Speed After Collision

[Jim Currie]

It would have to have been given before the astern movement, Sam. Murdoch would have known full well as we all do, that any plans involving the emergency use of the rudder of a ship, the engines of which had been stopped or were in the process of being stopped would by less than futile.

 

[Ryan Burns]

So what kept amidships and the stern from suffering damage if the stern didn't swing away?

Also, you're saying that if, while at ALL STOP, they had thrown the wheel hard-a-port that the rudder would have been useless and unable to turn the ship even if the ALL STOP command and HARD-a-PORT command were just a few seconds apart?

I'm a landlubber and have never been on the ocean in my life, so you'll have to forgive some of these questions.

 

[Christophe Puttemans]

I also can't really picture how Titanic was even
able to get off the ice with her rudder in the hard-a-starboard position and the ship rapidly slowing down.

However, I did see we forgot something in the foregoing. Even though Murdoch ordered a FULL STOP order to the engine room, it was never executed. The engines never even began to slow down before the collision because that takes time. If that order is given, it would take at least a minute to configure the engines by doing I-have-no-idea-what but that's what I was told on another thread.

 

[Ryan Burns]

I also can't really picture how Titanic was even
able to get off the ice with her rudder in the hard-a-starboard position and the ship rapidly slowing down.

However, I did see we forgot something in the foregoing. Even though Murdoch ordered a FULL STOP order to the engine room, it was never executed. The engines never even began to slow down before the collision because that takes time. If that order is given, it would take at least a minute to configure the engines by doing I-have-no-idea-what but that's what I was told on another thread.

Indeed. Again, I'm a total landlubber, but I can't imagine that propellers just turn off like a light switch. Surely even if an ALL STOP order was executed the blades would still be spinning from momentum for a short while, right?

 

[Ryan Burns]

I also can't really picture how Titanic was even
able to get off the ice with her rudder in the hard-a-starboard position and the ship rapidly slowing down.

Correct. The stern being swung away from the berg is the only explanation I can think of for the lack of damage to the midships and the stern.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Survivors at the bow looked over the rail and saw the iceberg off the stern and noticed the ship had almost come to a complete stop. From the below accounts I believe that the ship was turning right and slowing down very rapidly.

George Harder
"I could feel the boat quiver and could feel a sort of rumbling, scraping noise along the side of the boat. When I went to the porthole I saw this iceberg go by. The porthole was closed. The iceberg was, I should say, about 50 to 100 feet away. I should say it was about as high as the top deck of the boat. I just got a glimpse of it, and it is hard to tell how high it was."

(This suggests the stern was swinging away as Rowe said it was less than 10 feet away from the stern when it passed him, yet it was almost 100 feet away when Mr. Harder looked out of his starboard cabin.)


Joseph Scarrott
"We saw a large quantity of ice on the starboard side on the forewell deck, and I went and looked over the rail there and I saw an iceberg that I took it we had struck. It would be abaft the beam then. Abaft the starboard beam." (This must have been when Mr. Harder saw it up to 100 feet away from the side.)

Q - Was it close?
A - No, it seemed the ship was acting on her helm and we had swung clear of the iceberg.

Q - But how far away from your beam was the iceberg, a ship’s length or two ships’ length?
A - Not a ship’s length.

"Her stern was slewing off the iceberg. Her starboard quarter was going off the icebergs, and the starboard bow was going as if to make a circle round it."


Charles Hendrickson
Q - Did you see the iceberg?
A - Yes.
Q - Where was it?
A - Just abaft the engine room when I got on deck. When I got on deck first I saw a lot of ice on the deck, and I looked out and saw an iceberg astern just abaft the engine room.
Q - You came up very quick?
A - No, I walked up behind the others who were walking up.
Q - Had the ship nearly stopped then?
A - She was stopped.

(This suggests the ship was moving very slowly and quite possibly the action of circling around the iceberg kept it within view for a longer time.)


Alfred Shiers
"I first went to the forecastle head and on the fore well deck......I looked over the side and saw the iceberg which was off the starboard quarter......The ship had almost stopped and the iceberg was just discernible."

