Duke of Albany

(F. Kemp & Company)

The center anchor of the Titanic weighs 15 ½ tons and was fabricated by Messrs. N. Hingley & Sons, Ltd. Of Netherton, Dudley, Worcestershire. Typical of the manner by which the many and varied components for Titanic were assembled is the transport of this huge anchor from its place of manufacture to the Harland & Wolff Belfast yard.

London and Northwestern Railway Company’s own team of sixteen horses carted the casting from Hingely’s Northern Iron Works to the Dudley Station. From there, the anchor, together with its links, (each 2 feet 6 inches long and weighing 500 pounds) was carried via the London and Northwestern Railway to Fleetwood where it was loaded on a 40-ton platform and hoisted aboard the Duke of Albany for its trip across the Irish Sea.

The anchor and the chain arrived at Albert Quay, Belfast at 4:50 a.m. on Friday, May 5, 1911. It was unloaded onto a large lorry owned by Messrs. John Harkness & Co. to make the short trip to the No. 3 Slip at the Queen’s Island Yard. Here it was hoisted aboard the nearly-completed Titanic and installed in the well on the deck immediately abaft the bow.

Port of registry: Fleetwood, Lancashire
Flag of registry: British
Funnel: black, black with narrow white band below
Company flag: (1912) red, divided into quadrants by a broad white cross, white thin block lettering in each quadrant, green 3-leaf shamrock at the intersection of cross

L&Y	L&NW
RY	C0ys

Signal letters: H M J P
Steel hull, 1 funnel. 2 masts, twin screw, electric lights
Tonnage: Gross 2,184, underdeck 1.395, net: 624
Dimensions-length 330.9 ft., width-41.1 ft., depth-17.1 ft., poop-84 ft., bridge-148 ft., foc’sle – 70 ft.
Engines: triple expansion 8 cyl. (2) 25 ½” (2) 39 ½” (4) 43” stroke 22 ½
Captain: J. P. Hall

Built 1907 Built and engineered by John Brown & Co., Clydebank, Dunbartonshire (Yard No 376)

Knots, 425 n. h.p. 5 boilers

1907 Launched

1915 Taken over by the British Admiralty for service as an armed boarding vessel

1916 August 24 Irish Sea, 20 miles east of the Skerries, torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine (24/111)

© 2004 John P. Eaton all rights reserved.
This item first appeared in Voyage, Journal of the Titanic International Society.