Flintlock76 The Mod-man mentioned Turbinia, did anyone know she's still around? I didn't! Here Nikolas Lloyd, good 'ol "Lindybeige," takes us on an enthusiastic tour of Turbinia in her home in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle. Pure fun and very informative, "Lindy's" a great storyteller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrZ5IE-1GJ4 And now I'm going to sign off for a while. Even after three cups of coffee and two apple turnovers I'm making spelling and typing mistakes like you wouldn't believe! See you later!
The Mod-man mentioned Turbinia, did anyone know she's still around? I didn't!
Here Nikolas Lloyd, good 'ol "Lindybeige," takes us on an enthusiastic tour of Turbinia in her home in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle. Pure fun and very informative, "Lindy's" a great storyteller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrZ5IE-1GJ4
And now I'm going to sign off for a while. Even after three cups of coffee and two apple turnovers I'm making spelling and typing mistakes like you wouldn't believe!
See you later!
I am glad to know that Mr. Lloyd loves the HMS Nelson! I think we visited this museum before but the Turbinia wasn't there. I want my fantasy steampunk steam turbine ocean liner to have those screws on the Turbinia! Just because that looks cool...
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Flintlock76'Dude, talk about some tragic ironies. If Lusitania had collided with the iceberg, in exactly the same manner as Titanic,
Flintlock76If the Titanic had been hit by a torpedo damage would have been localized in that watertight compartment,
Flintlock: Two sincere, if ignorant questions:
1. What credence do you give to the theory that inferior iron plating was a significant factor in Titanic's sinking? If Lusitania had been constructed of the same allegedly inferior iron, and yet penetrated in the same place(s), would the results have been the same?
Also, 2. If Titanic had been carrying the same munitions as Lusitania is alleged to have been, would the results have been similar?
Although the brittle plates in the Titanic's hull contributed to the damage, the real problem was the open-top "watertight" compartments. Once the first compartment flooded and spilled over, the ship was finished. Later watertight hulls would have survived the same level of damage.
"Pre-titanic" steel is still around in structures and preserved railroad equipment. The biggest issue for preservationists is that the steel is difficult to repair by welding, since modern materials are much more pliable.
NKP guy Flintlock76 'Dude, talk about some tragic ironies. If Lusitania had collided with the iceberg, in exactly the same manner as Titanic, Flintlock76 If the Titanic had been hit by a torpedo damage would have been localized in that watertight compartment, Flintlock: Two sincere, if ignorant questions: 1. What credence do you give to the theory that inferior iron plating was a significant factor in Titanic's sinking? If Lusitania had been constructed of the same allegedly inferior iron, and yet penetrated in the same place(s), would the results have been the same? Also, 2. If Titanic had been carrying the same munitions as Lusitania is alleged to have been, would the results have been similar?
Flintlock76 'Dude, talk about some tragic ironies. If Lusitania had collided with the iceberg, in exactly the same manner as Titanic,
Flintlock76 If the Titanic had been hit by a torpedo damage would have been localized in that watertight compartment,
Very little NKP, although I'm sure I'll get some arguments on that.
First, Titanic was built of the finest materials of the time. The steel used in the hull wouldn't pass muster in this day and age, in actual fact it was rolled iron. The main cause of the fatal damage was the riveted seams splitting due to the impact of the iceberg. Maybe if the ship had been built of modern welded steel the plates may have just bent instead of splitting, but of course that kind of construction was far in the future.
Interestingly, when Olympic rammed and sank that U-Boot during WW1 her "forefoot," that is the lower leading end of the bow was bent four feet out of alignment, but none of the plates shattered or broke.
Dr. Bob Ballard said, and I agree with him, what killed the Titanic wasn't poor design, or poor materials, or poor workmanship, what killed it was poor seamanship.
Did the munitions on Lusitania cause that secondary explosion? They're still puzzling over that one. The munitions carried were small-arms ammunition, not heavy high-explosive stuff, small-arms smokeless powder cartidges don't blow up like that. Anyway, the topedo struck just about the area below the starboard bridge wing, which was aft of the hold the munitions were stored it.
