The one think I love is a problem that can be tested. The claim above was,
quote:
It was a deluge so overwhelming and so sudden that the men who got out barely managed to escape with their lives. They were overwhelmed so quickly in fact that they were unable to pull out one of their mates who had broken his leg in an accident.
Let's ask, is there a way to verify this if it were the water in the bunker at the forward end of BR 5 that flooded the compartment? The answer is YES WE CAN.
Under the absolutely worst case scenario, assume the entire bunker was emptied, and assume that the water reached the very top under F deck before a bunker door burst. Clearly the worst case possible for water held back by the bunker bulkhead. The total volume of that bunker space (W+V for anyone interested) is 20,592 cu ft. We also know the dimensions of that boiler room, 57 ft long by about 91 ft wide (it tapered down a bit at the forward end). We also know the ship was down by the bow about 3 degrees around 1 a.m., and can take that into consideration as well.
Well I will not bore people with the mathematic detail, which I'm happy to provide upon request, but if all the water that could possibly have been held back by that bunker suddenly burst through into the open boiler room proper, the height of the water flooding that space at the forward end would reach a height of about 5 1/2 ft over the tank top, and at the aft end about 2 1/2 ft over the tank top. The stokehold plates were 2 ft 7.5 in above the tank top. By the way, Assistant 2nd Engineer Shepherd, the one with the broken leg, was carried to the pump room at the aft end of that boiler room. The absolutely worst case shows that water would at most have reached only to the height of the stokehold plates there.
So it could not have been an overwhelming deluge as many people have been led to believe if it was a burst bunker door that gave way. And remember, I assumed that water had reached as high as F deck, which is highly unlikely to have happened, before one of those bunker doors would have given way.
If you go to the primary source, what was described was no deluge of water. What was described was: "I saw a wave of green foam come tearing through between the boilers and I jumped for the escape ladder." And a few weeks later, "A rush of water came through the pass - the forward end...I never stopped to look. I went up the ladder. Mr. Harvey told me to go up."
Sounds to me like Harvey and Shepherd were not in immediate danger of drowning at the time that rush of water was seen. Things like this always seem to get blown way out of proportion.
