Murdoch's Mistake

[L. Marmaduke Collins]

quote:

He did say that the engines were NOT backed while he was on the bridge, and he was just entering the bridge as the ship struck.

He said he DID NOT KNOW if the engines were backed

Mr. OLLIVER. The captain telegraphed half speed ahead.
Senator BURTON. Had the engines been backing before he did that?
Mr. OLLIVER. That I could not say, sir.
Senator BURTON. Did she have much way on?
Mr. OLLIVER. When?
Senator BURTON. When he put the engines half speed ahead?
Mr. OLLIVER. No, sir. I reckon the ship was almost stopped.
Senator BURTON. He must have backed the engines, then.
Mr. OLLIVER. He must have done so, unless it was hitting the iceberg stopped the
way of the ship.​

 

[Samuel Halpern]

I will let Olliver speak for himself as to what HE SAW while he was on the bridge:

Senator BURTON. Were the engines reversed; was she backed?
Mr. OLLIVER. Not whilst I was on the bridge; but whilst on the bridge she went ahead, after she struck; she went half speed ahead.

If the engines were reversed at any time, he didn't see it. He was careful not to say much about what happened before or after he was on the bridge. All of that was speculation on the part of Burton and Olliver.

 

[Keith R E Hall]

O.k. what if we say that William Mcmasters Murdoch decided that this was an unavoidable collision and decided to ram the iceberg head on is it at all possible that the ship could have stayed afloat bearing in mind that the keel plates would sustain heavy damage.
Regards Keith

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Keith, it's possible...Edward Wilding certainly believed that and said as much in sworn testimony. It may have even been attempted at some point. The problem here is that the proposition is a bit on the hypothetical side and we don't know all the variables at work that may have made it non-survivable.

 

[Alicia Coors]

Wilding also said, following question 20261 at the British Enquiry

quote:

The Witness: It might perhaps interest my Lord to know the rough calculation I was able to make as to the probable stress arising when the ship foundered as she got her stern out of the water. I can only do it very roughly, of course. It showed the stress in the ship was probably not greater than she would encounter in a severe Atlantic storm. The ship was made to go through an Atlantic storm, and therefore would be capable of meeting that stress.

So Wilding's back-of-the-envelope calculations on the strength of the bow in a head-on encounter should be tempered by this fact.​

 

[Samuel Halpern]

From a floodable length curve analysis, the ship should have been able to stay afloat with the first 4 compartments flooded, or any 3 out of the first five compartments. This assumes flooding damage only. If there is structural damage to the inner bottom and transverse bulkheads, then stresses imposed by the flooded compartments could result in progressive damage and addition flooding.

 

[Alicia Coors]

The mass of the flooded bow section was approximately 50,000 tons. The mass of the intact ship was approximately 50,000 tons.

Titanic's speed when she hit the seabed was about 22 knots. Her speed when she hit the iceberg was about 22 knots.

The impact of the bow hitting bottom loosened and bent shell plates all the way back to the bridge. It does not seem altogether beyond the realm of possibility that the same scale of damage would have pertained in a head-on collision.

 

[Erik Wood]

Sam, Captain Collins, Captain Brown, Michael Standart and Nate Robison all add some good insights.

Sam did a bang up job presenting what we did in Maine here. I am staying out of the Murdoch debate. What I will enter is the damage debate and the estimates on flooding.

Sam's numbers show that the ship should have been able to stay afloat with the first 4 compartments flooded or any three out of the first five. What Sam didn't tell you, is that estimate is based off what the Coast Guard calls, the "Garden Hose" effect. Meaning, that if I took a hose and filled four of Titanic's compartments full of water, she should stay afloat. But in a collision/allision type of situation you don't have that effect. Damage to steel plates at bulkhead connections will weaken the structure. Which means that in theory filling those four compartments will cause others to fail, because the weight is being distrubted along a unstable platform. This means bad things in the world of flooding. The basic understanding is that the weight of those four flooded compartments are effecting the weakened structure tasked with containing that damage.

Ships of the 1912 vintage and even up to the late 60's for the most part where built to with stand blunt trama at a defined point of entry. Meaning the water came in the big hole in the side. That isn't the case in Titanic. We don't have this huge gaping hole. We have small damage spread throughout a large area. Flooding was not consistant, adding unplanned or designed for strain in the worst possible places. Causing flooding to progress to unaffected compartments. Allowing secondary flooding.

The floodable length curve is only as good as the numbers used to achieve it and the definitions used to obtain it. In Maine and here I have said "Water didn't sink Titanic, Stress did" or some variation there of.

 

[Keith R E Hall]

erik that is the best explanation iv'e seen yet and that definatly sounds like what the titanic went through. When she hit a report came from one of the firemen that the first five compartments flooded almost instantly from the forward chain locker and two feet into boiler room six according to the plans the multiple tears in her hull would be 274 feet and the breakoff point would have occured at that point as mentioned before. In my opinion when 1st officer murdoch turned the ship he was exposing those compartments to take the full force of the impact but sadly the hull plates were not designed to deal with that force. Also in the latest film TITANIC there are a lot of things that are questionable that may or may not have really happened. You notice when the stern section is raised out of the water the rudder is strait i don't remember seeing anyone straighten the helm after she was turned hard over to port. And the ship broke about 10 - 20 feet after the second funnel. It did not break from the top down the stern rolled to port before it broke. And as for the "dull booms" in lightoller's testimony he was asked what happens when freezing water spills onto hot boilers his reply was "They would explode" but seeing the boilers on the sea bed there is no evidence to support this because the boilers appear to be intact. Well i hope this helps.

