Aside – Mark Chirnside’s Reception Room

Aside Published on 1 July 2025

Article from the Archives: ‘Thomas Andrews’ Olympic Maiden Voyage Notes’

This article represents an expanded version of material published by Mark Chirnside’s Reception Room in July 2005. It is published with revisions (up to July 2025).

There were reportedly three sets of copies of Andrews’ notes taken on Olympic’s maiden voyage – a copy for the White Star Line, a copy for Harland & Wolff, and his personal copy. Some of the notes he took have been summarised before (see: Lepien, Ray. ‘Olympic The Maiden Voyage’. Titanic Commutator 2003; Volume 27 Number 162; and: Marre, Jean-Philippe. Thomas Andrews: Architecte du Titanic. Lulu; 2015.) I was fortunate to purchase some of Andrews’ notes in summer 2004. I then published extracts online in July 2005 and again as an appendix in the revised and expanded edition of The ‘Olympic’ Class Ships: Olympic, Titanic & Britannic (History Press; May 2011), however many of Andrews’ recommendations were missing. At that time, I did not realise quite how many were unavailable but, over the years, a number of researchers have kindly shared material and helped to fill in the gaps.

We know that the set is still not complete because Andrews numbered his notes consecutively, from 1 to 56. Work is ongoing to try and reassemble the entirety of what he wrote, however notes 28 to 39 and 47 to 55 inclusive are still missing (as of July 2025). This revised article adds to the notes published previously.

I am grateful to researchers including Scott Andrews, Bruce Beveridge, Robin Beuting, Gunter Babler, Mark Evans, Joao Goncalves, Ray Lepien and Bill Sauder, for sharing information and supporting with my interpretation of either the handwriting or a particular detail. Any errors are mine alone.

Aside Published on 30 April 2025

Article from the Archives: ‘Olympic, Titanic & Britannic: An Issue of Finance’

It’s widely believed that construction of the three ‘Olympic‘ class ships was made possible by the use of American money – resources from either J. P. Morgan or IMM. The truth is the opposite: White Star was not supported by IMM’s resources. IMM was supported by White Star. Construction was financed through capital raised in the United Kingdom. This article (external link) explains in detail how:

White Star financed the ‘Olympic’ class ships and others by borrowing the money from largely United Kingdom-based investors, mortgaging its own fleet;
White Star borrowed the money, rather than IMM, to take advantage of its stronger financial position and lower borrowing costs;
The new ships provided additional security underlying IMM’s own debt, without increasing the money IMM itself borrowed;
Dividends paid by White Star from 1908 to 1912 helped IMM meet its debt interest payments.

It was first published in the Titanic International Society’s Voyage July 2020: Pages 135-39.

The subject of how the construction of the ‘Olympic‘ class ships was financed is a good case study showing the necessity of using primary sources (original documentation) rather than secondary sources (such as books or television programmes). We have the prospectus which was issued to investors in 1908, in which the White Star Line explicitly stated why they were borrowing the money; we have the IMM annual report from the same year, which carried a statement on behalf of President J. Bruce Ismay and the Board of Directors, explaining that the White Star Line was borrowing the money and giving their reasoning for doing so; and we have records from both the financial press and the London Stock Exchange Daily Official Lists (SEDOL) confirming that the bonds were issued and the prices they traded at when they changed hands on the market. In contrast to this, many modern books or television programmes have simply claimed that J. P. Morgan or IMM’s capital resources were made available to finance construction: this inaccurate assumption is simply false.

Above: ‘Movements in Shipping Securities’ reported on 18 June 1914. They were listed in alphabetical order by the name of the shipping line, so the many rows after ‘Cunard’ and up to ‘O’ have been deleted; ‘Oceanic Steam. Nav.’ is an abbreviation for the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, which was the legal name of the White Star Line. ‘Deb’ denotes that the security being traded was a debenture bond rather than a stock. (Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, 1914/Author’s collection)

Aside Published on 24 April 2025

Titanic‘s Centre Propeller Dossier

For decades, it was simply assumed that Titanic‘s propeller configuration was the same as her sister Olympic‘s. This assumption became accepted as fact. All too often, photos of Olympic‘s propellers were used to stand in for Titanic without the descriptions making clear that they were photos of her older sister ship. (There are no known photos of Titanic in dry dock with her propellers fitted and visible.)

However, in 2007 I was researching the Harland & Wolff records (supported by a local researcher, Jennifer Irwin). This material had been deposited with Public Record Office Northern Ireland (PRONI) between 1972 and 1994. It included documentation colloquially referred to as the ‘Harland & Wolff order book’, which kept a record of the key dates for each ship such as the contract date, when the shipyard and engine works were ordered to proceed, when the keel was laid, when the double bottom was completed, when the hull was fully framed, when the ship was launched and delivered. The ship’s basic dimensions and propelling machinery details were also recorded.

Of particular interest to ‘rivet counters’ or technical researchers was a series of five volumes of engineering notebooks, which focused on the technical aspects of the hundreds of ships they completed, as built: these included each ship’s size, displacement and propelling machinery particulars in great detail (such as the size of engine components, the boiler specifications and propeller specifications). The details were recorded meticulously. It is not clear exactly when they were transferred from Harland & Wolff, but the best guess is that this was probably the early 1970s. These records were also classified as closed, subject to researchers making a specific application to review them, which stands in contrast to other archival records that are classified as open (without such access restrictions).

The entries for Titanic state that her propeller configuration had an increased pitch of the port and starboard propeller blades (compared with the 1911 Olympic configurations) and a slightly larger centre propeller which had three blades instead of four. In other words, contrary to the assumption that Titanic‘s propeller configuration was closest to Olympic as she was in 1911, it was closer visually to Olympic‘s configuration after her 1912-13 refit. In hindsight, there should be nothing surprising about this. Shipbuilders of the period were constantly tweaking and experimenting with the optimum propeller designs and we know from J. Bruce Ismay’s testimony that Harland & Wolff had advised him they expected Titanic to be slightly faster than Olympic.

