Tarn -- based on a 5-year study of boiler room #6, I am convinced that the time between when the ship first felt the ice and the loss of boiler room #6 to flooding was on the order of 25 to 30 minutes.
Barrett and Beauchamp worked in boiler room #6 pulling down the fires and making those boilers "safe" after the accident. That work must have occupied a good 20 minutes or better. During that time the only water Beauchamp saw was coming through an open seam across bulkhead E in the bunker. This was the same opening observed later by Barrett in boiler room #5.
The fact that the men drew the fires in boiler room #6 immediately following the accident indicates that things weren't right in that space. More than likely, either Engineer Hesketh or Engineer Shepherd saw something of concern in way of bulkhead D at the head of the compartment. This prompted them to make the boilers safe. Beauchamp stood around for a few minutes after pulling the fires before he climbed out of a dry boiler room #6.
Barrett claimed he was in boiler room #6 and saw the side of the ship open two feet from where he stood. He said he jumped beneath a closing watertight door into boiler room #5. He was confused. Beauchamp's duty station was the after outboard furnace on the starboard side of boiler room #6. If Barrett was correct about his location, then he must have been standing almost in Beauchamp's shoes. It follows logically, that Beauchamp should have seen the side of the ship open, too. But, Beauchamp saw nothing of the sort.
Also, there is no watertight door on the starboard side of any boiler room. All of the doors were located on the ship's centerline. So, it would not have been possible to be two feet from the ship's side in boiler room #6 and then immediately jump through a closing door.
Barrett did not lie, he was confused. His story is basically true and that can be proven by other concurrent events.
Another anomoly in Barrett's testimony is his description of being sent back into boiler room #6 about 30 minutes after the accident. He and Engineer Shepherd then discovered flooding to a depth of 8 feet there. If the side of that boiler room had opened upon impact, there would have been no reason to send those two men back down into boiler room #6. The fact is, that nobody expected it to be flooded at that point, indicating it was still dry when Beauchamp left, just as he said.
The initial flooding of Titanic was quite different than what is contained in the BOT final report. In fact, that report simply ignored the 20-odd minutes from midnight April 14th until 12:23 a.m. when the watch changed. By doing so, Mersey was able to avoid discussing the fact that Titanic resumed making way after the accident. And, it also avoided the embarassing truth that the initial flooding was insufficient to sink Titanic.
As to that bit of information, it comes from none other than Edward Wilding, who admitted that when he first ran the numbers he could not get the ship to sink. So, he cooked the books to make things appear as desired by Lord Mersey. It's in the BOT transcripts.
The sad thing is that Wilding's self-admitted cooked numbers have been "set in concrete" by several recent papers written by modern naval architects and engineers. Unfortunately, these men relied upon secondary sources for their information regarding the speed and location of flooding. They did not do primary source history. As a result, their conclusions are nothing but self deception being foisted off on an unsuspecting public as fact.
--David G. Brown