Robby House
Member
From what I remember ( I will try to look this up, but May be some1 else will b4 me. ) it's 3ft. At first they thought this was punctured but I believe it was Roy Mengot who came up with a much better theory. Aka it flooded due to bars in the cargo hold or something. Again I will have to look more into this again.Here's a question about this area that I've long been trying to work out. How far inboard was the bulkhead of the bottom fwd end of the firemans passage? We have testimony that water was seen falling in on the floor of the passageway at the foot of the stairs. From the curve of the bow at this point it looks as if there is a gap between the hull and the bulkhead of the firemans passage meaning that the iceberg impact damage in this area was substantial.
I also believe they were watertight, but I also recall seeing on a drawing for Britannic that these two doors were listed as dust proof doors, not WTDs. They provided access to the reserve coal bunker.
Bulkheads do not have to be straight across the beam of a vessel. It is permissible to "jog" them to allow for machinery, etc. Jogs can be transverse within a compartment, but also vertical from one deck to another. The bow of Titanic with its firemen's tunnel stretched the jogging concept almost to the breaking point. From a watertight compartmentalization standpoint\ the tunnel is a "jog" of bulkhead B that goes aft through bulkhead bulkhead C. It continues aft to a vestibule of four doors. The side and after walls of this vestibule are a jog out of bulkhead D The forward wall of the vestibule is part of bulkhead B.
The interior of the vestibule is part of hold #3. The two coal passing doors were not watertight according to the symbols used on the plans. There was no reason for them to be anything but dustproof because the vestibule was part of the coal bunkers in hold #3. They are drawn on the plan using the symbols for vertically-hinged watertight doors.
The forward watertight door (marked with the two triangles apex-to-apex) of the vestibule closed of bulkhead B at the tank top and orlop levels. Llikewise, after watertight door closed off bulkhead D. If hold #3 flooded, so would the vestibule. But those two watertight doors would have contained water within the vestibule and prevented it from flowing aft to boiler room #6 or forward into hold #1. The walls of the tunnel confined the water from entering hold #2. Neither watertight door in the vestibule could have been eliminated without compromising the watertight integrity of holds #3 and #1.
There is a stair tower containing two circular ladders for the black gang to go to and from thiere quarters. On the tank top and orlop levels this tower is walled off much like the horizontal fireman's passage. Below G deck it is aft of bulkhead B. At G deck it moves forward of thiat bulkhead and is open to the crew berthing areas over hold #1. This arrangement is what makes the stair tower and firemen's tunnel part of hold #1. Water could rise up in that hold until it overtopped G deck when it would tumble down and flood the circular ladders and tunnel.
Quite obviously the vestibule could have become a death trap when the watertight doors were closed. So, an escape ladder was provided leading upward to safety.
-- David G. Brown
A little bit of input.
The access doors to the spare bunkers were not watertight. Apart from the obvious breathing and visibility problems..these doors would dust tight because coal dust in an enclosed space is an explosion hazard. For ease of use... i.e. men barrowing coal from the bunker to where it was needed...the doors would be designed to be swung open and hooked back. However, if the hull in way of the spare coal bunker failed for any reason, sea water at pressure would enter the space aft of WTB B.
All apertures through a WT bulkhead had to be themselves , water tight. Thus the WT door at the end of the tunnel. However. the swinging doors on each side of the tunnel compromised the watertightness of Bulkhead D so the vestibule between D and the entry to boiler room 6 had to be designed to maintain watertight integrity of the thwartship subdivision. Hence two WT doors in close proximity
No matter what type of door the double triangles indicated, they were not vertically-hinged doors which is what is indicated for the two doors into the bunker sections of hold #3. Making the man doors into bunkerage beneath hold #3 watertight would not have made the ship one whit safer in the event of water enteering in hold #3 because there was no longitudinal bulkhead dividing that compartment. The firemen's tunnel only divided the bunker space. Above the orlop hold #3 was a single compartment from a damage control standpoint. Once water in that space overtopped the firemen's tunnel it would fill the entire compartment. So, there would have been no benefit to making those doors watertight.
(Note -- unlike some researchers I have changed my mind about many details of Titanic's sinking over the years as new information has become available. I'd rather admit and correct a mistake than try to hide it.)
The two doors clearly marked as watertight closures, however, were integral with the ship's compartmentalization. They closed of bulkheads B and D and would have been vital in either keeping the damaged ship afloat or slowing its rate of sinking. One thing certain, if the forward door of that vestibule worked correctly (and there is no evidence it did not), then water could not have entered the firemen's tunnel from hold #3. The tunnel should have remained dry.
I have never accepted the idea that a dagger of ice cut into the tunnel and caused the flooding. Ice is simply too soft to have punched through the outer shell plating and retained enough integrity to rip open the tunnel. However, twisting and racking of the hull as it rode over the iceberg might have strained the tunnel enough to compromise its watertight integrity. Even that I doubt simply because of the timing when the flooding was discovered. That took place when stokers and trimmers started down for their "midnight" change of watch about 20 minutes after impact. Leading stoker Hendrickson noted it pouring out of the forward end of the tunnel and into the stair tower. Considering that the ship was trimming by the bow, water pouring forward would be expected no matter where it came from. However, it does seem to me that Hendrickson described a point of ingress hidden from his view because it was aft of the stairwell inside the tunnel itself.
The late Roy Mengot suggested this was water pouring down the stair tower from G deck While that definitely happened at some point, I do not see Mengot's flooding in Hendrickson's words. I suspicion some other mischief was at work.
-- David G. Brown
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