Hi Rolf,
As Michael has already written, escape ladders were provided from all of the major compartments in the engineering spaces. Some of the smaller spaces had their own ladders, such as the area between the double bulkheads and doors just forward of the boiler rooms. Each boiler rooms had a ladder that went up the boiler casing, fore/aft of the uptake. They allowed access to Scotland Road, on E deck, and the boat deck.
This drawing shows the layout in boiler rooms #1 and #2:
Boiler Room Elevation
All Things Titanic - main page
Other than the weather decks, the only watertight deck was a portion of the orlop deck over the shaft alleys. Elsewhere the decks were solid, except where openings were made for various reasons: there were openings above the engine and boiler rooms for ventilation and for the boiler uptakes (flues); other types of openings included those for ladders, plus numerous holes for ducts, piping and the like. You will often see Titanic's system of watertight bulkheads likened to an ice-cube tray: once the water reaches the top of a bulkhead, so it is said, it just pours over into the next compartment. It is really not quite that simple. In a
few places water could actually run over the top of a bulkhead, this was the case between the pairs of boiler rooms that share a funnel, but no where else (that I know of). Elsewhere, once a bulkhead is submerged below the waterline, water will flow onto the deck above the bulkhead, move aft and will then find its way below via the various openings. For example, water initially entered the Turkish Bath by flowing down the stairs from
E-deck, above. I would not expect the water to drain into boiler room #4, below, very quickly because there were probably very few openings in the deck between.
The Ash Rooms on F deck were there to service the ash hoists, which were used in port. The ash hoists were in addition to the ash ejectors, which were used at sea. Not every ash ejector had a ash room above it, only the ones that happened to be located with an ash hoist. It would be possible to escape from a boiler room by climbing to an ash room, but from there the only was out was by opening the watertight door in the side of the ship and jumping into the sea. There was no exit to F deck from the ash rooms (as far as I know). The escape route from the boiler rooms was via the ladders inside the boiler casing.
The boiler room watertight door scene in the Cameron movie is very dramatic, but the layout is wrong. The watertight door from boiler-room #6 to #5 was at the end of a passageway about 18 feet long and a little over 5 feet wide. The movie shows the door as it would have been seen from the other side.
The decks above the boiler rooms could have been made watertight around the uptakes by means of watertight bulkheads and hatches. This was done on warships, but not on Titanic. None the less, except where there were ladders, the decks would be pretty good at slowing the flow of water. To make the boiler casing watertight, for instance, watertight bulkhead would be built to seal it off from each deck it passed through, with watertight doors where necessary. The boiler-room and casing would then form one large watertight compartment, open at the top. All the decks that the casing passed through would be sealed off from the casing and each would form one (or more) watertight compartments between the lateral watertight bulkheads. Every place that a pipe or cable passes through a watertight boundary the deck or bulkhead would be sealed around it. Sanitary drains need valves to seal them off from the space that they drain. Ducts need closures at each watertight boundary. Large watertight hatches are fitted to seal the decks where companion ways lead below decks. When a warship goes to "General Quarters", crewmen have to run around and close all these watertight fittings to make the various areas watertight, this typically takes five to ten minutes to accomplish. I would be surprised if any merchant ships have that level of watertight isolation.
Warm Regards,
Cal
