Lordship, is missing there; the plating has been taken off showing the box of the float underneath the plating. I believe when my friend, the Attorney-General, visited the Olympic a compartment was flooded for demonstration purposes to see whether it worked?
A - Yes, the turbine engine room.
Q - Did it work?
A - Yes.
(The Commissioner) Were you astonished?
A - No, I expected it.


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[Rancor]

Main seawater overboard: This is the large volume of seawater that can still be seen today issuing from the side of steamships (and motorships for that matter), which is in the order of 5,000t/hr through a 1.2m diameter overboard discharge. That's pretty big and is quite obvious. Titanic had two of these, one each side for the tandem main seawater pumps.

Never cease to be impressed by the scale of the vessels. 1.2m diameter pipe is massive. And 5000t an hour... powerful pumps!

I agree it must have been the auxiliary condenser discharge that was flooding lifeboats during the sinking, if the main discharge was still going the lifeboat would have been swamped in seconds by the sound of it.

 

[B-rad]

Here you go Brad - you've given me a deadline for the QM! I am endeavouring to finish the rest-house on our farm, whence I can sit there, lord of all I survey, and write it up... Now where's that box?

Stephen

Thanks!!!!

 

[Rancor]

Still one more question about the condensing arrangements, I think this has been explained but i haven't quite understood it yet.
With the dynamos exhausting to th surface heater, and an unexpected stop of main engines and subsequent sudden cut in the feedwater flowing through the surface heater, what does this mean for the dynamo exhaust? Wouldn't it stop condending and you could have a high backpressure trip? How long did you have to switch to the auxiliary condenser before this happened?

 

[Stephen Carey]

Never cease to be impressed by the scale of the vessels. 1.2m diameter pipe is massive. And 5000t an hour... powerful pumps!

I agree it must have been the auxiliary condenser discharge that was flooding lifeboats during the sinking, if the main discharge was still going the lifeboat would have been swamped in seconds by the sound of it.

Hi again Rancor - yes, the main sea circ would have drowned a lifeboat, but it was much further aft (clear of the boats) and by that time was probably even out of the water, which would have incurred a change to the auxiliary system even if they had not done it earlier to save steam.

 

[Stephen Carey]

Still one more question about the condensing arrangements, I think this has been explained but i haven't quite understood it yet.
With the dynamos exhausting to th surface heater, and an unexpected stop of main engines and subsequent sudden cut in the feedwater flowing through the surface heater, what does this mean for the dynamo exhaust? Wouldn't it stop condending and you could have a high backpressure trip? How long did you have to switch to the auxiliary condenser before this happened?

I don't seem to get any notifications of posts on this site - what am I doing wrong? Must be a setting adrift somewhere...
Regarding the exhausts from the main generators, a crash stop of the main engines (and stopping or bypassing the main feed pumps) would probably have been handled by a dump line downstream of the surface heater, upstream of the contact heater; though I haven't seen one anywhere, it makes sense (good question, by the way!). Swinging this valve open would pass the feed from the downstream side back to the feed tanks, to be picked up again by the hotwell pumps in a circulatory fashion. This will keep lower temperature feed passing through the surface heater to condense the generator exhausts and avoid them stopping on high back pressure. The Mono air pump shown as a condensate removal pump would most probably also have a dump back to the feed tanks (possibly under gravity rather than being pumped). Opening these two circulatory systems would keep the feed passing through the heater to condense the generator exhaust. At the same time, a couple of engineers would be swiftly changing over the main generators on to the auxiliary system to keep them running without any further attention.
In addition to this, the main feed pumps, which would have been running flat out, would have responded to the feed checks being closed on the boilers by their relief valves lifting. This would either pass the feed back to the pump suction or discharge it back through a drains cooler to the feed tanks. I'd have to research whether there was one fitted, as one is supplied on Normandie for instance, even though she had self-regulating turbine feed pumps. I received some ER schematics the other day which i have yet to figure out - the answer may be there.

 

[Mark Baber]

I don't seem to get any notifications of posts on this site - what am I doing wrong? Must be a setting adrift somewhere...

