The story about the ol' paint pail is most likely a sea story based, as all good sea stories are, on reality. There apparently was a pail, we know this from two sources: quartermaster
Robert Hichens and first class passenger
Mahala Douglas. Hichens told Senator Smith:
"It was a small paint tin... It was an old one, sir. One the quartermaster got for the occasion, because we had nothing else... It would hold about a quart, sir; if it was full up.
" —
Robert Hichens
Senator Smith asked how it was fastened to the rope.
"Bent on, like any other ordinary thing; bent on the handle just like a bent pin." — Robert Hichens
The bent pin and old paint bucket does not seem to have been practicable. We have a rather detailed account of how the water temperature was actually taken. It comes from
Mahala Douglas in her American deposition:
"On Saturday, as Mr. Douglas and I were walking forward, we saw a seaman taking the temperature of the water. The deck seemed so high above the sea I was interested to know if the tiny pail could reach it. There was quite a breeze, and although the pail was weighted, it did not. This I watched from the open window of the covered deck. Drawing up the pail the seaman filled it with water from the stand pipe, placed the thermometer in it, and went with it to the officer in charge." — Mahala Douglas
Anyone who has ever dipped a bucket of water from a moving vessel can attest how impractical that paint pail and rope would have been, especially from a ship moving at more than 20 knots. If the quartermaster did not get rope burned hands, it's doubtful the bail of the rusty paint tin would have withstood the strain.
But, equally predictable, dippering water from a deck some 60 feet above the waterline was also impractical because of the ship's own wind. Note that Mrs. Douglass said the bucket could not reach the water for the breeze. Quite. Instead of going straight down the side, the tin would have streamed aft in the wind at quite an angle. So, the quartermaster she witnessed abandoned that fool's errand and did the logical thing – take water from the spigot.
It turns out that the pail was a jury-rigged solution to an ordinary problem of shakedown cruises — forgotten equipment. Hichens undoubtedly used a spigot as Mrs. Douglas reported when he tested the water temperature at 10 p.m. that Sunday. We can impute this from his own testimony that the proper device for measuring seawater temperature was missing. Hichens told Senator Smith that quartermasters were not supposed to use paint tins or buckets:
"They don't get no buckets at all. That is not the proper thing. The proper thing they use is a long piece of leather, leaded, the shape of that paper that is folded up on the table there [indicating]." — Robert Hichens
Titanic should have been equipped with a special leather pouch holding a thermometer intended for taking seawater temperature measurements from a high-speed ship. A streamlined shape allowed it to ride smoothly through the water so it would not pull the control line through the operator’s hands.
Why the deck department went through all this rigmarole is a mystery. As Bill Sauder pointed out (above), the temperature of the seawater was available from the engine room at any time for a phone call. Most likely we are seeing the twilight of a time-honored tradition of dipping water for a temperature reading. It wasn't practical on a ship like Titanic, but traditions change slowly at sea.
-- David G. Brown