Julian what's your angle here ?
I am sorry Julian but I disagree. That sort of "what if?" accident can happen with almost any situation in life and it would be impossible to insure against all of them. "What if Joe Bloggs had a heart attack while driving on the motorway?", "What if the open heart surgeon's knife slipped badly?", "What if my son broke his arm at school rugby?"
..................which were useful under normal working conditions, including reporting a problem. But after the ship it an iceberg and started flooding rapidly, the routine of those deep below in the Boiler and Engine Rooms would have been badly disrupted. Bell and his assistant engineers would have been busy rushing about to determine the extent and seriousness of the damage, potential consequences and practical countermeasures like pumping, WTDs etc. Despite the availability of a few telephones, it would have been practically difficult to run to one to report or update about a flooding or related problem. Those guys back in 1912 would have been far more used to dispatching a handy sailor runner carrying messages to the bridge if such was required.
Bell certainly would not have been hanging around a telephone waiting to make or receive calls when he would be urgently required in a lot of places to assess the situation and make decisions. Even if had someone standing by the telephone (which he actually might have ordered, if only as a standby measure), how is that someone going to find Bell to pass on an urgent message from the bridge without leaving his post? Or, if Bell found something that he felt the Captain ought to know about asap but was far away from the nearest telephone, dispatching a runner would have been the quickest and most practical way of doing it; the runner would also know where to find the CE when he returned with the Captain's response.
I could tell you that one thing that phone was used for was to relay the engine revolutions to the bridge at the end of each watch. I'm sure there were other uses for that direct line whenever something other than what was communicated by engine telegraphs was needed. E.g., to allow the opening of WT doors after they were closed from the bridge. However, Bell was not always in the engine room when on duty. Like Capt. Smith, he did not stand a regular watch. He came and went as he pleased. There was a phone in his cabin that was connected to the main engine room, but not to the bridge. There was also a phone in the main engine room to all 6 boiler rooms.
Julian, speaking for myself I would call our exchanges as "stimulating discussion" and certainly not personal criticism. You raise a lot of interesting and involving questions, which in turn trigger opinions and further discussion on the subject. I see nothing wrong in that and feel that's what these forums are for. Just because I disagreed with you about the phone vs runner to exchange messages between the bridge and bowels of the sinking ship does not mean that the subject was not relevant. it very much was and various events and activities during the sinking is my favorite Titanic thread.
That's interesting, Sam. Did that mean that each of the 6 boiler rooms had its own separate extension connected to the main phone in the Engine Room?
Thanks again. In that case, if CE Bell or someone else in the boiler or engine rooms wanted to phone the bridge urgently about something, which telephone would they use? Where was it physically located?
No, there could not have been extensions as the Grahams 'loudspeaking Navy telephones' of that era operated on a purely one-to-one basis. The small electric signal from the calling instrument was not sufficient to operate more than one receiving instrument.
Thanks for that detailed information, Richard. Clearly, from the layout that you have described, I can see that the telephone connections in the boiler rooms would have been useful in sending out isolated messages and perhaps receiving one that was expected. But under the noisy and somewhat chaotic conditions that followed the collision with the iceberg and subsequent flooding, the phones would be good for sending one or two urgent messages to the bridge but impractical as means for continued 2-way communication.
To those interested, that explanation from Richard is why Fleet called out, "Are you there?" when he called the bridge to report an "iceberg right ahead." Some people have pointed to that phrase, are you there, as some sort of proof that there was a significant delay in Moody's answering the phone when Fleet called down. There wasn't, only the relatively short time needed for Moody to get to the phone to say, "Yes. What did you see?"
You might be right in theory Julian, but we have to consider what practical use a telephone system like the one you describe would have been after the accident and more improtantly, what difference it could have made in the final outcome. Unfortunately, I don't believe that it would have made any.
I am sorry but I completely disagree with the comparison, which is like saying that the Allies would have won WW1 much faster if they had used Stealth Bombers against the Imperial German Forces. The Grenfell Tower Fire was in 2017, 105 years after the Titanic disaster and even discounting the widely different circumstances of the two accidents, contemporary communications and rescue techonolgy and facilties were not even a dream back in 1912. The Officers and crew of the Titanic had to make do with what they had and under the circumstances and they did the best they could. As Sam and Richard have pointed out, the telephone links they had would have been useful with routine communications during a normal voyage; after the ship impacted with the iceberg, I fully agree with you that either CE Bell or someone under him made a quick call to the bridge about flooding of BR6, which was a key part of the information for Captain Smith to realize that the damage was serious. But after that, Bell and his team would have been too busy, scattered and on the move with full damage assessment (which, unlike us with hindsight, they had no clear idea of at the time) and no matter what sort of parallel or other telephone system of the time they had in place, it would have been of limited practical use. On the other hand, dispatching runners - trimmers, greasers, any standby crew - would have been the most practical and flexible method.
You could indeed have such a system using the technology of the day but the relevant point for this discussion is that they did not, on that ship at that point in time. There was, in fact an indicator light on the phone, though not a very prominent one.
In situations like that, a mobile phone system, where the communication devices can go with the team commanders and leaders, makes a lot of sense. But in 1912 the phones were fixed in place, connected by hard wires to other phone locations. Those used in the machinery spaces, on the fore and after bridges, and crow's nest, etc., didn't even run through a switchboard. Even if a person was required to stand by a phone, say in the engine room, they would still have to send somebody to find the chief engineer, for example, and then the chief would have to decide if a taking the call was more important than what he was already doing. Then he would have to run back to the engine room to take the call, then run back to where he was or do something else, depending on what was said over the phone.