This material from Harland & Wolff is a primary source, which is far superior to secondary source material. As explained in the Harvard Library’s Research Guide for the History of Science:

Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. They are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented.

Secondary sources were created by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you’re researching.

The key distinction here is that, whereas many secondary sources simply repeated an assumption about Titanic‘s propellers that was made by people who were not there in 1912, the primary source material was produced first hand by personnel at Harland & Wolff who were tasked with keeping a record of each completed ship’s technical particulars. It is the contemporary record which was kept by the shipbuilding firm who completed Titanic in 1912.

This dossier groups together the primary source evidence and analysis of that material, including the Harland & Wolff evidence published in 2008 and other supporting evidence discovered by other researchers in the years since.

Sadly, Titanic’s propeller configuration has been the subject of ill-tempered and vitriolic arguments online. What was simply an interesting discovery of a previously unknown difference between her and her older sister ship has become the topic of frequent hysteria. Nonetheless, despite all these arguments, there is no debate as far as the primary source evidence is concerned. From the historian’s perspective, what counts is that our interpretation is based on the best available evidence. The best information we have about Titanic’s propeller configuration (to date) is Harland & Wolff’s own records.

Above: A stunning illustration of how Titanic‘s propellers most likely appeared, based on the propeller specifications recorded by Harland & Wolff. (Courtesy Vasilije Ristovic, 2019)

Aside Published on 2 April 2025

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.

Aside Published on 28 January 2024

Article from the Archives: Majestic Specification File

Majestic was the largest ship in service from 1922 until 1935. The new edition of RMS Majestic: The ‘Magic Stick’ will be published shortly and so it is worth taking a look at her key specifications and statistics. This specification file was published in November 2007 and gives a good idea of the scale of the ship. It illustrates that Majestic carried up to 1,093 crew, including almost eight hundred in the victualling department, who were tasked with looking after the passengers in all three classes. Her oil consumption per day was typically 840 tons (indeed, she burned 4,550 tons of oil during the course of her 189th westbound crossing in January 1935) and her engines developed an average of about 66,000 shaft horsepower. Her gross tonnage (a measure of the ship’s size by the total enclosed space, not weight) was about 22 percent greater than Titanic‘s.

Aside Published on 21 November 2023Leave a comment

Article from the Archives: ‘Britannic: The Length and Breadth of The Ship’

Even today, precisely 107 years after Britannic‘s loss, her history is often misunderstood. Many popular beliefs about her are demonstrably false. Among them are two basic points about her dimensions:

The belief that she was 903 feet long (overall length), whereas she was exactly the same length as her older sisters.
The belief that her beam (breadth) was increased following the Titanic disaster in order to make room for the ‘inner skin’ which was fitted along the length of her boiler and engine rooms. In reality, the decision to increase her beam had been taken already prior to the keel being laid.

This detailed article provides an analysis of the evidence about her length and discusses the reasons her breadth was increased. It was first published in the Titanic Historical Society’s Titanic Commutator February 2020: Pages 171-76.

Above: The sea above Britannic‘s wreck is a beautiful, deep blue (photographed in 2016). (Author’s collection)

Aside Published on 6 November 2023

Article from the Archives: ‘Lusitania and Mauretania: Perceptions of Popularity’

One of the common problems with research into Titanic history in particular, and ocean liner history more generally, is the repetition of claims in secondary sources (such as articles, books and television programmes) which do not match up to the available evidence. One such claim is that Cunard’s Lusitania was more popular with the travelling public than her sister Mauretania. Perhaps her tragic loss in May 1915 has distorted perception and memory as the years passed, because the available data on the number of passengers carried by both ships in the 1907-14 period is clear that Mauretania carried more passengers in total and a higher average passenger list.

My article, ‘Lusitania and Mauretania– Perceptions of Popularity‘, was published in the Titanic Historical Society’s Titanic Commutator 2008 : Volume 32 Number 184: Pages 196-200. It examined the number of passengers carried by each ship year by year and even included selected break downs by each class (first, second and third) and direction (westbound and eastbound). Although Lusitania carried slightly higher numbers of passengers initially, they drew level by 1909 and, from that point on, Mauretania was clearly in the lead.

Aside Published on 4 June 2023

Article from the Archives: ‘Whatever Happened to Germanic/Homeric?’

It’s sometimes said that the White Star Line’s Germanic, laid down in July 1914, was intended as a replacement for Titanic on the Southampton to New York express service. In fact, she was designed to serve their secondary service from Liverpool to New York. The fortunes of war meant she was never completed. My article ‘Whatever Happened to Germanic/Homeric?‘, published in the Titanic Historical Society’s Titanic Commutator 2013: Volume 38 Number 201, examined her history and I’m highlighting it for those who might have missed it when it was first published.

Aside Published on 14 September 2020

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.

Aside Published on 10 September 2019

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.

Aside Published on 12 September 2017

Presentation from the Archives: ‘The “Big Four”: Celtic, Cedric, Baltic & Adriatic’

The White Star Line’s Celtic (1901), Cedric (1903), Baltic (1904) and Adriatic (1907), collectively known as the ‘Big Four’, served for a combined 110 years. Together they carried around 1.5 million passengers on the Liverpool to New York and Southampton to New York routes during their time in service.

My presentation on 11 September 2017 at PRONI gave a comprehensive overview of all four ships’ histories, from conception and construction through to their successful commercial careers on the Liverpool and Southampton to New York services; cruising; war service; and Celtic‘s survival of both a mine explosion and torpedo attack in 1917 and 1918.