It's speculated that a coal-dust explosion is what split the starboard side of the Lusitania open, as stated earlier the bunkers ran along the side of the ship and of course that's where the torpedo hit. Coal is a dirty fuel, and the torpedo's explosion would have kicked up quite a bit of dust, easily ignited, producing the same effect as a grain elevator explosion.
The sounds of the two explosions were quite different as well, the torpedo exploding with a loud "CR-ACK!" and the secondary explosion was described as a long, low rumbling one, consistant with an airborne dust explosion.
Since the Lusitania lies on the bottom on its starboard side there's no way to inspect the damage and resolve the controversy, if one wants to call it that. The real answer will never be known.
I hope that answers the questions instead of confusing things more!
I don't recall brittle plates ever being a real issue: it was high sulfur in rivets holding the plates together. The glancing blow opened up lots of seams rather than a 'hole'.
I have never given much credence to the 'secondary explosion' on Lusitania being sympathetic munitions detonation. There was far more energy in levitated coal dust, and it was all 'right there'. (Leaving aside the issue of munitions on the ship in the first place, which I think there were -- at least 50tons of relatively small-bore ammunition -- making the ship a fair target for naval action...
I do think Titanic, if torpedoed under similar circumstances, may have demonstrated similar secondary detonation, and perhaps with brittle rivets much quicker secondary flooding and sinking.
Titanic's rivets. Just how brittle were they?
Well, several years ago I watched one of those TV documentaries on Titanic, and a stress-test was performed on a Harland and Wolff rivet dating from Titanic's time. The testers were surpised at just how much force it took to break it. "Nothing wrong with THAT rivet!" was the consensus.
What might have made a difference was the rivet type. The rivet tested was a "button-head" rivet, but below the waterline Titanic's plates were flush-riveted. Without the extra material of a "button-head" rivet it's just possible the plates were more prone to "popping," but with the damage buried in mud there's no way to tell.
A torpedo hit on Titanic? Remember what I mentioned earlier about Cymric, another Harland and Wolff-built ship. If Titanic had been torpedoed the damage would have been confined to one watertight compartment, and even if it hit one of the coal bunkers the damage would have been confined to that one bunker, instead of a chain-reaction effect down the ships side.
Titanic may very well have been lost, but not in less than 20 minutes like Lusitania, and I think it might very well have survived.
Isn't this fun?
A 1998 article in the Journal of Mettalurgy admitted that the Titanic's steel might have been the best carbon steel available at the time, but it was still brittle at -2C, which was the water temperature at the time of the collision. The simultaneous rupture of several compartments created most of the problem, but ship might have survived with a design which did not allow water to spill over into otherwise undamaged compartments.
Since the rivets were heated and then carried a ways before being inserted into their holes, some or even many of them may have been cold riveted, which would have contributed to the rivets being brittle.
Here's a link to the JOM article:
https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9801/felkins-9801.html
Thanks Mr. Drye.
Certainly if the watertight bulkheads had been carried up one more deck the ship might not have sunk. If it was built like a man-of-war where whole compartments could be sealed off it wouldn't have sunk. But bear in mind, no-one at the time could forsee a situation where 300 feet of the ship's side would be laid open, by anything. And it certainly wasn't intended to go into combat.
The big worry of the time, and it was genuine problem, was collision with other ships, a definate concern in those pre-radar days, and at busy harbor mouths, especially in conditions of poor visibility. It happened all the time. The expected damage from the same would have been confined to one compartment, two at most. As designed and built Titanic would have been more than capable of handling such damage. In fact, Titanic would have survived the damage that sank the Andrea Doria.
What the Titanic was built with is really immaterial, you build with what you have. What can't be argued is the ship was handled in a manner that bordered on recklessness, keeping up speed when ice warnings had been received, not posting extra lookouts, captain not on the bridge at the time the ice was expected to be encountered, although in fairness the man had to get some rest sometime, slipshod handling of wireless messages concerning ice, and a myriad of other things that led to the disaster.
