3.3 Titanic operation and boiler room 6

We are not quite through with boiler room six.  The author feels there remains substantial misunderstanding about the Titanic’s operation apart from the sinking itself and this impacts on the understanding of the sinking dynamics.  Why this misunderstanding persists is in and of itself a mystery.  The operation of boiler room six is central to the misunderstanding.

Titanic had six boiler rooms which were separated by transverse coal bunkers and water tight bulkheads.  As indicated previously, they were numbered 1 through 6 with number 1 boiler room closest to the stern and number 6 the most forward.  Boiler room 1 was the smallest with five single ended boilers.  The other five boiler rooms had double ended boilers which were about twice as long but of the same diameter.  Boilers in room 1 were principally used to provide steam for generating electric power and secondarily for the steam driven bilge pumps and ash ejectors.

Once the Titanic passed its abbreviated sea trials it is doubtful that these boilers in room 1 were ever completely shut down since the ship was immediately pressed into service to replace the sister ship Olympic which was in dry-dock for repairs.

 

Coal consumption was a big factor in steam ship operation and boilers were fired up on an as needed basis.  Thermodynamic and pressure drop considerations meant that only those boilers closest to the engines driving the ship were used for steam demanded by engines at the speed desired.  An approximate formula states that the steam required is proportional to the third exponential power of speed or velocity.   For example; a doubling of speed requires eight times more steam quantity, everything else remaining the same.

Until the collision with the ice berg Titanic was operating at reduced or “break-in” speed; at a little over 20 knots.  The running gear (reciprocating steam engines, steam turbine, gearing, bearings etc.) were performing very well so that Captain Smith and the virtual owner, Bruce Ismay, were anticipating getting favorable press by breaking Olympic’s maiden voyage crossing time record (Captain Smith himself had the Olympic under his command at that time).

To best Olympic’s record, the Titanic had to be run at its maximum design speed and to do this all boilers had to be operational which meant four (and the last) additional double boilers had to fired up according to the cube law noted above.  There happened to be four such boilers furthest from the engines that had never been used even in the test trials because the running gear had not yet been broken in.  These boilers were, of course, in boiler room six furthest from the stern.  Therefore I conclude: BOILER ROOM 6 WAS NOT IN OPERATION AT THE TIME OF THE COLLISION.

There is additional substantiating evidence for this conclusion which, by its nature, is quite extensive.  Much of it is therefore delegated to the APPENDIX. In Appendix 1 is a revised listing of the Titanic Crew, those who survived the sinking.  The original listing found in Reference 2 has a complete listing of all the crew prior to the sinking. This distinction is provided to help in keeping track of those involved in providing witness testimony.  Witnesses are shown in red lettering.  As far as boiler room six is concerned, the most important witness is leading fireman, Frederick Barrett. 

The crew listing in Reference 2 provides important information where it delineates the three 4 hour time “shifts” (watches) of operating personnel—firemen, trimmers and greasers.  It is very important to point out that the headings contained in Reference 2 for these time delineations for the operating personnel are misleading.  Better headings are provided in Appendix 1 where “watches” is to be preferred over “shifts” since the former is used in technical forums e. g. the hearings.  One reference states “there is nothing more confusing in the Titanic story than that involving time”  This seems to be the case even with simple things like “watches”.  The tables in Appendix 1 present 3 shifts of crew on 4 hour watches.  Each crew man on the Titanic served two watches a day each having 4 hours on and then 8 hours off.  From the evidence found so far it is not clear when the second watches occurred for the crew in these tables.  The bracketed times in blue format are my best guesses for when the second watches took place based on available information.  That information makes it clear that for these crew, the firemen,(stokers), trimmers, and greasers, the day schedule was as follows:

                             TITANIC WATCH SCHEDULE

8:00pm to 12:00am     2000-0000 (first watch)

12:00am to 4:00am    0000-0400 (middle watch)

4:00am to 8:00am      0400-0800 (morning watch)

8:00am to 12:00pm    0800-1200 (forenoon watch)

12:00pm to 4:00pm    1200-1600 (afternoon watch)

4:00pm to 6:00pm      1600-1800 (first dog watch)

6:00pm to 8:00pm      1800-2000 (second dog watch)

                      

Note that on the Titanic the 4-8 “shift” was broken into two watches called first and second dog watches.  Through a rotation system (not specified), the dog watches enabled all the crew of these tables to have evening meals on occasion.  Not all shipping companies or ships for that matter treated this kind of crew so well.

