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Ellen Grace Butland
Member
Username: elgrace
Post Number: 17
Registered: 9-2008
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 10:15 am: | 
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Dear Mr Layton, I have just recieved a copy of your book, AT LAST a text which speaks of this ship before her last tragic voyage. I thank you for your marvellous text, and will reply again when I've read it all. The only other text which touches on the Lucy's career is E Sauder and K marschell's Lusitania, apart from reprints of Engineering and Shipbuilder. If one thinks of bombs going off inside a ship, might I point to the Lancastria. Apparantly, she copped a bomb clean down one of her funnels, the results and loss of life were horrible. Mr Layton, may I thank you for your excellent work. I appreciate it very much. |
Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 588
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 10:34 am: |
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This is what I think is the most likely point of impact based upon the descriptions of those few who suvived the two forward boiler rooms.
Unfortunately to meet dimension standards clarity has been lost
The two names in #1 are Madden and Davis. Mcdermott is in #2. The red lines are High Pressure steamlines and the small clusters of black dots: metal fragments/splinters. the the long narrow arrow denotes Maddens journey to the aft bulkhead ignoring a ladder nearby.
"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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Jim Kalafus
Member
Username: jak
Post Number: 4795
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:01 am: |
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>Meantime the ship is driving forward unstoppable but only slowly reducing way.
Fortunately, she was not going all that fast.
In fact, one of the points Cunard's lawyers fought tooth and nail to keep out of the liability hearings, was just how SLOW she was moving. (Here is why the liability transcipts are a treasure. Questions were asked, and answered, to which Cunard objected and the objections were always sustained- we were, after all, at war with Germany. The judge could not legally consider these points while rendering his verdict, but they remain in the transcripts) Earlier in the morning she had nearly come to a complete stop in the war zone, which had the passengers talking with great concern among themselves (OBJECTION! Sustained.) When she began moving again, she was still going at a substantially reduced rate and hove in closer to the coast than any experienced traveler had ever known her to. And, there were many~ 64 first class passengers had already been aboard her in the previous eight months, and they KNEW. (OBJECTION! Sustained.) In the final hour, she was further away from shore, and moving faster than she HAD been after the inexplicable stop, but not as fast as she had been moving the day before. (OBJECTION! Sustained.)
15 knots seems about right.
We know of two passengers who were struck by the port side propeller as it reached the surface. One of these men was stunned, but survived, and his companion was gashed and seriously bleeding and probably did not survive. So, we can venture a guess that within 5 minutes of the dumping of the first port side boat, the props were near the surface and barely moving.
One wonders for how long propellers moving at a speed sufficient enough to drive a 32,000 ton liner at 15-16 knots would be able to overcome the drag of the submerging bow. By accounts given by crew members in later years as they attempted to explain the debacle of the lifeboats, it would seem that she was under way until seconds before she sank. Ogden Hammond, who was ejected from the first port boat to be wrecked, described her as being either a mile or a half mile from him when she finally sank (I don't have his testimony on hand)and she unquestionably left an arc of wreckage, shaped like a comma, as she moved forward, lost way, and sank.
Goodbye, dear, and amen. Here's hoping we meet again. Twas great fun...
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Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 589
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:17 am: |
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Hi J Kent,
thanks for posting the Times on Line story link.
I see they used that grossly inaccurate painting by Wilkinson of the Lusi "doing a Titanic"
as opposed to a more likely scenario like below.
"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 590
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:25 am: |
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Thanks for that Jim,
I would love to read those, shame it can't be published in book form.
The ship's passage after torpedoing is a matter that has exercised my mind for ages. We need some sort of forensics and naval engineering to help us out. By my tests with hull profiles I worked out the stern lifts the screws out of the sea at roughly the same time the focsle deck completely submerges[ 10 minutes after the torpedoe by my reading]
I hope that helps.
cheers
"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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Michael Poirier
Member
Username: mike_poirier
Post Number: 855
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:33 am: |
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Hi Martin,
Reading the survivor accounts that I have, I would definitely have the stern higher in the air than the rendering you produced. Not a dramatic, Cameron like angle, but definitely higher.