Going back to New York City in the late 30's, perhaps you might like improved St. Johs Park Freright Terminal photos:
Thanks David, I was hoping you'd show up!
How did you like that film from 1937? I and everyone else was amazed!
Flintlock76 It WAS the propellers. My memory was jogged by the 'Dude's comment, so I dug out my copy of "The Only Way To Cross" by John Maxtone-Graham. The turbine engines were smooth running, remarkably so, but high-speed propeller design was in it's infancy so it took a number of tries at propeller re-design to get close to getting it right on "Mary" and "Lucy," and even then it wasn't resolved 100%. Normandie even had vibration problems with it's original propellers. Three-bladed, they were replaced with a four-blade design which solved the problem.
It WAS the propellers. My memory was jogged by the 'Dude's comment, so I dug out my copy of "The Only Way To Cross" by John Maxtone-Graham.
The turbine engines were smooth running, remarkably so, but high-speed propeller design was in it's infancy so it took a number of tries at propeller re-design to get close to getting it right on "Mary" and "Lucy," and even then it wasn't resolved 100%.
Normandie even had vibration problems with it's original propellers. Three-bladed, they were replaced with a four-blade design which solved the problem.
That's what I get for skimming stuff on the internet in a hurry without bothering to track down proper sources.
I wonder if the Olympic Class had stronger frames which mitigated any vibration problems from their propulsion systems.
Regardless of the design, life as a stoker on a large coal-fired ship must have been absolutely Hellish!
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
I typed some stuff yesterday but accidentally clesed the window! Oh well.
The "straps" are clearly shown in this Ken Marschall painting:
He also painted something on the upper superstructure that looks very similar in this dock view of Titanic.
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
A family heirloom? No idea. But we've had this small trunk for as long as I can remember.
I store cables in it:
It's painted with the owner's name, likely by his or her own hand:
What makes it special are the remnants of the paper labels:
The ship shows at least 2 funnels. Also note the remnants of the U.S. customs stamp.
This one says "Hotel Ambassador Havana". In reality you can only read it if you tilt it into the light into an angle. If you look at my first opic you can see it in the bottom right corner. But I enhanced it as best I could in Photoshop to make it a hair more legible.
I'd love to know who "M. Lawrence" was and what ship this sailed on!
I wish I could show pictures of the trunks my mother's parent used in their trips to and from Japan (they were missionaries). Some had labels "Not Wanted"--which meant that they were not needed during the ocean trip. On the second (and last) trip my mother took, in 1907, they arrived in Vancouver on the Empress of China (there is a model of it in the maritme museum in Victoria) after a rough crossing (the children enjoyed it; my grandmother did not), came down to Vancouver and took the Great Northern's best train to St. Paul in a tourist sleeper which had a cookstove in it. I do not know what road they took to Chicago or then on to South Carolina. The trip wasin July, and when the train stopped in the Rockies, my uncles who were old enough got off and threw snowballs.
Johnny
Penny TrainsI'd love to know who "M. Lawrence" was and what ship this sailed on!
This might help: The Cleveland Blue Book for 1931 lists two people who might be "M. Lawrence." The first is Miss Maude Lawrence of 23200 Lake Road in Bay Village; and the second is Miss Margaret R. Lawrence of 1861 East 90th Street, who lived at home with her widowed mother. Margaret was a 1913 graduate of Flora Stone Mather College of WRU, and about 30 or more when/ if she sailed on Cunard and took this trunk with her in the 1920's. In 1945 she was living in Lakewood at 10109 Lake Avenue.
Of course, I don't know. But she seems the likely former owner of your trunk.
Flintlock76Normandie even had vibration problems with its original propellers. Three-bladed, they were replaced with a four-blade design which solved the problem.
Incidentally, one of the 'big secrets' about United States was that her inboard screws (woman-designed!) were five-bladed (of sophisticated bladeform for the time)...
Don't thank me... thank Mike!!
