The Grand staircase clock

[Evgueni Mlodik]

Someone posted on IMDb that the Titanic sailed out in such a hurry, there was no time to install the clock for the "Honour and Glory Crowning Time" piece on the Grand Staircase landing and a quickly improvised mirror was used instead.

Now, I know a lot of the rooms were barely finished when the ship sailed out of Southampton, but that seems like a load of baloney. Can anyone clarify this? Thanks! =)

 

[Ben Lemmon]

I may not be the best person to answer your questions, but I do have thoughts about what you are saying.

Many of the Titanic books that portray the inside of the Titanic show the "Honour and Glory crowning Time" piece. They also describe the clock in their description typically. Check out books on the ship, such as Titanic: an Illustrated History or Inside the Titanic. Both are reputable sources for debunking supposed myths. If you could get your hands on a copy, Titanic: the Ship Magnificent would also be a fantastic source.

The ship's maiden voyage was actually postponed for a couple of weeks because of the Olympic/Hawke collision. So anything they might not have gotten done before the originally scheduled maiden voyage could have been done by the actual maiden voyage. I doubt that it was simply a mirror used, but I could be wrong. I would advise you to check their sources. A lot of the time, you run into FOAF (Friend of a Friend) stories. These really have no backbone to them, and they cannot be supported by textual data. Although you said that you think it's a load of baloney, still remember to always verify sources. This prevents you from assuming false ideas and from making yourself look unintelligent in front of the "bigwigs" (i.e. people who study the Titanic as either their job or hobby)

Hope this helps. =)

 

[Bill Sauder]

Shipbuilders sometimes do run into problems with subcontractors shipping late, defective, or wrong parts.

When Stewart Bale arrived to do the formal, pre-maiden voyage photos of the Queen Mary in 1936, the lampshades for the Main Lounge had not arrived - so the photographer carefully arranged spare ornamental glass from the dome in such a way that the floor lamps *appeared* finished, but of course, were not.

That being said, I never bought into the missing clock story on the Titanic. First the evidence sounds slim. I asked about this a few years ago, and it boiled down to a "Somebody says" story.

Even if there was a problem with the delivery, or the clock was dropped and broken there is the problem with the ease of replacement. If the main stair clock was unavailable, was there NO OTHER clock on board that would have fit? The aft stair case perhaps? Better that stair should have the blank, than the main staircase.

[Moderator's note: This message and the two above it, originally a separate thread in a different topic, have been moved to this pre-existing thread addressing the same subject. MAB]

 

[Rocky Whiteside]

Oh, this is funny. I was just about to ask the same thing! I doubt the mirror story, when you look at the facts, it just doesn't work. They just happened to have a giant mirror on board that matched the grand staircase's design? I doubt it.

 

[Jeremy Aufderheide]

You mean, you don't keep an extra mirror laying around, Rocky? Come on...

Seriously, though...wouldn't having a mirror installed take a lot of time? I don't think that they had such big mirrors at the time so it would have most likely been multiple mirrored panels. The mirror thing would have taken time.

Also, don't you think if a piece of the Grand Staircase of the Titanic would be sitting around in a workshop somewhere, someone would have heard about it?

 

[Rocky Whiteside]

Exactly.

 

[Jeremy Aufderheide]

On IMDB someone chimed in on this on a discussion about this:

"You can easily telephone the Southampton Maritime Museum and ask them about the clock. Either the wooden panel (with the angels etc) was not ready, so they hung a mirror over the blank wall, or the wooden carving was ready and placed, but the centre clock was arriving seperately and didn't turn up. When you are in Southampton Museum and look at Olympic's you can clearly see that any old clock wouldn't fit in the centre gap (which looked to me less than 2 inches deep.) It would have to be a unique design built to specific measurements. But any mirror (round shaped) would fit easily."

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Thoughts, anyone?<<

I suppose you could give ringing up the museum a try just as the poster suggested, but unless they had a primary source document at hand I doubt they could give you a reliable answer.

 

[Matthew Newman]

I was reading the exact same thread on IMDB last night and suspected a couple of answers to the OP as being posted by ET members. You can find me there from time to time trying to answer questions also, but a lot of the times I get frustrated by the sheer hard-headedness of many of the posters there who insist "it didn't really happen because it wasn't in the movie", so I mainly just read and keep my mouth shut.

By the way, where did the mirror myth originate anyway? I've never seen any survivor or crew accounts that testify that there was ever a mirror (or several mirrors) there in place of the clock.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>By the way, where did the mirror myth originate anyway?<<

I think part of the problem is that we don't really know that it's entirely mythic. The Titanic was already late in getting into service because issues with the Olympic so some minor knick knacks may not have been fitted by the time the ship sailed. It's concievable...though by no means certain...that the clock was left behind on the beach along with a few other non-essentials which weren't really all that important.

The catch here is that something like that tends to be the sort of thing that most people don't really pay the greatest attention to. People don't speak to matters which are of no especial interest to them. (A "Didn't notice, didn't care" sort of attitude.)

A verifiable photo of the spot on the Grand Staircase where the clock was supposed to be on the day of the voyage would settle the question. Unfortunately, no such photos have survived or they are in private hands.

 

[Paul Lee]

The mirror story originated, as far as I can tell, in "Titanic Voices"

 

[Bill Wormstedt]

Paul is correct, as far as I know. The first, and *only* reference I've run across to the clock possibly not being installed was in "Titanic Voices", published in 1994.

 

[Matthew Newman]

Thank you, Mike, Paul and Bill.

I have the book and will check this out. I was just curious as to why someone would have even brought it up or thought twice about it unless they (or someone they knew) was there and mentioned the lack of a clock on the staircase.

As you're all very well aware, sometimes someone will just throw some kind of random thing like that into a conversation just to create debate without any real rhyme or reason for it and I just wanted check to make sure this isn't another one of those "red herrings".

Thanks always!

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I was just curious as to why someone would have even brought it up or thought twice about it unless they (or someone they knew) was there and mentioned the lack of a clock on the staircase.<<

Second or third hand rumour mongering perhaps or just taking a story of uncertain origin more seriously then it needs to be. As I've often said of late, before debating a particular premise or assertion, the question which first needs to be asked is "Is it even real?"

I'll have to dig out my copy of Titanic Voices some time but if there's no firmly established provanance for the story, I'd be skeptical of it.

 

[Kyrila Scully]

Well, I wish whoever was making reproductions of the clock as expensive souvenirs would start selling them again. I'd love to have one for our exhibit.