The Californian

[Philip Bowler]

Hi David,
Sorry, I am one of those officers of whom you speak! I always preferred coffee rather than tea so the hot water would have been welcome! Thank you.
You have all talked about leaving the bridge/wheelhouse to talk to the Captain.
As a Merchant marine Officer from 19?? to 19?? I never really wanted to talk to him, just needed him there to help me sort something out if it looked like it was shortly about to go pear shaped. He was God after all.
At sea and making way (moving) I would have sent the Cadet (apprentice) down if the telephone hadn't worked.
The reason being that the rest of the bridge watch were experienced professionals within their field and as he was learning he was least likely to be missed within the team.

 

[Noel F. Jones]

"the plan I have is an illustration that was part of Leslie Reade's private collection and it appears in the section with the illustrations. It has "S.S. Californian No.159" along with a few basic dimensions set to one side so it certainly looks legit. I don't see where else he could have obtained them.

If you have access to the Lloyd's records at some point, I'd be interested in what they have to say."

It could so be the plan (unless it was a fold-out) was attenuated while being miniaturised for publication. As we know, ship drafts are rather large documents. Whatever, six hatches serving just two compartments seems highly impracticable to me.

We'll have to leave this in abeyance while I try and access some long distance information.

Noel

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>We'll have to leave this in abeyance while I try and access some long distance information.<<

Agreed. I'll look forward to anything you find.

 

[David Haisman]

Hello Phil,

In those days I was an Ordinary Seaman, come Bridge Boy and General Factotum working throughout the bridge alongside of QM's and doing a stint on radar and recording hourly readings on a blackboard in the wheelhouse. Sea temps and revs were done by phone from the engine room and other readings taken on the ''Monkey's Island''
The 14 000 ton Ascania was built in 1925 by Vickers Armstrong on the Tyne and they knew something about ship building! She was a wonderful ''sea boat'' and took all the North Atlantic storms in her stride, behaving beautifully with beam on seas almost as though she had stabilizers.
One of her features was the crews washrooms on the port side of the for'cstle with around 8 stalls divided with low partitions and bat wing doors at the front.
The one way valves on the waste pipe outlets at waterline level were long past their ''sell by date'' and no longer operated as they should have.
As a result, occupants in the bog would experience a sudden upward gush of spray and icy sea water around their nether regions when pitching into heavy seas.
To watch heads bobbing and down each time the ship took another dive made this activity worth thinking about. It goes without saying that on evecuation, one would have to time the next plunge before flushing and making a rapid exit to prevent getting one's own back!

All the best,

David

 

[Erik Wood]

In relation to coffee/tea while underway and waking the skipper.

Since I am currently underway I thought I would share a conversation I head with my Russian Chief Officer shortly before we left St. Petersburg. We where going over what I expect and when during my slumber period he would like me to be awakened. My response was short, "if there is doubt, wake me". He then persisted and wanted to know if he could request that I come and check out a developing situation, to which my response "was of course".

3 days after we left Gibraltar on the second leg of this trip at around 2 am (ships time) I was awakened to the sound of the ships emergency alarm. I sprinted to the bridge in my skivies with coverall's in hand.

I arrived to find my young third mate red faced with a wheelsman and Chief Officer red faced when they told me that they had accidently tripped the alarm and they then made a pipe. The Chief said, Captain I didn't call you, if it was a real emergency I would have called you. Imagine, the ships master, the man of authority standing on his bridge in his skivies. Well, it has happened before and I am sure it will happen again.

In the old days my stomach could handle coffee, that isn't the case anymore, but I can recall a trip from Honolulu to South Korea when I was but a young deck officer and I came on the mid watch to find what I thought was a fresh pot of coffee. I attempted to pour it in a cup but the sludge wouldn't move, I then took the pot over to the bridge wing in a attempt to fling the sludge out, that didn't work either. So I looked around and tried one more time, "unfortunatly" the pot came loose from the not so tight grip I had and over the side it went. So, I had to call down to the night cook and get a new one. The next night I arrived on the bridge to find that there was no coffee pot, with a note from the skipper that said (and I still have the note), "Mr. Wood your coffee privlages have been suspended, I hope you take better care of my ship then you do the coffee pot" signed Captain Berrows. To which I waited until about 0330 and woke him asking what he would like me to do about a certain contact. When he asked what it was, I told him "a coffee pot that some a@* hole threw over the side". To which all I heard was the sound powered phone hanging up. The next night I had my coffee privlages back.