Mike
Sitting on stuff is called, 'squatty toad syndrome'.
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Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 591
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:38 am: |
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"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 592
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:43 am: |
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re stern higher, Mike, I agree this took place at the moment Ken shows in his now famous painting. The screws leave the water briefly BUT as more portholes submerge aft the ship settles back to where I drew her based on the other Marschall painting, so I think we are both right.
The Cameron-like angle is improbable and what I have against the "war propaganda school" of art.
thanks for the feed back. I'm enjoying this 
"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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Michael Poirier
Member
Username: mike_poirier
Post Number: 856
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:56 am: |
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Hi Martin
I tend to think the Marshall painting is inaccurate. It looks more Cameron. I would probably, for that moment in time you drew, show more of the deck in front of the third funnel, tilt it more to starboard, and raise the stern more.
Sitting on stuff is called, 'squatty toad syndrome'.
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Jim Kalafus
Member
Username: jak
Post Number: 4797
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 12:37 pm: |
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>I tend to think the Marshall painting is inaccurate.
Well, in the final minutes, as we know from Needham and Mereheina, the Lusitania had heeled far enough to cause the collapsibles at the stern, which they were cutting loose at two different points, to slide across one another to the rail and become damaged. But not in the painting.
We know from everyone in Harkeness' boat, as well as Mrs. Pye in a different boat and Mrs. Wolfenden in a third, that the funnels came over the boats in such a way that, in all three cases, the occupants assumed that they were about to be crushed. In Harkness's boat, several DOZEN of the close to one hundred occupants gave interchangeable accounts of this. Many in that boat said that the funnels seemed close enough to touch.
Come to think of it, where IS the boat with close to 100 occupants and less than six inches of freeboard in the painting?
We know, from Maude Thompson, that the angle of incline was not steep as the water washed on to the starboard boat deck. She and those she stood with were swept back along the deck towards the stern as the ship began to sink. As Mike said, more of the superstructure should be shown at the moment captured in the painting.
Also, she sank at an angle that allowed the wireless antenna to sweep across Harkness' boat. The witneses agreed that he saved the boat by pushing the antenna away as it swept across them. Quite a few people in the water were snared by it.
The ship, as seen in that painting, would have had to have made a VERY violent heel indeed- which no one commented on- to assume the accurate position in the time that remained for her.
My trouble is that the picture is remarkably static. Perhaps it captures the PRECISE moment before the final roll to starboard began, but as there is virtually no sense of motion, it is hard to tell. Sure, the water appears to be moving. Or, is painted in a way which suggests motion. But the ship herself appears to be a solid object emerging from the water. And the people jumping are rendered rather crudely and subsequently appear to be suspended in the air rather than falling through it.
Aside from that, it is fine.
Goodbye, dear, and amen. Here's hoping we meet again. Twas great fun...
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J. Kent Layton
Member
Username: jkent
Post Number: 121
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 9:19 pm: |
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Ellen,
Thank you very much for your positive feedback on the book. I really wanted to break ground that no one else had covered before, and it seems that many have enjoyed the 'breath of fresh air.' I'm glad you enjoyed it - comments like that make all the hard work worthwhile.
Continuing on with the group discussion, you mentioned before Jim: why don't they just go into the areas where the explosions took place and see what's left? That's a very good question which begs an answer. If I recall correctly, Ballard somehow managed to get into the "magazine," which in reality was a reserve coal bunker, just forward of BR 1. He reportedly found it undamaged per se, which means no evidence of an explosion (although I have not personally seen images of the area).
One thing, Jim - I thought the ship had increased her speed slightly to 18 knots from the 15 knots she had occasionally been making in the fog that morning...? It still would have felt like she as just 'loafing along,' especially on a sunny afternoon with a calm sea and a coastline visible on the horizon.
