FAQ: Would It Have Been Inconvenient for Titanic to Arrive in New York on Tuesday?
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FAQ: Would It Have Been Inconvenient for Titanic to Arrive in New York on Tuesday?
Titanic never reached New York, but there has been a lot of discussion over the years about her projected arrival time. All of the details of that debate are beyond the scope of this post. Instead, it will focus on what we know about Olympic.
Information is available about the arrival times for six of Olympic‘s first eight westbound crossings in 1911-12. These include:
Westbound Voyage 1: Arrival at Ambrose Channel Light Vessel 2.24 a.m. Wednesday 21 June 1911
Westbound Voyage 2: Arrival at Ambrose Channel Light Vessel 10.08 p.m. Tuesday 18 July 1911
Westbound Voyage 3: Arrival at Ambrose Channel Light Vessel 9.10 p.m. Tuesday 15 August 1911
Westbound Voyage 4: Arrival at Ambrose Channel Light Vessel 5.40 p.m. Tuesday 5 September 1911
Westbound Voyage 7: Arrival at Ambrose Channel Light Vessel afternoon of Wednesday 17 January 1912
Westbound Voyage 8: Arrival at Ambrose Channel Light Vessel 9.37 p.m. Tuesday 13 February 1912.
What we can see from these six westbound crossings is that Olympic arrived at the Ambrose Channel Light Vessel on Tuesday evening on four out of six occasions. In the case of her fourth westbound crossing, she docked in New York on the Tuesday evening as well as disembarked all her passengers.
On her maiden voyage, she arrived there less than two-and-a-half hours after midnight, but it is known she left Queenstown, Ireland, about three hours late and that she had been delayed about one-and-a-half hours during the crossing due to fog. In other words, it was those two delays which combined to prevent her arriving on Tuesday evening on that occasion.
The sixth westbound crossing was actually one of the slowest of Olympic‘s long career. She averaged less than 19 knots, taking more than six days and six hours to complete the crossing due to horrendous weather conditions.
There is a question of how we define ‘arrival’. When someone talks about arriving in New York, they might be referring to the arrival at the Ambrose Channel Light Vessel, which marked the end point of the transatlantic crossing, or, alternatively, the time the ship actually completed her docking. It is therefore important to be precise with our definitions. The White Star Line reassured their passengers that, if the ship docked after 8 p.m., they had the option to remain onboard overnight and have breakfast in the morning, rather than disembark. In other words, passengers were not inconvenienced in either case if they had based their plans on disembarking on Wednesday. On the one occasion when she docked on Tuesday evening, the passengers were reported to be satisfied and without complaint, disembarking by about 11.30 p.m.
What is clear from the available data is that Olympic regularly arrived at the Ambrose Channel Light Vessel in New York on Tuesday evening and she also docked in New York on one occasion (when she was on the shorter northern track, which cut more than a hundred nautical miles off the voyage distance). There is therefore no basis to state that any inconvenience would have been caused to her passengers if Titanic arrived in New York on Tuesday evening, because her older sister did so repeatedly in 1911-12.