Q - Did you look over the side and see whether the ship had any way?
A - She just had way. She was just moving.

Q - Did you have a look over the side to see?
A - Yes, I had a look over the side.

Q - When you saw the berg could you judge whether your ship was stopped or going ahead?
A - When I looked over the side there was a slight way on her; she was moving, but not much.

Q - And you could see that the ship had very little way?
A - Well, she just seemed to me to be moving.

Q - You thought you could discern there were some slight motion?
A - Yes.

Q - What were they?
A - There were bubbles as the ship was going along.

Q - You thought that you could see bubbles on the surface?
A - Yes.

"I saw the phosphorous that was coming up in the water"


(The sighting of phosphorous could indicate that the ship was turning hard right and this would produce a great amount of phosphorous along her starboard side as she turned right.)


Photo of a large ship turning right quite rapidly.

Also notice the list to port caused by the ship turning hard right. Lookout Fleet was asked:

Q - Did it tilt the ship to any extent?
A - She listed to port right afterwards.
Q - To what extent?
A - I could not say; a slight list.
Q - Just immediately on striking the berg?
A - Just afterwards.
Q - Did it seem that the blow came beneath the surface of the water and caused her to shift?
A - Yes, sir.

My understanding is that it was the helm order that caused the ship to list or heel over to port just after the collision as she turned right to swing her stern away.


Quartermaster Olliver was approaching the bridge at the same time Boxhall was. It is odd because Boxhall said he heard the order "hard a-starboard" and Hichens said he heard this order and that Olliver was standing next to him when the order was given, but Olliver himself did not hear that order. He said:

"What I know about the wheel. I was stand-by to run messages, but what I knew about the helm is, hard a-port."
Q - Do you mean hard a-port or hard a-starboard?
A - I know the orders I heard when I was on the bridge was after we had struck the iceberg. I heard hard a-port, and there was the man at the wheel and the officer. The officer was seeing it was carried out right.
Q - What officer was it?
A - Mr. Moody, the sixth officer, was stationed in the wheelhouse.
Q - Who was the man at the wheel?
A - Hichens, quartermaster.
Q - You do not know whether the helm was put hard a-starboard first, or not?
A - No, sir; I do not know that.

Strange that he was not aware about the order 'hard a-starboard' yet Boxhall and Hichens claimed they did hear it and made no mention of the 'hard a-port' order. It was their word against his. Sadly Olliver was not asked to give evidence at the British Inquiry, so Boxhall and Hichens version was the official version.

Scarrott described the collision as - ".....it seemed as if the ship shook in the same manner as if the engines had been suddenly reversed to full speed astern, just the same sort of vibration, enough to wake anybody up if they were asleep."

He said the collision happened "about five or eight minutes" after he heard the crows nest bell ring. This would certainly give Murdoch enough time to slow down the ship, which might explain why she was moving so slowly when the survivors looked over the side and witnessed the iceberg off the stern.


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[Aaron_2016]

There is another possible explanation though, and that is perhaps the survivors were witnessing a second iceberg passing the ship as she slowed down and they assumed that it was the same iceberg they had struck. At first daylight there appeared to be two large icebergs in the immediate area, but it is unknown if they had anything to do with the disaster. Perhaps Fleet had spotted one of them, and they accidentally turned into the path of the other one?


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[Ryan Burns]

He said the collision happened "about five or eight minutes" after he heard the crows nest bell ring. This would certainly give Murdoch enough time to slow down the ship, which might explain why she was moving so slowly when the survivors looked over the side and witnessed the iceberg off the stern.
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Well that's just absurd. Wonder if he meant seconds.

The explanation for why it was moving so slowly is either because the engines were at ALL STOP and thus they were coasting or the engines were FULL ASTERN which would have basically been like the ship applying the brakes.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Joseph Scarrott was asked:

Q - What did you hear?
A - Three bells.
Q - Do you know what time that was?
A - Not to be exact I do not, but it was round about half-past eleven.
Q - How soon did you feel this vibration after you heard the three strikes on the gong?
A - As I did not take much notice of the three strikes on the gong, I could hardly recollect the time; but I should think it was, well, we will say about five or eight minutes. It seemed to me about that time.

