Why 37 seconds doesn't work

>>wouldn't it them make sense to quietly enlarge the rudder on the Olympic during her refit in 1912-1913?<<

It might. The grabber is that this was never even raised as an issue back in 1912, and it wasn't as if they didn't have the smarts to work things out. The sliderule and direct observations may have been crude, but they worked.
 
quote:

Had any or all of the above thought there was a problem with the maneuverability of the Titanic, wouldn't it them make sense to quietly enlarge the rudder on the Olympic during her refit in 1912-1913?
Click to expand...
The turning characteristics was never an issue. It is a modern day myth created to explain why the ship hit the berg despite an alleged avoidance maneuver in an attempt to avoid contact. The failure was in sighting the berg in time and/or failure in judgement in assessing the situation in enough time to to avoid contact.​
 
>>The failure was in sighting the berg in time and/or failure in judgement in assessing the situation in enough time to to avoid contact.

I'd go with the latter, Sam. Fleet always said he rang the bell and got on the phone as soon as ever he saw the thing (...but then there are Olliver and Scarrott to contend with). However, every time he was pressed more closely, he admitted the berg, when he first saw it, was quite small and distant. This is to an extent borne out in the sketch ("First Sighting") he did for Ed Kamuda. The berg is small, on the very edge of the horizon - not huge and directly in front of the ship. The problem is, First Sighting is a line drawing on a light background - it would be better viewed as a negative. I suppose one could say he phoned the bridge as soon as he "recognized" it as an iceberg.

Roy
 
Michael and Sam,

I agree completely. The issue of a rudder that was "too small" is one that never seems to go away. My point being that if it was suspected then that the rudder size was a problem, it would have been corrected on both the Olympic and the Britannic.
 
Tim,

Re: The (@*&#$ Rudder Issue

It's always seemed to me that liners travel their best in a straight line and that's the reason we have tugs in the harbors. I can't quite picture huge steamers playing Demolition Derby.

'-)
 
Roy,

Why not a demolition derby for ships? Instead of just scrapping the "United States" and the "France/Norway", why not take them out to see and see which one would survive the longest! Shucks -- we used to do this with old steam locomotives ...
 
>>My point being that if it was suspected then that the rudder size was a problem, it would have been corrected on both the Olympic and the Britannic.<<

I agree. Frankly, the whole rudder-is-too-small thing has struck me as a modern day red herring. One that should have died a quick death by the simple exposition of the Fr. Brown photo which shows the Titanic making some pretty tight turns.

>>It's always seemed to me that liners travel their best in a straight line and that's the reason we have tugs in the harbors.<<

That's pretty much it. The North Atlantic run on it's most fundemental level was a ferry service. The ships designed for it weren't warships and needed none of the qualities possessed by same.

Regarding tugs, even warships needed them because they weren't very handy in confined/restricted waters. The advent of such tools as bow and stern thrusters which makes it possible to dispense with them was a development which was half a century into the future.
 
Hi, Michael!

We still have our tugs in Seattle and I've seen some of our present Elliott Bay tugs stop and maneuver absolutely on a dime. Once a year during the August Seafair event, they all get together and have a race. No Demolition Derby, though. '-)

We see a great many monster container ships from Asia coming into the port and they need to cut their power several miles north to take enough way off by the time they arrive here. Then the tugs take over. Would you say we have a combination of the Old and New?
 
>>Shucks -- we used to do this with old steam locomotives ...

Oh, yeah! And a couple of too-close innocent bystanders would occasionally get mangled in the process.

%-p
 
>>Would you say we have a combination of the Old and New?<<

Sounds like it. I don't know of a lot of cargo vessels with bow and stern thrusters and with the ready availability of tugs in major seaports, such features may be regarded as more trouble and expense then they're worth.

For modern cruise ships however, they are essential since they frequently call on ports where tugboat availability is questionable or non-existant. When one of my ship's visited Acapulco, I saw a cruise ship without any such warp herself up to the quaywall using some clever action with the screws, the rudder and precision anchorage because she didn't have thrusters and there were no tugs to be had.
 
I've never been there when one of our big cruise ships has come in, but their pier is situated in such a way I suspect they could do it all on their own. They're quite a sight - some are just a little smaller than the Big T, while others are quite a bit larger. Impressive! And I can look up all their specs online.
 
>>I suspect they could do it all on their own. <<

That's probably the idea. Aside from the fact that tugs aren't always available, where they are available, there's a cost that goes with their hiring. The cruise lines at least would prefer to do without that if they can.
 
Hi,

I posted earlier that I'm working on a book for young readers - nonfiction, based on survivor accounts. I couldn't do any of this research without this site (although when I began this project I didn't realize how many thousands of words have been written about, say, 37 seconds...)

Anyway, my latest question is about the speed Titanic was going at the time of the collision. In his testimony Lightoller mentions 21 1/2 knots; Boxhall I believe used 22 knots when figuring the position. He says: "No, I never depend on the patent log at all. It was an estimate that I had arrived at from the revolutions, although I had had no revolutions that watch; but, taking into consideration that it was smooth water and that there ought to have been a minimum of slip, I allowed 22 knots."

Could someone point me in the right direction to figure this out further? I am not sure what Boxhall means exactly when he says "I had no revolutions that watch." Also, I would like to know not just the best figure to use but also a bit more about how it would have worked -- for instance, does only the captain set the speed or, just as an example, does the senior officer on the bridge have discretion? So could that have been the speed Lightoller set but after he went off duty it was changed?

I apologize in advance if these questions are stupid...I don't want to bog kids down with theories but I want to be as accurate as possible and also hope to include a page in the back on "Be a Titanic Researcher" to suggest questions they can pursue -- and read about here...

Thanks so much.

Deborah
 
>>Could someone point me in the right direction to figure this out further?<<

I don't know that you can. Much of what was in the testimony came from fallible human memory since anything they had in writing went down with the ship.

You might want to follow the conversation between Jim Currie and Sam Halpern since it illustrates how two very well informed people can look at the same body of evidence and come to some very different conclusions.
 
"You might want to follow the conversation between Jim Currie and Sam Halpern since it illustrates how two very well informed people can look at the same body of evidence and come to some very different conclusions."

Yeah, a classic example.
But it makes excellent reading.
 

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