Titanic

FAQ: Was Titanic’s Starboard Propeller Used to Repair Olympic after the Hawke collision?

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FAQ: Was Titanic’s Starboard Propeller Used to Repair Olympic after the Hawke collision?

 

No.

The available evidence indicates that Harland & Wolff used three spare blades as replacements for the three damaged blades on Olympic’s starboard propeller.

George Cuming, one of Harland & Wolff’s managing directors, was one of a number of professionals to see Olympic in drydock.  On 14 October 1911, he summarised the necessary repair work to an Engineer Commander, whose report went to the Director of Dockyards (on behalf of the Admiralty) some days later.

Olympic’s Starboard Propeller Blades

There was some good news: ‘There are no marks on the propeller blades of the centre and port shafts to show that these have been touched by anything at the time of collision’.  Unfortunately, the starboard propeller blades were all damaged:

The three blades have been removed; they are damaged towards the tips.  They are probably bent as well although this is not obvious.  Mr. Cummings’ [sic] proposal is to scrap these three blades, appropriate three spare and replace the spare blades used.  The blades are…manganese bronze.

Olympic’s Starboard Propeller Boss

The starboard propeller boss itself (the cylinder at the centre of the propeller to which the blades were attached) was ‘apparently undamaged’ but either of Titanic’s port or starboard propeller bosses were available to use as a replacement in the event that any damage to Olympic’s starboard propeller boss became apparent later.  (There is no evidence that it did.)  Harland & Wolff proposed to ‘anneal the studs for securing the blades, and if necessary, to renew them’.  (To ‘anneal’ meant to heat the material and then allow it to cool slowly, which made it easier to work.  In the event, it was necessary to renew at least some of them.)

Olympic’s Starboard Propeller Shafting

There was damage to Olympic’s propeller shafting, but Harland & Wolff did not think any bent shafting could be straightened out or repaired.  Instead, it would need to be replaced:

The tail shaft can be withdrawn into the dock and so removed to the shop, the three pieces forward of this necessitate that certain plates should be removed from the ship’s side so as to pass them out into the dock and so send into the shop.

Where the shafting passes through [watertight] bulkheads, the plating has had to be cut in order to uncouple and pass the shafting to be removed through the orifice being cut in the ship’s side.

It is not expected that these four lengths will be in the shop for another seven or eight days, and so the renewal necessary as regards them is unknown. As a precautionary measure a forging has been ordered for one length of shafting. The shafting is hollow and Messrs. Harland & Wolff do not consider that if any length is bent it can be made serviceable by straightening.

The Titanic’s shafting is available if necessary but if used would entail considerable delay in that ship’s completion, as the engines are now being put into her.

While Olympic was in dry dock, Harland & Wolff took the opportunity to increase the pitch of her port propeller blades from 33 feet to 34 feet 6 inches.  The cost was accounted for separately to the repairs of the collision damage.  The new starboard propeller blades were undoubtedly set at the same pitch. 

 

Olympic Starboard Propeller 1929
Olympic in drydock for her annual overhaul, January 1929. (‘Rivet counters’ might notice that there are five rows of rivets around the top of the centre propeller aperture.  This is one of several easy ways to identify photos of Olympic which date from after her stern frame was replaced over the winter of 1925-26.  As built, there were only four rows of rivets in this location.) (White Star Magazine, 1929/Author’s collection)

 

 

Titanic’s Collapsible A: Oceanic, May 1912

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Titanic‘s Collapsible A: Oceanic‘s First Officer Sights the Lifeboat Adrift, May 1912

This and many other incidents from Oceanic‘s interesting career are chronicled in Oceanic: White Star’s ‘Ship of the Century’ (signed copies are available for purchase through this website).

On 8 May 1912, every one of Oceanic’s lifeboats was ‘lowered into the water and tested’ before she left Southampton for Cherbourg, Queenstown and New York.  At Cherbourg, ‘Madam Navratil, mother of the two French waifs from the Titanic now being looked after in New York’ boarded.  She was one of 736 passengers, including only 61 in first class.

Five days later, Oceanic was well on her way to New York and steaming through a moderate swell with light southerly winds.  First Officer Frank sighted a boat to starboard in latitude 38˚ 56’ North longitude 47˚ 01’ West around 12.45 p.m.  Captain Smith ordered the ship stopped and she came to rest about 800 yards away.  Then the emergency boat was lowered in charge of the fourth officer, John Withers.  As word spread throughout the ship that the boat contained bodies, ‘passengers of all classes lined the rail’ to watch what was happening.  One month after Titanic’s sinking, the boat turned out to be her collapsible A lifeboat: one of two collapsible boats that floated off the boat deck in the ship’s final moments as her frantic crew ran out of time to launch them.

Withers returned and reported that the bodies were ‘not in a fit condition to be taken on board, and recommended that they be buried from the boat they were in’.  Dr. French was called to identify them and then Bo’sun Jones ‘volunteered to go and sew them up in canvas, as he had been a sail maker and had had experience in burying men in the Red Sea and other places in the East’.  Oceanic’s flag was lowered to half mast as Dr. French read out the service and Captain Smith, his officers and crew ‘stood to attention bareheaded on the upper deck with the passengers, who followed their example’:

As the doctor uttered the words ‘We commit these bodies to the deep’, the sailors let the three canvas covered bodies sink beneath the waves, and the boat pulled back to the Oceanic towing the Titanic’s boat astern.