Hello, codad---

If you click on your name at the top right corner of the page, you should see "Alert Preferences" in the drop-down From there you can make any desired changes to your settings.

 

[Itsstillthinking]

With this new testimony from Alfred White that iv been directed to some answers have been confirmed as the sole survivor from the engineer spaces towards the end
"
Reproduced below - June 21, 1912 letter from (Electric) 'Light Room" Greaser Alfred White to the Reverend M. Langley, brother-in-law of Mr. Parr, the Assistant Manager of the Electrical Department of Harland and Wolff, RMS Titanic [with bracketed annotations by Pellegrino and Lord, 1994]:





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Dear Sir: I am truly sorry that I could not answer your letter before as I have been very ill and have been unable to do anything at all. I knew Mr. Parr very well for the short time we were together. I was with him nearly till the last[;] that was at twenty-to-two [AM] on the 15th of April in the main light room of the 'Titanic." [At 1:40AM, Alfred White was with Mr. Parr in the main light switching center, located on the lowest deck, behind the 4th smokestack.] You are asking me if he was on the [upper] deck when the ship went down and I honestly say that he was not and all the rest of the engineers were below. That was the last I saw of them. At one O'clock [1hr, 20 minutes after the impact; however, a discrepancy in Alfred White's timing suggests that this might actually have occurred a half-hour later, at 1:30 AM], Mr. Parr and Mr. Sloan came below. I was on watch at that time and he said to me, 'We are going to start one more engine." [According to this plan, remaining steam pressure stored in the aft boilers could be used to run the turbine for electrical generation; the light room and the Marconi Shack's Sound Room also had acid batteries for supplemental emergency power.] I generally did that [job; the starting of the generators]. They went to the main switch board to change over.



[NOTE: A portion of this switching system was jetted out through the stern section's starboard side after its 2.5 mile free-fall to the ocean floor; and pieces of a switching panel were recovered in 1993 ' 1994, during the Tulloch era of Titanic exploration.]



We knew that the ship had struck something but took no notice. Work was going on as if nothing had happened. When at twenty-to-two the ship seemed as if she had started [up] again and flung us off our feet ' Mr. Sloan and Mr. Parr said to me, 'Go up and see how things are going and come and tell us." [The only event matching a lurch forward, as described here, about this time, was the implosion of Boiler Room #4, some 300 feet forward, under the second smokestack. It is possible that, like several fellow crewmen ' among them Fireman George Kemish ' Alfred White had not been keeping up that day with the periodic fifteen minute and half hour resettings of watches, if indeed he possessed a watch at all. It seems likely that White was running a half hour out-of-synch in his reporting. The boiler room implosion was felt on the top deck, and the critical loss of buoyancy under the second smokestack instantly shifted the Titanic's center of mass and triggered the final plunge; this was manifested as a tidal wave on the starboard bow ' which washed more than twenty women out of Boat A and which was actually body-surfed by Colonel Archibald Gracie. This event, time-stamped by such evidence as the moment Gracie's properly reset watch stopped, occurred between 2:10 and 2:12AM. The interval between the lurch described by White and the breakaway of the stern section would therefore have been between five and seven minutes ' with the journey to the top deck, as ordered by Sloan and Parr, becoming more difficult with each sweep of the second hand, while the slant toward the bow angled down from 10 degrees to 45 degrees.



Telling you the truth, Sir, I had a job to get up the engine room ladder. I had to go up the dummy funnel [the name given to the fourth smokestack, because save for venting generator steam and smoke piped out from coal-fired kitchen stoves, the 'dummy funnel" was built merely to give Titanic an added appearance of power and speed]. There was a doorway [and a ledge] there [on the forward side of the dummy funnel, about half way up]. The sight I saw ' I can hardly realize it. The second funnel [or smoke stack] was under the water and all the boats had left the ship. I could not get back [to the engine rooms] as the boat was sinking fast. We did not know ' they were [,my friends,] all at boat stations [at emergency stations, at the engines]. I am sure that was where Mr. Parr was and so should I have been if they had not sent me up. That is all I can tell you. I must close this letter and I am truly sorry for Mr. Parr's wife and all his friends. I remain yours truly, Alfred White."