Posted by Penny Trains on Monday, January 27, 2020 7:05 PM
Penny Trains I typed some stuff yesterday but accidentally clesed the window! Oh well. The "straps" are clearly shown in this Ken Marschall painting: He also painted something on the upper superstructure that looks very similar in this dock view of Titanic.
The lines of rivets around the double row of scuttles at the top of the black painted area on the Titanic look very similar to those on the Normandie. I guess this was a common practice in riveted hulls of the period. It looks as though the Normandie had some areas electrically welded, particularly around the bow.
My own experience is confined to welded structure.
Peter
I wonder why the funnels/smokestacks on the Normandie are so much wider than the other ships?
SD70Dude That's what I get for skimming stuff on the internet in a hurry without bothering to track down proper sources. I wonder if the Olympic Class had stronger frames which mitigated any vibration problems from their propulsion systems. Regardless of the design, life as a stoker on a large coal-fired ship must have been absolutely Hellish!
One thing to remember is that at the time of the Lusitania and Mauritania the turbines were direct drive and the shafts turned much faster than the reciprocating engines of the time.
Thus the design of the propellers was a work in progress. The two big Cunarders were the biggest turbine ships in the world when laid down.
The Olympic and her sisters had four cylinder triple expansion engines with an exhaust turbine on the centre shaft. In the movie Titanic there is a scene showing an underwater view of the hull and the centre shaft can be seen to be turning about twice as fast as the outer shafts. So propeller induced vibration would be less likely due to occur on the big White Star ships.
Shaft misalignment can be a source of vibration, even very small errors can cause problems for the life of a ship.
HMAS Melbourne, a WWII light fleet carrier, had this problem. But at the turbines themselves, you could only tell they were running if they were hot... But there was a lot of other noisy things in the engine room...
And the Royal Navy never transferred a ship to the RAN that they wanted to keep...
The Normandie had 200 000 shaft horsepower
The Titanic had 45 000 shaft horsepower
The Titanic had three active funnels while the Normandie had two.
There was a significant change in fashion and by 1935 lower, wider, funnels were popular.
The Bremen and the America were both built with lower funnels but they had to be raised to carry the smoke clear of the decks. Partly this was due to the influence of diesel ships which didn't need tall funnels since there was less exhaust smoke.
Anyone notice the other thing about Normandie's funnels?
Funnels two and three are progressively lower than funnel one. Part of the esthetic of the ships design, they give the impression of speed.
And that Ken Marschall painting of Normandie? Kenny sure knows his business, doesn't he? Great attention to detail!
And 'Dude, life as a stoker on a coal-fired ship was hellish! Maxtone-Graham devotes a chapter of "The Only Way To Cross" to the subject. Great book, if you can find it don't pass it up.
Oddly enough, the stokers themselves took kind of a perverse pride in the hellish conditions of the job and their ability to deal with it. Tough people back then brother!
SD70DudeI wonder if the Olympic Class had stronger frames which mitigated any vibration problems from their propulsion systems.
The Olympic class were never intended to be fast ships -- their business model was quite different. People who don't know this tend to think Ismay was trying to get Captain Smith to go recklessly fast in the ice field 'to capture the Blue Riband' or make New York in record time or some such nonsense.
The turbine on Titanic was intended purely as an economy device -- as you probably know, it operated completely below atmospheric pressure, inlet to exhaust, and only rotated forward. In a sense it was an adjunct to the condensers in controlling exhaust flow from the LP stage of the reciprocating engines in full forward operation.
The chief 'stupidity' in ship-handling, to the extent there really was one, came in combining a 'crash-stop' reverse with attempting to avoid the berg entirely. I think it has been established that the Titanic would have handily avoided the collision if simply throttled down to something like medium ahead, where she would have responded reasonably well to her rudder and not suffered 'spoiling' of the flow to the rudders from the reversing screws. Any non-glancing damage, even if severe, would likely have been handled by the existing compartment system -- a lesser ship than this, in WW1, had her bow blown off by a torpedo in mid-Atlantic and successfully made port, in reverse to limit sea action on the exposed bulkheads.