 

Now with the detailed information we can make better sense of what went on in boiler room 6 on the night of the collision.  We start the scenario at 4:00 pm the night of the sinking.  The third table down in Appendix 1 gives the surviving crew from this 4pm to 8pm watch.  The total crew in this watch shift before the sinking, besides the surviving lead fireman, Mr. Charles (George) Henderickson, included two other lead firemen, 54 firemen/stokers, 22 coal trimmers, and 18 greasers.  The firemen and trimmers were spread out over the five operational boiler rooms (1-5) since I maintain boiler room 6 was not in operation..  While the greasers shared the same watch schedule as the firemen and trimmers and hence are in these lists, most of their duties took them far from boiler room activities since their job was to keep rotating surfaces, e.g. bearings, well lubricated.  Other crew such as lookouts, had different watch schedules ranging from 2 hour watches to 8 hours and beyond.  Captain Smith’s main function, when things were going well, was to entertain the rich, young and famous for as much time as possible.  While the 4pm-8pm watch was keeping the ship running at top speed, the other two shifts were getting their evening meal either from 4 to 6 or 6 to 8.

Their feeding took place well away from the public in the crew dining room (mess) hall on C-deck forward of the bridge just under where Cameron’s movie stars Jack and Rose traipsed across to get to the bow for their romantic encounter.

The 4pm to 8pm watch is then replaced at 8:00 by the next watch; the 8pm to 12 (midnight) watch for which Mr. Frederick Barret is the surviving lead fireman.  The full crew for this watch includes 4 other lead firemen, 49 regular firemen, 22 trimmers, and 7 greasers.  [The disproportionate number of greasers in the 4pm-8pm watch raises my eyebrows, but the matter cannot be pursued here.  Many hours were spent by the table compiler for Reference 2, Lester J. Mitcham, and by others to provide these lists that are found in Reference 2 and for which I am most grateful; I must thereby leave it to others for explanation.]

According to Fred Barret’s testimony at the hearings there were three personnel in boiler room 6 at the time of the collision.  Here is his testimony as summarized by  Walter Lord in “Night to Remember”and depicted in Figure 3.3-1 below:

                                                                     

          F 3.3-1 Boiler Room 6 at Time of Collision

         [Appendix 1 is to be found at the end of "The Mysr]terious Titanic Affair" blog]

According to Fred Barret’s testimony at the hearings there were three personnel in boiler room 6 at the time of the collision.  His testimony is depicted in Figure 3.3-1 below:

F 3.3-1 Personnel in Boiler Room 6 at Time of Collision

Besides Fred, the leading fireman in this watch (he is listed first in Ref. 2), there is the engineer, Hesketh, and the fireman/stoker, Beauchamp.  No other personnel are mentioned by Barrett or Beauchamp (Hesketh did not survive).  If the boilers were in full operation there would have been fully a dozen operational people in boiler room 6 at the time of the collision.  Notice would have been made by Barrett and Beauchamp of the chaotic exit with that many people, the closing of the water tight doors and only one escape ladder.  And besides the water tight doors going into the firemans tunnel closing (two sets of doors), the tunnel was already filling with water.

So what were the three men, and only three men, doing in the boiler room?  They were starting up the 4 boilers for the high speed run for the rest of the voyage to best Olympic’s record.  I have read it takes about eight hours to start up a large coal fired scotch boiler and it has to be done carefully.  The start up details can be found elsewhere. 

These considerations lead to the following speculative scenario.  Sometime before the Sunday evening meal, Ismay confers with chief engineer Bell about the condition of the running gear and is informed that everything is performing better than could be expected and Ismay is assured that the propeller RPM’s could be increased without due concern.  [The DVDs give the impression that the Bell-Ismay conversation took place after the collision which is borderline non-sensical since the ship’s engines had been stopped for good within ten minutes of the collision and Ismay without much doubt knew it.]  During that evening meal Ismay let it be known that arriving early would be a good thing and Smith, possibly with some misgiving because of the ice warnings, agreed.  After the meal Smith orders Bell to start up the boilers beginning with 8pm watch after Bell assures him the ship is up to a higher speed.  Smith also hedges his bet by ordering a slight southward correction to the helmsman.  Both men then retire to the security of their magnificent private lounges and the rest of the scenario is well known by most.

3.4 Wholly, hole, holy mackerel

In my youth the expression holy mackerel was popular in my neck of the woods being less offensive than similar expression except to certain religious types (the context of which I was unaware in my younger years).  I find it a bit ironic that this memory comes to mind in a Titanic context.  In this section, we are going to consider the holes in the Titanic’s hull that were a consequence of the collision.  In my opinion there is something fishy about the estimates of their sizes—and yes this hole mackerel is part of the background material so hang in there.