This could explain why the lookout apparently did not receive any reply on the telephone. Major Peuchen shared the same lifeboat with Hichens and Fleet. It seems that both men did not know who was the officer on watch and Hichens even called out to the other lifeboats asking if they knew who was in command of the bridge at the time of the collision. That is certainly a strange thing to ask. Perhaps the two men were discussing the collision and were debating who's fault it was?


Major Peuchen's testimony at the US Inquiry:

"I was interested when I found he was in the crow's nest, and I said, "What occurred?" In the conversation he said he rang three bells, and then he signaled to the bridge."
Q - Did he say how far off the iceberg was when he first sighted it?
A - No; he did not tell me that.
Q - Did he say what it looked like when he first saw it?
A - No; he did not go into that. The only thing he said was that he did not get any reply from the bridge.
Q - From the telephone?
A - I heard afterwards that really the officers were not required to reply.
Q - That is, the information is imparted from the crow's nest to the officer at the bridge, and that is the end of that information?
A - I spoke to the second officer on the boat regarding the conversation; and he told me it is simply a matter of whether the officer wishes to reply or not. He gets the information, probably, and acts right on it without attempting to reply to the crow's nest.
Q - Did he tell you anything more about the iceberg and the collision than you have stated?
A - That is all. They had some conversation. The quartermaster was asking them who was on the bridge and they were calling over, and they did not know which officer was on the bridge, and the quartermaster called out to another boat, to the quartermaster or whoever was in charge of the other boat.
Q - Another lifeboat?
A - Yes, sir.
Q - From your boat?
A - Yes, sir; they were not far off.
Q - What did he say?
A - I did not catch the answer.
Q - No; I mean what did the quartermaster say?
A - He said, "You know one officer (what officer) was on duty on the bridge at the time we struck?" So far as I could gather, the officer was in command of the other boat. He did not know; he might not have been on duty.
Q - And the lookout in the crow's nest did not seem to know?
A - No.

Q - Who was the quartermaster on your lifeboat, I mean?
A - I do not know exactly how to pronounce his name, but it is spelled Hichen. He was the man at the wheel on Sunday evening.
Q - Have you his initials?
A - No. He was Quartermaster Hichens. I think probably you can find him; but he was the man at the wheel, and he was calling out to the other boats wanting to know what officer was on duty at that time. He did not seem to know which officer, at the time of the sighting of the iceberg, was on duty.



This is strange because Hichens told the Inquiry that Murdoch was on the bridge and heard him give the order to turn the ship and telling the Captain what they had struck and that closed the watertight doors. Yet in the lifeboat he was calling out and asking if anyone knew who was on duty at the time they struck the iceberg. Clearly he did not know. Reading his opening statement at the US Inquiry it appears Hichens was given a long handwritten official statement to read out and possibly was written in advance and not by his own hand. I noticed a few survivors who seemed to give their testimony like a police account and were perhaps reading out pieces of paper with their notes on it. Were survivors allowed to bring notes to the Inquiry?


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[Jim Currie]

So what kept amidships and the stern from suffering damage if the stern didn't swing away?

Also, you're saying that if, while at ALL STOP, they had thrown the wheel hard-a-port that the rudder would have been useless and unable to turn the ship even if the ALL STOP command and HARD-a-PORT command were just a few seconds apart?

I'm a landlubber and have never been on the ocean in my life, so you'll have to forgive some of these questions.

Hello Ryan,


Don't concern yourself with being a landlubber. There are those on this site who profess to understand ships who consistently make exactly the same mistake - consider the problem minus one significant factor; the ice berg. When the full weight of Titanic moving at 22.5 knots 'leaned' and ground its way along the ice berg, there would most certainly have been an element of reaction. Old Isaac Newton knew a thing or three. If such a reaction did not exist, then for sure, the stern would have swung to the right, toward the ice berg. You are correct. there was a factor which stopped the ice grinding its way all the way to the stern.