The question, to me, is if the shock of a greater impact would have buckled the ship at the now-known weak zone around the Grand Staircase, where the hull actually broke in the 1912 sinking. Even so, I would argue, the ship would not have sunk -- certainly not in the time it would have taken for the nearest liner, only 63 miles away at the time of impact (!), to arrive and rig to take passengers off.
Of course there would have been a very different inquest, asking whether the maritime equivalent of emergency braking shoulda-coulda-woulda been used to prevent any impact in the first place ... and, not knowing what we now know so well, heads would probably have rolled.
I bought into the whole Ismay-as-villain thing far too long: it was only by knowing Henry Forster, who knew him firsthand and well, that I got an accurate picture of the situation. If it helps matters any, Ismay took personal and extensive responsibility for the sinking and was involved for over 25 years in administering the company that handled the insurance, long after he resigned as head of IMM and White Star. It is his (fairly extensive) thoughts about how the sinking could have been avoided, as related through Forster, that govern much of how I look at the accident.
Poor Bruce Ismay. Never having been in a situation like that I can't in good concience point a finger at him and say "You should have done THIS!" or "You should have done THAT!" but I can't help but think if he stayed on board until the ship sank, and then with a bit of luck managed to survive, he never would have gotten the grief he did in that "Death before dishonor!" society he grew up in.
Second Officer Lightoller, the senior surviving officer of Titanic did just that, and later on said thank God he did, as he didn't have to take any "back-chat" from anyone over surviving.
Another thing about the turbine engines on Olympic and Titanic. If what I've read is true both Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line were being a little conservative. They were interested in turbines, but weren't ready to go all the way with them yet. The turbines on both ships were kind of a "Let's try them and see how they perform" installation.
And yes, just like a car turns faster at a higher speed so will a ship, so First Officer Murdoch blundered badly with his attempt to avoid the collision. I guess he didn't drive, huh?
I have to say one thing. Author Daniel Allen Butler said it best, and Lady Firestorm, myself, and thousands of other Titanic junkies agree with him.
"Once you let Titanic into your life, she never leaves!"
Yeah, if Ismay had waited to get in a boat until after the sinking, he could have been a hero. He could also have gone down with the 'suction' or frozen waiting for recovery like so many others. He did reflect frequently on how advisable it would have been to have waited...
Flintlock76Another thing about the turbine engines on Olympic and Titanic. If what I've read is true both Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line were being a little conservative. They were interested in turbines, but weren't ready to go all the way with them yet.
They were considerably more than conservative. The three big ships were explicitly intended to be no faster than they were because turbines, at the time, were considerably more expensive per effective shp ... and if run without even more expensive reduction gearing would have had much the same cavitation issues as did the Cunarders, probably even at the lower hull speed. Remember that hydrodynamics on the large White Star hulls were still at a very primitive level; you're familiar with all the 'unexpected effects' like those on the New York.
The economies provided by the Parsons reaction turbine as built, though, were substantial. To the extent they provided a desirable PR boost as "turbine propulsion" I'm sure the design was further approved, but the idea was purely economically based ... and of course couldn't be done with any level of further piston-engine compounding. It is highly interesting that the last stage of quadruple expansion was used instead of 'more stages' in the reaction turbine for compounding, further proof of the 'economic' explanation...
The turbines on both ships were kind of a "Let's try them and see how they perform" installation.
There was nothing novel for Harland & Wolff (or Andrews, or anyone at White Star or IMM) to "learn" about the use of turbines for primary propulsion. They could surely have been used had the 'business model' found them useful ... warts and all. I find it much more interesting that they greenlighted the adoption of the reaction bottoming turbine so thoroughly at that relatively early date.
No, I guess he was intimately familiar over his long period of experience with smaller ships on how one reacted when confronted with an iceberg squarely in a ship's path. And no, I don't blame him (any more than I'd, say, blame Euclid for recommending emergency instead of blended-full-service in the corresponding situation for high-speed passenger trains).
