Titanic

[normspanners]

I feel for the 'stokers' a bad job at best, but having to shovel burning coal from an increasingly hotter bunker as the burning coals drop down therefore fanning the bunker fire into an already very hot furnace must have been hell.

 

[the snooper]

I feel for the 'stokers' a bad job at best, but having to shovel burning coal from an increasingly hotter bunker as the burning coals drop down therefore fanning the bunker fire into an already very hot furnace must have been hell.

it must have already been unbearable due to the huge boilers

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@the snooper

There are a few people who think it was the Olympic sunk not the titanic.
Here is a link explaining why, how and why not.
http://www.williammurdoch.net/articles_34_Titanic_switch_theory_02.html#18

The 3 sisters names were cut into the hull plate steel, not painted or welded on, is common practise now.

But the theory of the swopped is all but debunked now.

@normspanners

The coal is not burning as in flames etc, think of it more as glowing hot. Like burning coal to make coke.
As it settle the base got lower and as shovelled out by the trimmers, or it dropped out by the double ended boilers, in the Titanic case. Then straight into a boiler fire grate.

If the coal had burnt past the useable stage it was blown out with steam, along with ask and clinkers into the water.

 

[normspanners]

Yes, I was.

HE HE ------what a member of the advisory commision
that would make your age about 124 ish unless very learned as school boy

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Odd thing about Titanic and ships boilers of that age was they were always put into the ship uninsulated. Only when they have had a boiler inspection and a pressure test were they lagged.

This lagging will fall off and melt in sea water.

 

[addjunkie]

And be asbestos more than likley. Even on modern ships its very very beginning with f, hot in the engine rooms let alone shovelling coal into them.

 

[normspanners]

The coal is not burning as in flames etc, think of it more as glowing hot. Like burning coal to make coke.

Still flippin hot though, I bet they knew they had done a shift !! bad enough being a coal miner digging it out of the rocks with the heat under ground, without having a huge roaring fire inches away bad enough puttin logs on the fire at home! at least a train stoker had the movement and airflow of the train to keep them cool. I used to look after a massive heating system and when the feed broke down we had to load it with logs about 6-8ft long and that was too hot in the winter. EH when men where men imagine going from that heat and into the freezing sea water !
balls like jojo's

 

[normspanners]

Imagine the HnS connotations nowadays for a job like that-------- BARE CHESTED !!! oh no-------- you must wear an air fed full fire proof suit, watercooled gauntlets, metal handled shovels to save the shaft catching fire, OH and you mustn't smoke on duty---- you can steam---- but not smoke.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@normspanners
We need @Parm to do one for fun.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

If any one wants to know how tough Ice bergs can be.
I was on HMS Rothesay, link below. We closed into approx. 100 yards and let loose with 10 4.5" shells at a berg.
The bounced of or splatted against it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Rothesay_(F107)

 

[mike os]

So nothing new then.....

She was running fast because almost every new ship,had set a new record for the crossing. ..... pride, prestige, and profit were the main contributors to the disaster, the how .... will always be open to speculation, but whether it was a fire (not that unusual ) bad engineering , bad design or any other matter open to speculation. .. The berg was the defining and deciding factor

 

[mpats]

If any one wants to know how tough Ice bergs can be.
I was on HMS Rothesay, link below. We closed into approx. 100 yards and let loose with 10 4.5" shells at a berg.
The bounced of or splatted against it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Rothesay_(F107)

Do you mean HMS Bellona Vark?

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@mpats
No.
pfffffts to you.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Just to show that worker safety hadn't improved that much in 70 years...
I used to work for Fothergills Engineered Polymers in the late eighties and one of the products was a curved carbon fibre bed for a medical x-ray machine.
Part of the process was to lay sheets of Roacell (spelling?) on a curved mould and place it into a walk in oven and heat it up, when it got to 160°C muggins had to walk in and drape weights over the sheet to help them form to the mould.
The only protection I was given was a pair of gauntlets and a fibreglass insulation hat that covered my ears.
I did this for about 3 months before someone actually bothered to read the data sheet for the Roacell sheets, turns out it freely gives off cyanide fumes at temperatures of over 120°C!!!
Cue a visit to the Bristol Research Hospital to find I had elevated levels of cyanide in my body, not enough to cause any damage but I ended up with a nice fat compensation cheque.
So long as I don't eat any apple pips I'm still below the safe level.

Edit:
It's called Rohacell and it's still produced:
http://www.rohacell.com/product/rohacell/en/about/properties/pages/default.aspx

 

[normspanners]

I was on HMS Rothesay, link below. We closed into approx. 100 yards and let loose with 10 4.5" shells at a berg.

Was that to teach their 'kind' a lesson for killing several of our 'kind'
could be seen as war crimes !

 

[normspanners]

not enough to cause any damage but I ended up with a nice fat compensation cheque.
So long as I don't eat any apple pips I'm still below the safe level.

AAH Is that the reason for some of your post's being quite poisonous

 

[Wedg1e]

Apparently this was proven many years ago when forensic analysts looked at photos of the two ships and according to many of the experts they were renamed and swapped and documentation apparently came to light showing the ships had their names swapped.

Utter horse, for at least two reasons (no, sorry, three):
Firstly it would have needed the collusion of a lot of skilled shipyard workers to effect the change (on TWO ships), all while other work was going on around them. All those people kept quiet till they died? Unlikely.
Second, Olympic and Titanic diiffered in having part of the promenade deck closed in. The last pic ever taken of Titanic shows it wasn't Olympic.
Third, the boat's name wasn't just painted on, it was formed by recessed plating. See point 1 - and as Ballard found in '85, Titanic's name was still legible, with rust streaks from the edges of the recessed plating.

Edit: Ah, I see 'Vark has already referred to the recessed plating in post 43, sorry for going off half-cocked

 

[Wedg1e]

@normspanners

Yes, I was.
But that is what annoys me about shoes like that, the latch onto one bit of information and build a theory round it.

It is interesting that on some on the 3 sisters photographs the negatives, glass slides and the photos wee "touched up".
classic one is in one image the Titanic name is in the wrong place. It was painted in afterwards, the negative came to light in the 1980's. Oh yes that is often quoted as "proof" that the titanic was swopped with the Olympic.

They now are saying that it may be the case on the show that 2 two main images may have the same thing happened to them.
Will be interesting to wait and find out.

One of the other things that helped to spread misinformation (according to Ballard) was that in the aftermath of the sinking, White Star was inundated for requests for pictures of the ship but as they hadn't any available they released postcards provided for passengers to send from Olympic, but claimed them as being from Titanic. The Olympic postcards of course showed the different promenade deck but to the untrained public eye the boats looked identical.

 

[Mee]

it was proven it did not happen.

It is still speculation at this point and many documents were destroyed, altered, forged, and many have never been made available; for me its a case of remain sceptical about both sides of the theories until real irrefutable evidence emerges.

Still flippin hot though, I bet they knew they had done a shift !! bad enough being a coal miner digging it out of the rocks with the heat under ground, without having a huge roaring fire inches away bad enough puttin logs on the fire at home! at least a train stoker had the movement and airflow of the train to keep them cool. I used to look after a massive heating system and when the feed broke down we had to load it with logs about 6-8ft long and that was too hot in the winter. EH when men where men imagine going from that heat and into the freezing sea water !
balls like jojo's

It got worse with mechanisation Norm, for a start everything was air cooled, flameproof, and the heat the motors and extra equipment produced rose throughout the week. Monday mornings were the coolest time in a coal mine and the temperature rose through to the hottest shift which was Friday night shift, most things were switched off for the weekend and it all cooled down again until Monday morning.

 

[the snooper]

It is still speculation at this point.

it was proven in the documentary if I remember correctly as they counted the boilers