As for rudder effectiveness: The ship was turning hard left. The helm was hard over, the ship's forward motion was being curtailed by friction. the propellers were slowing down rapidly, faster than the equivalent rate of the ship. Under such circumstances, there would have been a virtual maelstrom in the vicinity of the rudder. To work efficiently, a rudder needs constant forward motion slip-stream and propeller wash acting on it to create pressure on the rudder blade. It just wasn't there. Apart from the mechanics of the case, there were three surviving witnesses who were on the bridge during the the first few moment when such a second helm order would have been effective. These included the man on the steering wheel. Not one of these heard the hard-a-port order as a part of a seriess of helm orders. Only one heard it - QM Olliver - and that was when the iceberg was "way down stern"

 

[Jim Currie]

Aaron,

The reason why Olliver heard that second order was because it came late-on and was not part of the iceberg avoidance manoeuvre. For the same reason both Boxhall and Hichens didn't bother to mention it.

I take the evidence of Peuchin and Scarrot with a very large pinch of salt.

Personally, I think the good major was, as they say in Glasgow " a chancer". This was the man whose desription of leaving Titanic on a lifeboat would have us think that the ship sank facing east. The same man who ridiculed Hichens but thought Carpathia had come to anchor in 2000 fathoms of water.
As for AB Scarrott, he made it very clear at the beginning of his interrogation that he did not know the time of impact.
" 336. What did you hear? A:- Three bells.
337. Do you know what time that was? A: - Not to be exact I do not, but it was round about half-past eleven."

 

[Ryan Burns]

Jim, so you are suggesting that the collision pushed the iceberg slightly away from the ship and that is what saved the stern?

 

[Ryan Burns]

Also, what about the testimony of all the crew who claimed to see the berg off to starboard (instead of behind them) as the ship was slowing down as seen in Aaron's graphic.

Poor Moody should have made it into a boat. He could have told us so much.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Just played Ship Simulator 2008 which uses quite accurate physics and I noticed that when I sailed the Titanic and brushed against the iceberg it caused the entire ship to bounce or repel away from the iceberg. This only worked however when the wheel was not turned. Not sure how the real ship would have reacted though. Hichens said - "The sixth officer repeated the order, "The helm is hard astarboard, sir." But, during the time, she was crushing the ice, or we could hear the grinding noise along the ship's bottom." This might suggest that there wasn't time to turn the ship and she bounced off when she struck. When Hichens saw the ship had turned 2 points to port it might have been caused by the collision which caused her helm to shift. Lookout Fleet was asked:

Q - Did it seem that the blow came beneath the surface of the water and caused her to shift?
A - Yes, sir.

This might account for Hichens seeing the helm turning two points. Major Peuchen described the collision as - "I felt as though a heavy wave had struck our ship. She quivered under it somewhat. If there had been a sea running I would simply have thought it was an unusual wave which had struck the boat; but knowing that it was a calm night and that it was an unusual thing to occur on a calm night, I immediately put my overcoat on and went up on deck."

Perhaps the ship had slid upon a shelf of the iceberg and the action alone of sliding off the iceberg shelf caused her to move away from the iceberg. The ice fell onto the deck, and this might have occurred if the ship had made total contact at that point and the ship was pushed away by the impact.


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[Samuel Halpern]

Which version of Hichens do you want to believe?
954. (The Commissioner.) Do let me understand; had she swung two points before the crash came? - Yes, my Lord.
955. (The Attorney-General.) I am not quite sure that I understand what you had done to the helm before this. You had got an order, "Hard-a-starboard"? -"Hard-a-starboard," yes.
956. You proceeded at once to put the wheel hard-a-starboard? - Immediately, yes.
957. Before the vessel struck had you had time to get the wheel right over? - The wheel was over then, hard over.
958. (The Commissioner.) Before she struck? - Oh yes, hard over before she struck.