Martin, I think the diagram of the torpedo impact you posted is a very good one regarding the spot that the torpedo struck home. One has only to look at "torpedo damage" pictures on a Google Image Search to see how badly the longitudinal bulkhead would have been damaged by the blast, which makes it very easy to see how water would have been allowed into the Boiler Room proper in such a short amount of time. I found pictures somewhere of the torpedo damage to the Gulflight, and was astounded to see the amount of damage that was done to the shell plating on the other side of the hull. The fact that the torpedo struck where it did would - on its own, with the deficiencies in the ship's watertight design - probably have been enough to sink the ship.
We've known for years about the .303 Remington rifle cartridges. That they were found on F Deck is interesting, but not wholly a new concept. Indeed, it seems to hark back to Colin Simpson's odious, error- and conspiracy-filled book, pg. 106, which reads:
"The remaining area [of F Deck] is marked as empty on the stowage plan maintained in the Cunard archives. In March 1918 it was established from a member of the crew that the two forward sections of F deck had been filled with cargo. However, the exact nature of that cargo has never been disclosed. There is no doubt that it was ammunition. The evidence for this is a cable sent by Sumner to Alfred Booth two days after the disaster in answer to Booth's cabled inquiry as to where the ammunition had been stored. Sumner replied that it had completely filled the lower orlop holds together with the trunkways and passages of F deck."
This area, which I suspect is the same area that the Remington cartridges were recovered on this trip, was well away from the point of the torpedo impact. The bow of the ship was not "blown off" by the sort of heavy munitions blasts previously referred to in this thread. Additionally, we also have seen recovered and wholly unexploded munitions - from the dives in the 80's, from the dives two years ago and from this expedition.
If the question is going to be settled with finality, a serious search needs to made of the sections of the wreck in question to see what evidence remains. If divers have been able to penetrate deep within the wreck of the Britannic, which they have, and if Ballard got inside the wreck of the Lusitania in 1993, then I would think that it would be feasible to investigate some of the inner regions of the wreck that have a bearing on questions about the explosions. This would be a far better use of precious dive time than hunting for munitions that we already know were there. A look at the remains of Boiler Room No. 1 may be the most helpful, although also the most difficult to get to.
Regards,
J. Kent Layton
http://www.atlanticliners.com
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Omar Khokhar
Member
Username: khokhar
Post Number: 23
Registered: 8-2008
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 9:51 pm: |
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I`v always had the impression that greg b beleives exploding cargo caused the 2nd explosion? |
J. Kent Layton
Member
Username: jkent
Post Number: 122
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 10:00 pm: |
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Omar,
If you look back in the thread to my September 29 post, you'll see the pertinent quote from The Times which should answer your question.
Take care!
Regards,
J. Kent Layton
http://www.atlanticliners.com
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Jim Kalafus
Member
Username: jak
Post Number: 4798
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 - 12:21 am: |
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>One thing, Jim - I thought the ship had increased her speed slightly to 18 knots from the 15 knots she had occasionally been making in the fog that morning...?
Kent. She STOPPED in the fog. Before that, at sunrise, as witnessed by the Naisches, the Thompsons and others, she was moving slowly and was joined by a military vessel of some sort which sailed beside her for a time and then drew away.
(The last is just an interesting aside. On May 1st, a war vessel....obviously not belligerent....altered course and sailed after the Lusitania for a time. None of the photos taken aboard the Lusitania survived, and none taken from aboard that vessel ever surfaced. A letter written on board details a second meeting during the crossing, and close to midnight on Day 2, she met up with a British naval vessel and exchanged messages by lamp. Added to the vessel seen by those who awoke early on the 7th, that makes four encounters. None of which seem ever to have been officially discussed)
18 knots, or about as fast as she could go, was the party line. If you read through the testimony, however, you see a rather consistent pattern of people who said that she was going faster than she had that morning but not as fast as she had gone earlier in the voyage.
>If the question is going to be settled with finality, a serious search needs to made of the sections of the wreck in question to see what evidence remains.
But that would mean an end to lucrative Lusitania TV specials, and books, with the word "Mystery" in the title.
Goodbye, dear, and amen. Here's hoping we meet again. Twas great fun...