Now, better experience in sea trials would establish how poorly the ship would respond to the helm in a crash stop -- if I recall correctly, if dimly, this in fact was observed in some ship trials, especially the 'spoiling' effect of the reversed inside propellers on the rudder of four-screw ships. There has been discussion of a 'spoiling' effect by the Parsons center screw, which would have surely been in full stable operation at the time the iceberg was spotted, but the turbine itself would have been cut out immediately at the time the engines were reversed (since it could not be reversed) and even from full rpm the effect would be mere 'windmilling' with little hydrodynamic effect on the rudder integrity (at least in my opinion). Now, if for some reason the turbine were not disengaged when the engines were reversed, you'd have a whole different issue ... but I don't think there has been any suggestion other than speculation that that could, let alone would, have been the situation.
There was considerable discussion at the inquest (again, as I recall) about the consequences of steering around the iceberg rather than reversing at crash stop. Much of this focused on the potential for disturbing and perhaps even injuring passengers with the 'centrifugal' force and heeling that would accompany such a rapid turn, especially if differential action from the outer screws was not commanded (as, I confess, I would have done, but strictly by reducing the 'outer' engine turns rather than reversing that engine to provide differential thrust preserving relatively 'clean' hydrodynamics over the screws and hull). I would also expect a certain concern about 'what else' might be encountered during the subsequent evasive-action turns in a known ice field... we'll leave aside any consideration of "CYA" for getting the speed up there a bit too quick 'for conditions', as it were...
BTW: it does bear remembering, as few seem to do, that they did almost succeed in getting way off the ship while making the evasive turn: in essence, had the ship stopped even a few feet sooner, the damage would not have extended patently into boiler-room 5, and the ship not sunk so quickly ... perhaps, with collision mats successfully deployed, not at all. A problem, of course, is that no one seems to have remembered the enhanced Bernoulli effect when the large bluff hull was running parallel to a solid object, so it's not likely even a more successful evasion turn would have kept the side of the ship out of contact with the iceberg as it was constituted, with the projecting shelf at the 'wrong' depth... in fact, this might have led to a longer damage path and, knowing what we now know, a much quicker sinking.
You know, I have to feel a bit sorry for First Officer Murdoch as well. Disliking "Monday morning quarterbacking" I do realize that whatever he had to do, he had to decide RIGHT NOW! And if he decided right, he'd have been a hero. Too bad.
Just like so many others who have to decide RIGHT NOW! A cop on the beat, a battlefield commander, an airline pilot, well, you get the picture.
In a way, it's even more of a shame Captain Smith wasn't on the bridge. Titanic was observed to have made a series of S-turns on the voyage from Southhampton to Cherborg as Captain Smith got the feel of the ship. Possibly E.J would have given the correct helm orders to have avoided the collision, but again, just speculation.
Are we still having fun here?
There are some 3D artists rebuilding the Lusitania and Titanic with up to date graphic engines for various games and simulations. Some of them have a highly detailed interior. Don't miss the free demo 3 of "Titanic Honor & Glory":
That is some amazing CGI, both the Lusitania and the Titanic interiors!
Flintlock76 That is some amazing CGI, both the Lusitania and the Titanic interiors!
Definitely! You could walk around the ship to explore the interior after you downloaded the "Titanic: Honor and Glory" software, it is just like a computer game. An Intel i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, and a common 5-year old graphic card should be powerful enough to run that program. For the Lusitania, I think there is another add-on for the "Vehicle Simulator", but the graphics engine of that game is rather outmoded so I didn't post the video here.
I don't know about frame strength, but the Titanic had a wider beam at 92'6" vs. Lusitania's 87'6" and clocked in at nearly 46,000 tons displacement where the Lusi's displacement was 38,000 tons. I would assume that those are the key numbers as to why Titanic was more stable. As built Lusitania had 3 bladed screws:
Which were replaced with 4 blade screws in 1909. You can visit them in Liverpool and Dallas:
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter