THE MOST SUMPTUOUS PALACE AFLOAT
DIMENSIONS OF THE TITANIC -- CAPACITY -- PROVISIONS FOR THE COMFORT
AND ENTERTAINMENT OF PASSENGERS -- MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT -- THE
ARMY OF ATTENDANTS REQUIRED
THE statistical record of the great ship has news value at this time.
Early in 1908 officials of the White Star Company announced that they
would eclipse all previous records in shipbuilding with a vessel of
staggering dimensions. The Titanic resulted.
The keel of the ill-fated ship was laid in the summer of 1909 at the
Harland & Wolff yards, Belfast. Lord Pirrie, considered one of the
best authorities on shipbuilding in the world, was the designer. The
leviathan was launched on May 31, 1911, and was completed in February,
1912, at a cost of $10,000,000.
SISTER SHIP OF OLYMPIC
The Titanic, largest liner in commission, was a sister ship of the
Olympic. The registered tonnage of each vessel is estimated as
45,000, but officers of the White Star Line say that the Titanic
measured 45,328 tons. The Titanic was commanded by Captain E. J.
Smith, the White Star admiral, who had previously been on the Olympic.
She was 882½ feet long, or about four city blocks, and was 5000 tons
bigger than a battleship twice as large as the dreadnought Delaware.
Like her sister ship, the Olympic, the Titanic was a four-funneled
vessel, and had eleven decks. The distance from the keel to the top of
the funnels was 175 feet. She had an average speed of twenty-one
knots.
The Titanic could accommodate 2500 passengers. The steamship was
divided into numerous compartments, separated by fifteen bulkheads.
She was equipped with a gymnasium, swimming pool, hospital with
operating room, and a grill and palm garden.
CARRIED CREW OF 860
The registered tonnage was 45,000, and the displacement tonnage
66,000. She was capable of carrying 2500 passengers and the crew
numbered 860.
The largest plates employed in the hull were 36 feet long, weighing 4½
tons each, and the largest steel beam used was 92 feet long, the
weight of this double beam being 4 tons. The rudder, which was
operated electrically, weighed 100 tons, the anchors 15½ tons each,
the center (turbine) propeller 22 tons, and each of the two "wing"
propellers 38 tons each. The after "boss-arms," from which were
suspended the three propeller shafts, tipped the scales at 73½ tons,
and the forward "boss-arms" at 45 tons. Each link in the anchor-chains
weighed 175 pounds. There were more than 2000 side-lights and windows
to light the public rooms and passenger cabins.
Nothing was left to chance in the construction of the Titanic. Three
million rivets (weighing 1200 tons) held the solid plates of steel
together. To insure stability in binding the heavy plates in the
double bottom, half a million rivets, weighing about 270 tons, were
used.
All the plating of the hulls was riveted by hydraulic power, driving
seven-ton riveting machines, suspended from traveling cranes. The
double bottom extended the full length of the vessel, varying from 5
feet 3 inches to 6 feet 3 inches in depth, and lent added strength to
the hull.
MOST LUXURIOUS STEAMSHIP
Not only was the Titanic the largest steamship afloat but it was the
most luxurious. Elaborately furnished cabins opened onto her eleven
decks, and some of these decks were reserved as private promenades
that were engaged with the best suites. One of these suites was sold
for $4350 for the boat's maiden and only voyage. Suites similar, but
which were without the private promenade decks, sold for $2300.
The Titanic differed in some respects from her sister ship. The
Olympic has a lower promenade deck, but in the Titanic's case the
staterooms were brought out flush with the outside of the
superstructure, and the rooms themselves made much larger. The sitting
rooms of some of the suites on this deck were 15 × 15 feet.
The restaurant was much larger than that of the Olympic and it had a
novelty in the shape of a private promenade deck on the starboard
side, to be used exclusively by its patrons. Adjoining it was a
reception room, where hosts and hostesses could meet their guests.
Two private promenades were connected with the two most luxurious
suites on the ship. The suites were situated about amidships, one on
either side of the vessel, and each was about fifty feet long. One of
the suites comprised a sitting room, two bedrooms and a bath.
These private promenades were expensive luxuries. The cost figured out
something like forty dollars a front foot for a six days' voyage.
They, with the suites to which they are attached, were the most
expensive transatlantic accommodations yet offered.
THE ENGINE ROOM
The engine room was divided into two sections, one given to the
reciprocating engines and the other to the turbines. There were two
sets of the reciprocating kind, one working each of the wing
propellers through a four-cylinder triple expansion, direct acting
inverted engine. Each set could generate 15,000 indicated horse-power
at seventy-five revolutions a minute. The Parsons type turbine takes
steam from the reciprocating engines, and by developing a horse-power
of 16,000 at 165 revolutions a minute works the third of the ship's
propellers, the one directly under the rudder. Of the four funnels of
the vessel three were connected with the engine room, and the fourth
or after funnel for ventilating the ship including the gallery.
Practically all of the space on the Titanic below the upper deck was
occupied by steam-generating plant, coal bunkers and propelling
machinery. Eight of the fifteen water-tight compartments contained the
mechanical part of the vessel. There were, for instance, twenty-four
double end and five single end boilers, each 16 feet 9 inches in
diameter, the larger 20 feet long and the smaller 11 feet 9 inches
long. The larger boilers had six fires under each of them and the
smaller three furnaces. Coal was stored in bunker space along the side
of the ship between the lower and middle decks, and was first shipped
from there into bunkers running all the way across the vessel in the
lowest part. From there the stokers handed it into the furnaces.
One of the most interesting features of the vessel was the
refrigerating plant, which comprised a huge ice-making and
refrigerating machine and a number of provision rooms on the after
part of the lower and orlop decks. There were separate cold rooms for
beef, mutton, poultry, game, fish, vegetables, fruit, butter, bacon,
cheese, flowers, mineral water, wine, spirits and champagne, all
maintained at different temperatures most suitable to each. Perishable
freight had a compartment of its own, also chilled by the plant.
COMFORT AND STABILITY
Two main ideas were carried out in the Titanic. One was comfort and
the other stability. The vessel was planned to be an ocean ferry. She
was to have only a speed of twenty-one knots, far below that of some
other modern vessels, but she was planned to make that speed, blow
high or blow low, so that if she left one side of the ocean at a given
time she could be relied on to reach the other side at almost a
certain minute of a certain hour.
[Illustration: LIFE-BOAT AND DAVITS ON THE TITANIC
This diagram shows very clearly the arrangement of the life-boats
and the manner in which they were launched.]
One who has looked into modern methods for safeguarding a vessel of
the Titanic type can hardly imagine an accident that could cause her
to founder. No collision such as has been the fate of any ship in
recent years, it has been thought up to this time, could send her
down, nor could running against an iceberg do it unless such an
accident were coupled with the remotely possible blowing out of a
boiler. She would sink at once, probably, if she were to run over a
submerged rock or derelict in such manner that both her keel plates
and her double bottom were torn away for more than half her length;
but such a catastrophe was so remotely possible that it did not even
enter the field of conjecture.
The reason for all this is found in the modern arrangement of
water-tight steel compartments into which all ships now are divided
and of which the Titanic had fifteen so disposed that half of them,
including the largest, could be flooded without impairing the safety
of the vessel. Probably it was the working of these bulkheads and the
water-tight doors between them as they are supposed to work that saved
the Titanic from foundering when she struck the iceberg.
These bulkheads were of heavy sheet steel and started at the very
bottom of the ship and extended right up to the top side. The openings
in the bulkheads were just about the size of the ordinary doorway, but
the doors did not swing as in a house, but fitted into water-tight
grooves above the opening. They could be released instantly in several
ways, and once closed formed a barrier to the water as solid as the
bulkhead itself.
In the Titanic, as in other great modern ships, these doors were held
in place above the openings by friction clutches. On the bridge was a
switch which connected with an electric magnet at the side of the
bulkhead opening. The turning of this switch caused the magnet to draw
down a heavy weight, which instantly released the friction clutch, and
allowed the door to fall or slide down over the opening in a second.
If, however, through accident the bridge switch was rendered useless
the doors would close automatically in a few seconds. This was
arranged by means of large metal floats at the side of the
doorways, which rested just above the level of the double bottom, and
as the water entered the compartments these floats would rise to it
and directly release the clutch holding the door open. These clutches
could also be released by hand.
[Illustration: LIFE-BOATS AS SEEN FROM THE CARPATHIA
_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Photographs taken from the rescue ship as she reached the first
boats carrying the Titanic's sufferers.]
[Illustration: CORNER OF THE MAIN SALOON
Showing the well and dome from the café, and giving an idea of the
beautiful decorations on the lost liner.]
It was said of the Titanic that her compartments could be flooded as
far back or as far forward as the engine room and she would float,
though she might take on a heavy list, or settle considerably at one
end. To provide against just such an accident as she is said to have
encountered she had set back a good distance from the bows an extra
heavy cross partition known as the collision bulkhead, which would
prevent water getting in amidships, even though a good part of her bow
should be torn away. What a ship can stand and still float was shown a
few years ago when the Suevic of the White Star Line went on the rocks
on the British coast. The wreckers could not move the forward part of
her, so they separated her into two sections by the use of dynamite,
and after putting in a temporary bulkhead floated off the after half
of the ship, put it in dry dock and built a new forward part for her.
More recently the battleship Maine, or what was left of her, was
floated out to sea, and kept on top of the water by her water-tight
compartments only.