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Michael H. Standart
Moderator
Username: mstandart
Post Number: 22104
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 - 5:27 am: |
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A little note on small arms ammunition. While pistol and rifle ammunition can certainly "Cook off" in a fire, what you see when it happens is not a big bang, but individual cartridges going off a bit like slightly wet firecrackers. You get a mild burst, but not powerful enough to do any real damage beyond propelling the bullets out of the cases, and it's these bullets don't even move that fast since a lot of the prollants energy is wasted.
They might scare and even bruise anybody nearby, but they won't blow anything apart.
Cordially,
Michael H. Standart
Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon
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J. Kent Layton
Member
Username: jkent
Post Number: 123
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 - 6:34 am: |
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Michael,
Yes, that's exactly correct (my previous post may have been slightly obscure on what I was referring to).
The munitions test of July 1910 showed that similar cartridges to those contained on the Lusitania, even when exposed to fire for twenty-five minutes, did nothing more than cook off, as you said. Not a very encouraging concept for those who try to connect munitions to the second explosion.
Regards,
J. Kent Layton
http://www.atlanticliners.com
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Michael H. Standart
Moderator
Username: mstandart
Post Number: 22116
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 - 6:42 am: |
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>>Not a very encouraging concept for those who try to connect munitions to the second explosion.<<
And not even very impressive. If somebody wanted to find something to blow the bow off, they would have to do better.
Cordially,
Michael H. Standart
Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon
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Jim Kalafus
Member
Username: jak
Post Number: 4801
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 - 11:17 am: |
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Regarding the nature of first explosion vs second explosion. Do torpedos invariably send up the waterspout we've all seen in photos? I ask, because to a person, all of the witnesses who were on deck and left accounts May 7-14, agreed that there was only one such upheaval on May 7. And it coincided with the heavy detonation. Should not there have been two waterspouts, if first the torpedo exploded and then the second, heavier, "mystery explosion" occurred?
Whatever the second explosion was, it happened right at the side of the ship, and managed to direct enough force UPWARD along the side of the ship, (and not outward through the hole blown by the torpedo as one might expect) to throw water and metal fragment higher than the funnels. While not generating equal upward force within the ship.
Goodbye, dear, and amen. Here's hoping we meet again. Twas great fun...
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Jeff Brebner
Member
Username: wheeds
Post Number: 19
Registered: 4-2008
| | Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 - 5:40 pm: |
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I think the waterspout is to some extent dependent on how high on the curve of the ship's hull the torpedo hits. If it were to hit deep, almost underneath, then there probably wouldn't be as big a spout as if it hit just below the waterline. |
Michael H. Standart
Moderator
Username: mstandart
Post Number: 22117
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 3:10 am: |
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>>Regarding the nature of first explosion vs second explosion. Do torpedos invariably send up the waterspout we've all seen in photos?<<
It has in every bit of film footage I've seen. I suppose a lot would depend on the size of the warhead and the location of the weapon when it explodes. Every weapon in use during World War One had a contact detonator so you would see the waterspout going up along the side of the ship. The only way I can see this not happening is if the weapon had sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate the hull and explode inside the ship. Even then, some of the explosive gasses would be vented outside through the opening.
Cordially,
Michael H. Standart
Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon
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Omar Khokhar
Member
Username: khokhar
Post Number: 25
Registered: 8-2008
| | Posted on Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 3:52 pm: |
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http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1001/1222724598718.html |
George L. Lorton
Member
Username: retro_geo
Post Number: 861
Registered: 2-2008
| | Posted on Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 5:45 pm: |
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Thanks for the link Omar.
There's a mistake though.
quoted from the Irish Times Story/Article Owner Of "Lusitania" Munitions Sought
quote:The ship was en route to Liverpool from New York when hit by a torpedo from a German submarine, but there is still mystery over the cause of the substantial and fatal second blast heard by survivors about 18 minutes later.
Excerpt from the Irish Times Copy Right 2008
The "Lusitania" sank in 18 minutes so unless the survivors heard the explosion under water then its safe to say the second explosion was heard about right after the first explosion or 3 to 5 minutes after the first.
Other then that I thought it was a good article and worth a read. |
Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 593
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 11:33 am: |
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it's very quiet here.
any more news[hopeful]?
"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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