 

[Rancor]

Good find there, Itsstillthinking. I think Aaron also posted a similar link in another thread as well. I think this additional information if taken at face value would indicate at least one of the main dynamos was still running. I find this kind of thing quite interesting.

Thanks for your reply Codad. It seems like the engineers would have had a lot to do in a short time frame, and with no notice as well. All evidence points to them managing things very well, though like in the movie there may have been quite a few spilt coffees that night!

 

[Aaron_2016]

We like to picture a clean break, but I think a number of the decks were still intact. Perhaps the port side was still intact or the bottom decks were still intact which allowed the power to remain in the stern section. Then again, maybe the steam which provided the electrical current was being 'stored' in the stern like a generator, or the power was being absorbed like a battery in a charger, and when the charger was disconnected the battery would still produce power for a few minutes before running down or winding down and going out. The men inside may have done their best to keep it going.


Idea of a partial separation e.g.

Mr. White saw the lights on the stern as he looked down from the 4th funnel. He wasn't the only one.


Thomas Ranger
"The forward end of the ship went underneath and seemed to break off, and the afterpart came back on a level keel."

Q - Can you say in relation to the fore funnel at what point the ship broke off?
A - About the second funnel from forward
Q - When she came back like that on a level keel were there any lights?
A - Right aft. The lights were right aft what were burning, on the afterend what was floating.
Q - And did they continue burning then right away aft to the taffrail?
A - Yes, right aft.


Edward Brown
"With the first report of that explosion I saw the afterpart of the ship giving a tremble, and I thought by the afterpart going up, and giving a bit of a tremble that the bow had fallen off."
Q - Did you notice whether the lights of this afterpart were still lighted or not?
A - There were lights burning then.


Mr. Bright
"She broke in two. All at once she seemed to go up on end, you know, and come down about half way, and then the afterpart righted, itself again and the forepart had disappeared.....The lights had gone out in the forepart of the ship then. The lights were burning in the afterpart of the ship. It was only the after section, though, that was burning. The after part of the boat had her lights burning."

Q - After she broke in two?
A - Until she went under water; yes, sir.
Q - The bow lights were extinguished, were they?
A - You could not see anything of them after that.
Q - Did you see any lights on the stern after she settled?
A - Yes, sir; until she finally disappeared underneath the water.
Q - Until the stern disappeared, after the break?
A - Yes, sir.


Charlotte Collyer
"Two other explosions followed, dull and heavy, as if below the surface. The Titanic broke in two before my eyes. The fore part was already partly under the water. It wallowed over and disappeared instantly. The stern reared straight on end and stood poised on the ocean for many seconds. They seemed minutes to me. It was only then that the electric lights on board went out."

Mr. Brice
Q - How far apart in time, probably, were the two explosions?
A - From 8 to 10 minutes......The lights were still on in the after end of the ship after the first and second explosions.

.....etc


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[Jay Roches]

Well, everyone seems to agree that the stern section had lights.

The data I've seen on the breakup all suggest a break in the vicinity of BR #1 that took with it the forward section of the reciprocating engine room. That certainly can't have left much steam for the main/emergency dynamos, particularly considering the dynamos fed off relatively high pressure steam, 185 psi. Perhaps someone with intricate knowledge of the engine room equipment would know if there is any chance of a steam reserve.

If there was no steam, the dynamos (all of them) would still have quite considerable angular momentum, having run at 325 rpm. We don't know exactly how long the lights stayed on for (and it is the sort of interval that people may have dilated in their minds), so it's hard to say if that momentum -- the "spinning down" of the dynamos -- was sufficient to power the lights for long. The dynamos were double-expansion reciprocating engines, probably not ideal to be running without steam.

Why did they start that extra dynamo? I might have an idea, depending on whether it's reasonable that the spinning down of the dynamos provided more than a few seconds worth of power.

 

[Itsstillthinking]

When the stern broke off it was only above the surface for less than a 70-60 seconds and considering how low the emergency dynamos are in the stern it was probably around 20 seconds until it was under water. So they did not have to be on for very long to provide the power