Now back to your regular topic.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

That was brave, Erik.

 

[Inger Sheil]

Lord himself seems to have raised the matter of how effectively he was summoned. There's that response to a letter from Lord (now, apparently, lost), that Rostron wote on the 5 September 1912:

Anyway, Lord, you have my sympathies. I understand more than I can say especially about the calling business

Reade notes that:

Rostron had told his younger shipmate Ivan Thompson, later Sir Ivan Thompson, that the reference to "the calling business" related to Lord's letter to him in which Lord had said "It would not have happened if I had been called properly."

Thompson's statement to Reade dates to 1963, but it does seem to fit in the context of Rostron's reply. I wonder, though, if Lord elaborated further on not being 'called properly' in his correspondence with Rostron.

Very interesting to get the anecdotal evidence from the mariners on the board about how one notified the master and under what circumstances.

 

[monica e. hall]

Erik,
I take it that 'skivies' are some sort of undignified undergarments?

Actually, I think you have a good chief there - very thorough - and I think you can sleep soundly. These anecdotal stories from the bridge are very interesting, as Inger said, and do illuminate the problems of absolute authority vs. encouraging contact. One can quite understand the need for absolute authority, but it could get dangerous.
On a slightly different subject (moderators please re-direct post if necessary / not totally idiotic suggestion)... the iceberg. Strikes me people argue about an imponderable - how far away could the lookouts have been expected to see it. Would it not be possible to do a computer simulation based upon the lookouts' perspective (100ft above water?) and the fact that detecting it at a safe distance would have been a matter of realizing that a portion of the night sky of blazing stars was obscured? We can calculate their distance to the horizon (of sight), we know the speed of the ship, we know the rough height of the iceberg. So surely we could set up a simulation which would determine when the iceberg would have blocked out enough stars to cause concern about an object blocking the ship's path? I can do the maths, but am not up to the programming these days, so what about it? I have a suspicion that you could only have seen it quite close up - Rostron detected a few, star twinklings off the bergs etc., but he knew what he was looking for, and he later said he missed more bergs than he sighted.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

One could do a computer simulation that would hypothetically make it possible to judge at what distance the iceberg could have been spotted, but it would only be as useful as the assumptions behind the perameters used and the knowable variables.

The problem is that it's simply impossible to know what all the variables are. How does one account for fatigue and other factors such as having an approximmate 21 to 22 knot wind blowing in one's face giving a windchill of around 14 to 15 degrees over a period of two hours? How does one calculate such variables as the stamina of the lookout and his ability to see in the dark, and attention span to a particular area? How does one factor in exactly where the attention of the lookouts was focused and any possible distractions? How does one factor in exactly what it is that would get the lookouts attention or what gets them to decide that a particular area should perhaps be given closer study?

Computers make wonderful tools and might give us a general idea of what's possible, but there's a lot more going on then can ever be factored into an algorithm.

It's the variables you don't and can't know that tosses a monkey wrench into the idea.

 

[Philip Bowler]

Monica, try standing in the dark for 4 hours staring out into blackness, even with something in the foreground that you can see. Eventually it will disappear even though you stare very hard. Do it then on a very cold night with"1912" garments. Sometimes you see things sometimes you don't. Nowadays we expect every thing to have lights on or the international ice patrol has told us it is there.
You are probably correct that a vast portion of stars were missing but they are only missing if you are not too cold to concentrate properly.
I know that the movie over dramatises but remember the look, second look and disbelief? Well it happens even if you are not standing on the bridge in your underpants with a coffee pot full of sludge!