Article from the Archives: ‘Olympic & Titanic: Refining a Design’
Mark Chirnside’s Reception Room first came online back on 1 April 2005! Since then, it has expanded substantially and been redesigned twice (2007 and 2022) to keep it fit for purpose. The nature of the internet and online content means that so many websites which were available then are no longer with us. One of those websites was the Titanic Research & Modelling Association (TRMA) which was pioneering in its day. (Fortunately, much of it is archived and preserved as a static site.)
My article ‘Olympic & Titanic: Refining a Design‘, is a revised and expanded version of a short article of mine published by TRMA in 2005. It was published in the British Titanic Society’s Atlantic Daily Bulletin 2019: Pages 18-22.
Author’s Note: Back in 2005, I published information about some previously unknown refinements to Titanic based on experience Harland & Wolff gained from observing Olympic during a particularly severe North Atlantic storm in January 1912. The article was published on the Titanic Research & Modelling Association (TRMA) website. It discussed some modifications to some of her rivetted joints fore and aft: Olympic’s great length meant that the stresses at these points – from about a quarter of her length ahead of the stern and a quarter of her length abaft the bow – required some additional reinforcement, beyond what previous experience had suggested was necessary, to prevent rivets in these areas becoming gradually slack in severe weather conditions.
It goes to show how much we are still learning about the ‘Olympic’ class ships all these years later, but the demise of the TRMA website offered an opportunity to publish this new article. It contains the original article’s information about the changes to Titanic, supplemented by additional material, including new diagrams of both Titanic and Britannic, and contextual information about other large liners of the period.
When I published this information for the first time all those years ago, my view was that these refinements demonstrated the fundamental strength of Olympic. Harland & Wolff were following their usual practice, as Edward Harland had explained back in 1873, of using their experience from operating new ships over their early voyages to proactively make improvements to them and their sister ships. She experienced a storm in January 1912 which was one of the worst of her entire career and which Captain Smith reportedly said was the worst he had ever seen in all his decades of North Atlantic service. The North Atlantic in winter storm conditions is an extremely hostile environment but she came through it: the modifications were not intended to remedy any serious defect which had occurred but to prevent future maintenance requirements. Ships such as Olympic were built as fast passenger and mail steamers, designed to run through these hostile conditions even at relatively high speed.
Nonetheless, I was contacted shortly after the original article’s publication by an American conspiracy theorist who was trying to argue that Titanic was a weak ship that sank because she broke up, rather than the reality that she was a strong ship which broke up in the final stages of sinking. (The cause of the breakup is that she was exposed to stresses over a prolonged period that were far greater than what she would have experienced in the worst possible storm conditions that she was designed for. No comparable passenger liner was designed to have her stern raised clear of the water for an extended period, unsupported.) He sought to use the information I had published (which he mischaracterised and deliberately took out of context) to support his claims and, unfortunately, all too many others followed suit: It is a very common problem with Titanic that many people look at her in isolation without looking at the broader context or doing an objective analysis. That context includes her sister ships as well as other large liners of the period.
Sensationalism is often what draws attention in the mass media and one example of this was a headline in a United Kingdom newspaper, which echoed his claims:
‘Titanic faced disaster from the moment it set sail, experts now believe…Even if the ocean liner had not struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage, structural weaknesses made it vulnerable to any stormy sea’. (Copping, Jasper. ‘Revealed: Titanic Was Doomed Before it Set Sail’, Daily Telegraph 10 June 2007)
This headline stands in stark contrast to the assessments of experienced professionals at the time, summarised by two short quotes from a number of examples. Edward Wilding, Harland & Wolff naval architect, 1915:
We have had less repairs to the Olympic than to any large ship we have ever built, due to external causes, of course’
Principal Ship Surveyor to the Board of Trade, 1925:
Olympic…has, I think, proved to be a successful ship in the matter of strength’.
On the positive side, the design changes outlined in my article have also been analysed and cited by serious researchers. (For an analysis of these changes and their potential impact on Titanic, see Parks Stephenson’s article ‘What Caused Titanic to Sink?’ in the Titanic Historical Society’s Titanic Commutator 2014: Volume 39 Number 206. Pages 92- 100. See, also: Rudi Newman’s ‘A “Riveting” Article – an Historical Rejoinder to Metallurgical Studies of the Titanic Disaster’ in the British Titanic Society’s Atlantic Daily Bulletin 2012: Pages 18-30.) Following on from my 2005 article, when The ‘Olympic’ Class Ships: Olympic, Titanic & Britannic was published (History Press; revised and expanded edition, 2011) I included this information on page 226.