P.S if anyone has any recent images of the wreck site please send them to [email protected]
Many thanks.

Keith

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Mmmmmmmmm...uhhhhhhh...Keith, I wouldn't take the film very seriously as evidence of much of anything beyond what the scriptwriter wrote.

>>When she hit a report came from one of the firemen that the first five compartments flooded almost instantly from the forward chain locker and two feet into boiler room six<<

Uhhhh...nope. It didn't.

Reports came from several witnesses as to the nature of the flooding, some of which was quite contradictory. Compare for example the testimonies of Fireman Bauchamp and Fireman Barrett at The Inquiries held both in the United States and in Great Britain.

You may also wish to download Captain Weeks Powerpoint presentation on the flooding pattern and the Microsoft Word transcript of Erik Wood's presentation which are on The Titanic Symposium 2004 Webpage.

The pages where the presentations can be found are HERE and HERE

Caveat: Nobody makes any pretense that any of this is the final word on the subject, but it is the end result of a lot of painstaking research into the problems of the forensic aspects of the casualty.

Regarding the dull booms, it is extremely unlikely that this was due to a boiler explosion. Most had the fires drawn, and as you noted, the boilers that can be seen are intact. In all likelihood, the booms...all of them noted after the ship was gone...were likely the result of any airfilled sections imploding as the stern went deeper.

 

[David G. Brown]

Charles Lightoller summed up the flooding caused by the iceberg for the U.S. Senate inquiry.

"Mr. LIGHTOLLER: I can only express it as I have expressed it before. She was ripped open.

Sen. FLETCHER: To what extent was the ripping as far as you could judge?

Mr. LIGHTOLLER: Nos. 1, 2, and 3, and the forepeak."

Lightoller's testimony is supported by the actions and testimonies of other members of the crew. In particular, QM Olliver stated the sound of the ship in the ice stopped before he could see the berg slide past the end of the starboard bridge wing. This would place the damage forward of Bulkhead D, which was corroborated by fireman Beauchamp who spent about 20 minutes making the boilers safe it boiler room #6 after the accident.

The only contradiction came from leading fireman Barrett who said that boiler room #6 flooded immediately upon impact. His story has internal contradictions. That is, he claimed that Engineer Hesketh ducked beneath the door from boiler room #6 into #5 with him. Yet, a few minutes later this same Hesketh ordered Barrett and Shepherd back into #6, which was Shepherd's direct responsibility. What Barrett has us believe is that a senior engineer who saw the side of boiler room #6 cave in and the space flood had forgotten this some 10 minutes later. Otherwise, why would Hesketh have sent Barrett and Shepherd into a flooded compartment?

Barrett also would have us believe that Shepherd was either equally forgetful as he complied with Hesketh's instructions without mentioning that boiler room #6 was flooded. In reality, to Shepherd's knowledge it was still dry, as it had been for the 20 minutes after the accident while the fires were raked down.

Barrett does not say the two men expected to find water swirling in boiler room #6. And, that was because seeing water there came as a surprise to him as well.

So, the preponderance of evidence is that only the first four compartments were open to the sea with uncontrollable flooding by the iceberg. Boiler room #6 and the firemen's tunnel do not seem to have flooded for at least 20 minutes or longer after impact.

The damage listed by Lightoller and corroborated by the crew should not have been fatal. Captain Erik is the only one to date who has come up with a plausible theory as to why Titanic sank as the result of apprently non-fatal wounds.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Jonathan Granato]

What if the ship had managed to swing around the berg, thereby missing it? Would Murdoch have ordered a slow-down or would he have just kept her at Full Speed Ahead until another one was sighted?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I don't think the answer to this question is entirely knowable, but I think they would have done much the same thing as the Californian did. They would have stopped, taken stock of the situation, made a decision as to whether or not it was safe to get underway, then either work their way out slowly or stop for the night.

Either way, I don't think we'ed be having this discussion.

 

[L. Marmaduke Collins]

In April 2004, Inger Sheil and I exchanged opinions on ET Thread Murdoch’s Mistake, based on the erroneous information of the Alan Villiers quote:

Posted on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - 7:12 am:

quote:

There was never a better officer. Cool, capable, on his toes always - and smart toes they
were. I remember one night - we had just come up on the bridge to take over the watch -when the lookout struck the bell for a light on the port bow. It was that awkward moment before you have your night vision, for we had just come up to take over from the First Officer and his junior. Murdoch went at once to the wing of the bridge. I didn't see anything, for a while. I don't think I ever did see that light until it was almost on top of us.

The inference, in the quote, is that Murdoch was the second officer of the SS Arabic. The point discussed was Murdoch countermanding the helm officer of the first officer. This, in my professional opinion, constituted insubordination by Murdoch. I now realize that Murdoch was in fact the first officer, senior to the officer he was relieving. Therefore, there was no insubordination.

Regards,
Collins​

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Capt. Collins. You say the information was erroneous from Alan Villiers. Have you found some other source that indicates that Murdoch was indeed the 1st offer at that time? He is mentioned as being the 2nd officer while on the Arabic in 1903 and was first promoted to 1st officer after serving 11 voyages on the Oceanic just before his assignment to the Cedric in Feb 1906. He came on the Cedric as 2nd officer and became its 1st officer in Jul that year. Ref.: http://www.dalbeattie.com/titanic/wmmlifea.htm.