In the past a whole lot of attention has justifiably been given to these Titanic holy holes, especially the uncertainty of their size location and geometry (that pretty well includes everything).  However, with some certainty we can narrow attention down to the bow section—in fact, what is postulated for boiler room 6 is fairly well believable.  To give a concrete example of the whole difficulty with the holes, the following table has been constructed from the analysis provided in Reference 2.

Table 3.4-1

Water Intake per compartment at 12:25 am

(from Ref. 2)

	COMPARTMENT	H2O Tons	AREA *        **
1	Forepeak tank	190	0.06	trace
2	No. 1 cargo hold	1,730	0.55	0.47
3	No. 2 cargo hold	3,040	0.96	0.80
4	No. 3 cargo hold	3,515	1.11	0.74
7	N0. 4 boiler room	187	0.06	trace
6	No. 5 boiler room	180	0.06	0.04
5	No. 6 boiler room	4,658	1.47	1.47
totals		13,500	4.27	3.52

                                                                          

                                                                           (  hole area in sq. ft. )

Table 3.4-1 shows a compartment by compartment tabulation of the amount of water that invaded the ship by 12:25 am or forty-five minutes after striking the iceberg.  [ H₂O data in table 3.2-1 from Reference 2 pg.111 ].  The fourth from the left column of table 3.2-1 (*) gives the area of the other holes (likewise assumed to be slits) obtained by prorating (ratioing) the amount of water in the other compartments to the water and area of compartment 5 (boiler room 6).   The right most column (**) is the area of each opening determined from the opening lengths given in F 3.1-3 multiplied by a presumed ½ inch width.  The correlation between the two different area determinations is surprisingly good except for cargo hold #3 (compartment 4).  The “water ratio” technique produces an opening area of 1.11 sq. ft., while the ½ inch technique produces an opening of 0.74 sq. ft.  There are at least two possibilities for this discrepancy.  First, the opening is much wider than ½ inch; the second possibility is that there is at least one or more openings in cargo hold #3 (compartment 4) not detected by the sub-bottom profiler.  Survivor testimony suggests that the latter possibility is more likely.  This testimony will be important in latter sinking analysis.

But it is the total area values at the bottom of the table that are disquieting if not downright alarming.  These values of less than five sq. ft. are a far cry from the nominal 12 sq. ft. determined by others or even the 10 sq. ft. the Reference 2 authors claim to have determined. The reason(s) for this disparity are not obvious to the present author and underscore his uncertainty about the published hole areas and their possible location. 

3. SIGNIFICANCE OF BOILER ROOM No. 6

It is somewhat difficult to separate out the true significance of boiler room No. 6 from what is public record and what is not. The inflow of water and the reaction of the ship’s personnel to it has been written about and dramatized over and over again.  On the other hand, attention seems to be focused on saving boiler room No. 5 from flooding as if that will save the ship from sinking.  In so doing, the audience has been deluded into downplaying the role of boiler room No 6   This then is the public record and part of the background to the Titanic sinking; and as such it could have been in the background section.   But it is not in the background  section because of the special significance it played in the sinking scenario.

3.1  Overview

To help the readers orient and familiarize themselves; especially those new or forgetful like me, a brief review of the front end of the Titanic is offered up.  This will help those who would like to know where boiler room No. 6 was located.  Figure F-3.1 gives sort of a cut away view of the ships guts in the forward area where all the damage occurred.  This view is before the Titanic struck the iceberg.

The numbering of the various features of the ship was somewhat unusual and somewhat confusing.  For the most part numbering sequences advanced from the front end, (the bow) to the backend, (the stern); except for the boiler rooms for which the numbering was opposite.  The use of Table T-3.1 in conjunction with F-3.1 will help clarify the nomenclature that was used by the ships designers.

The forepeak was separated from the forepeak tank by a horizontal bulkhead (heavy solid line).  The forepeak contained a separate chamber for storing the huge chains to which the anchors were attached.  This was called the chain locker.