By the position the boat was found in she must have drifted seven and three-quarter miles a day…

Smith recorded what happened in the ship’s log:

Three bodies were found in the boat but being decomposed and unfit for removal these same were committed to the deep from the boat, service being read by Doctor French.  One presumably was the body of Thomson Beattie, identified by name on pocket lining of coat, the others, a sailor and firemen respectively.  A fur lined overcoat was found in the boat and letters in pocket addressed to Richard Williams, also two rings welded together as one inscription on inside of one ‘Edward & Gerta’ on the other ‘Edward’.  Ship proceeded at 2.27 p.m. having taken on board collapsible boat which is marked No 1. Deck lifeboat certified by Board of Trade to carry 47 persons.

American newspaper reports (below) suggested subsequently that ‘the three men had lived for several days and died of starvation after devouring the cork in the lifejackets’.  White Star officials and Dr. French were quick to deny the suggestion ‘emphatically’.

Above: One of a number of sensationalised newspaper reports which falsely claimed that people who had initially survived the Titanic disaster subsequently ‘starved’ to death.  In reality, they were already dead when Collapsible A was set adrift.  (New York Evening World, May 1912)

 

 

Big Ships and Small Boats

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New Article: Big Ships and Small Boats

A new article, ‘Big Ships and Small Boats’ has been uploaded.

In the years leading up to the Titanic disaster, ships were getting significantly larger.  A lot of comment at the time and up to the present day has focused on the increasing size of ships in relation to the lifeboats they needed to carry under the law.  However, this overlooks the fact that the size of a ship was not necessarily a reliable indicator of how many passengers and crew she could carry.  This article provides a snapshot comparison between Olympic and Carpathia in April 1912 and some comparative British government data looking at the largest foreign-going passenger steamers, their passenger and crew capacity and lifeboat provision.

It was first published in the Titanic International Society’s Voyage September 2022: Pages 3-4.

 

 

‘Titanic at 110: Learning, Unlearning & Relearning History’

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‘Titanic at 110: Learning, Unlearning & Relearning History’

 

 

 

My presentation in April 2022 at PRONI discussed some key Titanic topics. 

PRONI in partnership with the Belfast Titanic Society welcome Mark Chirnside to give a talk to mark the 110th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic.

Titanic is one of the most famous ships in history and people might justifiably ask whether there is anything new to learn. However, 110 years after her loss many commonly-cited facts about the ship are either based on questionable evidence or are demonstrably untrue. Statements are often repeated from one modern-day source to another without reference to contemporary documentation from 1912.

Mark Chirnside takes a look at some of the testimonies of survivors from the bridge, engine and boiler rooms in a discussion about what happened before the collision; explores an example of documentation being mischaracterised in modern-day media; and discusses recently unearthed evidence about Titanic’s propeller configuration.

 

 

 

‘Olympic & Titanic: “A Very Remote Contingency” – Lifeboats for All’

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‘‘Olympic & Titanic: “A Very Remote Contingency” – Lifeboats for All’ 

 

 

 

My presentation in September 2021 at PRONI discussed the topic of lifeboats.  I set the scene by covering the key points about lifeboat provision during the decades preceding the Titanic disaster; the regulations in 1912 and how they had evolved; and how Harland & Wolff and the White Star Line exceeded the legal requirements for lifeboat capacity.

 

Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that Harland & Wolff recommended to the White Star Line that more lifeboats should be fitted.  What they did do is provide a new Welin davit design which would enable them to carry more lifeboats in the future, if the regulations changed.  They also provided four additional semi collapsible boats for each ship.  Comparing the number of lifeboats shown on the ‘Design “D”‘ concept which the White Star Line approved in July 1908 with Titanic as completed in April 1912, the number of lifeboats increased from 16 to 20.     

I closed the presentation by covering some examples of inaccurate claims about Titanic‘s lifeboats in the mass media.  One was a completely inaccurate characterisation of a Harland & Wolff drawing office notebook, which a television programme claimed was evidence that Harland & Wolff had intended originally for Titanic to be fitted with enough lifeboats for everyone (in fact, it was a document recording changes to Olympic‘s lifeboat configuration in the 1912-13 refit).  Another was a newspaper article mischaracterising notes which were authored by Board of Trade surveyor Captain Maurice Harvey Clarke.  They were written after the disaster, not before.   

Mark explores the issue of lifeboat regulation over the decades preceding the Titanic disaster and discusses the context immediately prior to 1912. He discusses the question of lifeboat provision for these new White Star giants and dispels a few longstanding myths and false claims made about Titanic’s lifeboats.

 

 

 

 

 

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Presentation from the Archives: ‘The Chairman & The Commander: J. Bruce Ismay and Captain “E. J.” Smith’

 

 

 

My ‘superb’ presentation in September 2020 at PRONI discussed both J. Bruce Ismay and Captain Smith.  Key topics include J. Bruce Ismay’s correspondence several weeks before the Titanic disaster, when he writes about his daughter’s wedding coming up in March 1912 and explains that he will sail on Titanic on 10 April 1912, expecting to return to Southampton on 27 April 1912; Captain Smith’s ‘uneventful’ career is discussed in some detail, including the Hawke collision on 20 September 1911.   

A talk focusing on two of the key personalities in the Titanic story: the White Star Line’s chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, and the Line’s senior captain, ‘E. J.’ Smith. Mark explores some of the history of these two men in the years leading up to 1912, including little known anecdotes and events – as well as some of the misconceptions surrounding them.

 

 

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Presentation from the Archives: ‘An”Olympic” Challenge: “We Have Reached the Limit…’

 

 

Building the largest ships in the world wasn’t simply a question of the shipbuilding process itself.  There were all sorts of other practical challenges to consider, including financing them, insuring them, expanding the port and docking facilities to operate and maintain them, and powering them across the North Atlantic. My presentation in September 2019 at PRONI discussed a number of these key issues and highlighted just how many logistical challenges the White Star Line was faced with.