Note in particular the watertight bulkheads labeled WTB-A, WTB-B, etc. (heavy mostly vertical lines) which are not included in the following table: 

      

                     Table 3.1

                 Titanic Numbering

FEATURE from left to right	COMPARTMENT  number
(stern to bow)
boiler room No. 4 boiler room No. 5 boiler room No. 6 cargo hold No. 3 cargo hold No. 2 cargo hold No. 1 forepeak tank forepeak	7 6 5 4 3 2   1   1

Not shown

Not shown

Now we start to go into the middle ground between public and non-public knowledge.  As any school-boy in his mid-twenties or thirties knows, Thomas Andrews said it all.  In many of the docudramas the chief technical man, Thomas Andrews, representing the ship builder Harland and Wolf, is seen explaining to the captain that the ship would not sink if only the first four compartments dividing the ship were flooded (compartments number 1-4 in table T-3.1).  This was an essential part of the philosophical basis upon which the ship was designed.  The other parts of the design philosophy are not germane to the discussion here and can be found elsewhere.  Bruce Ismay, the virtual owner of the ship, was told the same.  With some measure of authority, Andrews asserted that more compartments than four, the ship would sink.  That next vital compartment going aft, was compartment number five, which was, of course, boiler room six as explained previously ( F-3.1 and T-3.1).

After the sinking, the chief naval architect for Harland and Wolf, who reported to Andrews, said essentially the same thing during the inquiries in 1912 as his boss had on board the Titanic.  The amazing conclusion that can be drawn from this is ( never firmly stated in the resources I have studied) —the Titanic would not have sunk at all if boiler room six had not been damaged.  Not a single soul would have been injured let alone killed. 

According to Wielding’s presentation at the inquires, in this condition (only the four forward compartment flooded—holds 1-4) the ship would have been down by the bow only about 1-1/2 degrees with the propellers under water.  Possibly it could have made it to safe haven under its own power.  Figure F-3.2 depicts this happy ending..

[A number of these images were actually presented at the disaster inquiry in England in 1912 by Wielding himself .  These here have been taken from Reference 2.]

          Figure F-3.2  Titanic with only compartments 1-4 flooded

Unfortunately, such was not to be the case.  Figure F-3.3 provides a view of the damage sustained by the compartments —1-5  (which now includes boiler room 6) as determined by side scanning radar.  The source of this image is again Ref. 2.

       Figure F-3.3  Hull Damage Profile Measured by Side Scanning Radar

Titanic’s forward or bow portion is buried in the sea floor nearly up to its retracted anchors so the hull damage is only discernable through the bottom mud by radar.  There was minor damage done to compartment s 6 & 7 in addition to what is depicted but it could not be detected by the radar system and so is not shown in Figure F-3.3.  From the water intake reported by survivors, Wielding estimated the hull damage to be about 12 square feet which meant it could not have been a continuous gash in the hull for three hundred feet as was first thought.  The radar images show Wielding was correct.  Modern calculations (Ref. 2) indicate the damage amounted to something slightly less than 12 sq. ft.  Figure F-3.3 shows  that the damage length was greatest in boiler room 6 and the damage extended into boiler room 5 a short ways. 

Boiler room six would then seem to be the whole crux of the sinking disaster. Despite what the DVD’s depicted, the activity in boiler room 5 to save the ship was mistaken and futile.  Titanic was going to sink no matter what the crew did.  It was going to sink even if the coal bunker door had not failed.  However, other scenarios are possible and will be discussed much latter in this story.

How big was the hole in the side of Titanic’s hull in boiler room six.  Calculations by Charles Weeks and Samuel Halpern indicate that water came into boiler room 6 through a relatively small hole, less than 1-1/2 square ft. (Ref. 2, pg. 113) .  That is equivalent to about a sixteen in diameter circle.  What is being said here is that the fate of over 2,000 people depended on a hole in the ships side not a whole lot bigger than a large dinner plate.   On the surface of it, this would seem to be ludicrous situation in as much as the Titanic was the largest moving object made by man at the time.  No wonder there is so much fascination with the Titanic story.

This then is pretty much where the  boiler room 6 story available to the public ends; there is a bit more in what the survivors in boiler room 6 had to relate at the time of the collision Their stories will be woven into the narrative to follow and their stories are public knowledge.  Next we will provide a sneak preview into the proprietary analysis of what happened in boiler room 6.  Table 3.2 shows a compartment by compartment tabulation of the amount of water that invaded the ship by 12:25 am or forty-five minutes after striking the iceberg.  [ data in the two leftmost columns of table 3.2 ]

Table 3.2

Water Intake per compartment at 12:25 am

COMPARTMENT      H2O        AREA                                    tons       *        **
Forepeak tank	190	0.06	Trace
No. 1 cargo hold	1,730	0.55	0.47
No. 2 cargo hold	3,040	0.96	0.80
No. 3 cargo hold	3,515	1.11	0.74
N0. 4 boiler room	187	0.06	Trace
No. 5 boiler room	180	0.06	0.04
No. 6 boiler room	4,658	1.47	1.47

         

( area in sq. ft.)

The data in these first two columns is taken from Reference 2; page 111.  Through the use of the suitably modified bournuli equation along with appropriate Reynold’s number, flow coefficient, and water density (which the author’s did not disclose), Weeks and Halpern determined the area of the hole (opening) in boiler room six was about 1.47  sq. ft. (bottom row of T-3.2).  A simple calculation results in the hole of 1-1/2 sq. ft. being rather slit like with an average width of less than ½ inch. 

The third from the left column of table 3.2 (*) gives the area of the other holes (likewise slits) obtained by prorating (ratioing) the amount of water in the other compartment to the water and area of compartment 5, boiler room 6.   The right most column (**) is the area of each opening determined from the opening lengths given in F-3.3 multiplied by a presumed ½ inch width.  The correlation between the two different area determinations is surprisingly good except for cargo hold #3.  The “water ratio” technique produces an opening area of 1.11 sq. ft., while the ½ inch technique produces an opening of 0.74 sq. ft.  There are at least two possibilities for this discrepancy.  First, the opening can be much wider than ½ inch; the second possibility is that there is at least one or more openings in compartment 4 not detected by the sub-bottom profiler.  Survivor testimony suggests that the latter possibility is more likely.  This testimony will be important in latter sinking analysis.

Let us now return to boiler room 6 for a more detailed discussion of what happened there.  Figure 3.4 depicts a simplified cut-away view of boiler room 6 looking forward as if the boilers were not there.    This is how the structure would have looked before the collision with the iceberg.

                                                 F-3.4 Boiler Room 6 Undamaged

[ F-3.4 was taken from the DVD “Titanic Achilles Heel” (Ref. D1) and which then would ostensibly infer the image was boiler room 6 of the Titanic.  However the original image in the DVD showed an inner “skin” of steel plating.  In the view above, this inner plating (“skin”) has been removed since the Titanic did not have an inner “skin”.  Inner plating in the boiler rooms was added to both the Britannic and Olympic sister ships after the sinking of the Titanic as added precaution (and face-saving promotion by White Star line).]

This type of construction is still used today, the only difference being the welding of the structure together instead of using rivets.   Much attention has been given to the possibility that rivet failure played a significant role in the sinking, but laboratory testing has pretty well downplayed this theory.  Brief scenes of this testing can be viewed in DVD’s, and technical reports are also available.   No doubt it is possible some rivets failed in the forward part of the Titanic which took the brunt of the impact with the iceberg initially.

The next view is boiler room 6 about 8 seconds after the collision with the iceberg.  There is now a ½ inch crack in the  hull plate about 2 feet up as surviving fireman  xxxxx described in his court room appearances.

                                                F-3.5 Boiler Room 6 Damaged***

            (*** time=approximately 8 seconds after initial contact with iceberg)

The amazing revelation that is being disclosed here is that apart from the crack, there is absolutely no new deformation of Titanic’s structure—no bent web or channel members what so ever!  At this time, approximately 8 seconds the iceberg is still in contact with the hull outside of boiler room 6 and is preventing significant water entry.  The next view depicts water flow into boiler room 6 through the ½ inch crack.  The reader is reminded of scale disception—the plates shown in F-3.5 (and the one with the crack) are six feet high!

Crack dynamics is the subject of the next section.  Because of its proprietory nature it, the discussion of crack dynamics, cannot be presented in the blog at this time.

 What can be said at this point is this crack formation is a consequence of steel embrittlement which, in the case of the Titanic is public knowledge.  Aside from striking the iceberg itself, steel embrittlement at water freezing temperatures is the fatal flaw in the Titanic disaster, the root cause of the ship’s sinking and the resultant loss of life.  Although made of the highest quality steel at the time of Titanic’s construction, the consequences of steel impurities at low temperatures was unknown to steel makers and users, and therefore not a subject of quality assurance.  Reference XXXX provides a thorough discussion of this subject as applied to the Titanic situation and for the non-faint hearted it is recommended reading.  In a nutshell, under the conditions that prevailed that night in the mid-Atlantic, the Titanic’s steel shell was shock sensitive…a metalugical “fatal flaw”,  Note, as depicted in F-3.5, it was the steel plate itself that failed, not a riveted seam.  A question remains!  What caused the crack to be ½ inch wide?  That is the subject of the next section, section 3.3.

3.3  Crack dynamics

MATERIAL IN THIS SECTION IS PROPRIETARY

NOT CONTAINED IN THE BLOG

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