Interesting article.
So every movie/TV show, and all civilians in real life, when they say “full speed ahead”–didn’t Capt. Kirk always say that too–are actually saying “Yikes it’s an emergency, put the pedal to the metal” instead of a confident return to efficient progress.
Ignorance fought.
But they could have been trained that a head-on collision was preferable.
This assumes that people can only go over the rail at midships.
As the Titanic went down by the bow, the passengers, gathered on A Deck could have simply moved forward to the position below the bridge, going down to the open rail at the forward end of B Deck and boarding returning boats, there. As the ship sank lower, they could then stop going down to B Deck and begin boarding from the open rail below the bridge on A Deck. This would not be a magic “save everyone” scenario, but there is no reason to believe that people would have had to jump into the water and be fished out by waiting boats.
I was under the impression that nearly all accounts refer to the utter calmness of the sea at that time.
This has more weight, although if it was more apparent that people were being successfully removed, the issue of panic might have been mitigated.
Good point. I said that as a figure of speech.
It depends. Most ships don’t travel at their maximum speed except in emergencies, because it’s not very fuel-efficient.
However, if a ship has a compelling reason where speed is more important than fuel consumption (which is more likely to be the case for a warship than for a commercial vessel), then the ship could indeed be traveling at its maximum speed even if it’s not an emergency.
U.S. warships routinely travel at full/flank speed if there is a reason to do it, even in non-emergencies. Heck, I’ve done flank speed runs on several occasions in a submarine where we traveled at flank speed for days at a time. A submarine can make it across the Atlantic quite fast (for a nautical vessel) in such a case.
In a U.S. Navy submarine, the emergency terms are actually: “Back Emergency” and “Ahead Flank, Cavitate.” Either of these engine orders will wake up the engine room in a hurry. The “Back Emergency” order will cause an ungodly shaking of the entire boat (assuming it was previously going forward), and the “Ahead Flank, Cavitate” will put so much torque on the whole submarine that it will actually take a significant roll as it accelerates.
Not as simple as all that. The actual idea would have had to have been to train along the lines of “If you have enough distance to turn to avoid, do so. If you don’t have enough distance to turn to avoid, hit it head on. If you’re not sure whether you have enough distance or not, do ???”
The hard part is the middle case. The idea of converting what would have been a close call into a guaranteed severe collision is real unattractive.
Something that’s hard for lay people to understand is how big that gray area is. In driving cars there are not too many close calls in developing situations. It’s either obviously going to miss or it’s obviously going to crunch. You pass through the zone of uncertainty in milliseconds.
In big ships, the zone of uncertainty can be minutes long. You just can’t tell, based on what you can see, whether or not you’ve got the necessary time and space to maneuver successfully out of the collision. The only way to know is to try one alternative or the other and wait for the then-inevitable outcome.
In jets we get a different take on the same problem: you can become totally committed to crashing long before the situation looks scary to the casual observer. Kind of like a black hole event horizon, you pass the point of no return before anything looks too far out of the ordinary. Avoiding those situations requires a different kind of awareness. And planning to operate with hefty margins so a little inattention or round-off error doesn’t slide you past the point of no return unnoticed.
Fascinating thread.
Please explain references to the Californian and her captain.
The Californian had stopped in the ice field at dark. (Smarter than the Titanic’s officers, at least.) They were close enough to see the distress flares* that the Titanic sent up, but Captain Lord decided that they meant nothing and dd not even have his radio operator awakened to try to contact the ship firing flares.
He was never charged with negligence, but he was censured for making bad decisions.
*There was not an explicit convention regarding the use of flares, but Lord first claimed they were “fireworks,” then decided that they were recognition flares for ships from the same company and made no effort to discover why a ship was repeatedly sending up flares from the same position over a long period.
Also the California had radioed the Titanic the dangers of the thickness of the Ice in the ocean suggesting that she slow down because of the danger. The Titanic’s response was to tell them to quit interrupting her radio traffic of her passsengers. That is one of the reasons the Captain of the California disregarded the flares he did not want his radio office called just to be chewed out again by the Titanic’s radio officer.
Most merchant ships other than passenger ships do travel at full speed once they clear the bar. On a steam ship the ABS or USCG will limit the max RPM and/or number of nozzles open on the main engine. After the bar pilot is let off and the bridge rings up full speed the throttle is open full and the proper number of nozzles on the turbine are opened to reach that max safe RPM.
I was on a T-2 Tanker. A turbo electric steamship. When we cleared the bar and the bridge would ring up full ahead. The fireman would put in the biggest burners in the boiler. And I would pull back the stick until steam pressure would begin to drop, at that point I would adjust the stick to maintain boiler pressure. Full speed was hopefully 90 RPM, but usuall around 89 rpm.
Wow. 
The breadth and variety of professional experience represented on the SDMB always dazzles me.
One more thing about this business of surviving a head-on collision with the berg.
The Titanic was traveling at some 22.5 knots when she struck (nearly 38 feet per second). Now if we assume that she weighed roughly 50,000 tons (estimate, we’re just after rough figures here) the formula for kinetic energy is mass X velocity squared divided by 2, which comes out to be a shade over 2.5 billion foot-pounds of energy that would have to be dissipated in a very short period of time. I don’t think anybody can visualize what might have happened. With the brittle rivets that were used in the hull, a massive failure might have occurred throughout the ship. For sure most of the passengers would have been plastered on the forward bulkheads of their cabins.
I’m not a sailor, but for sure the one thing I would not have done is to deliberately cause a head-on with an iceberg. Remember, the ship just barely touched the iceberg, and a foot or two more would have made the whole episode into just a near miss.
Now really, without using hindsight, what would you guys have done?
Wow, not only has the SDMB absorbed the notion that an event horizon is not, in itself, anything particularly noticeable, but it’s gotten so ingrained that people use it as an analogy for mundane non-relativistic things like flying a plane. I’m proud of you guys.
Indeed, the congressional testimony of one of the cooks (also portrayed in the movie Titanic hanging onto the rail beside the couple) was that he stood hanging on to the rear railing and as the stern sank into the water, it was he said very smooth, like stepping off a descending elevator - no suction, no turbulence, never went under. And thanks to a decent amount of alcohol (?), he somehow avoided hypothermia before he was picked up by a lifeboat quite a while later.
While I don’t have any particular experience with motor vessels, my experience with tracked vehicles taught me that the best way to make a sharp turn is to keep one side going forward and reverse the other. The order to go back full on all shafts almost certainly robbed the ship of some deflection — especially since the centerline shaft that couldn’t be reversed, only stopped (which eliminated the effect of wash on the rudder).
If Murdoch had ordered back full on the port shaft only, it’s quite possible that the forward section would have missed the iceberg. Of course, it would have been kind of dicey to time the opposite move to avoid collision further aft, but in any case the ship would not have gone down by the bow.
One theory I once came across, which sounded good at the time, was that they were not required to have enough lifeboats for everyone on board because before radio the idea of abandoning everyone to the lifeboats to float around simply meant a slow death from exposure or starvation. Better to take a chance the ship didn’t fully sink, or go with it quickly. Many early sailing ships had only one or two. Lifeboats were only meant to ferry people in groups to an obvious safe landing.
With the advent of … — … it was thought that help could always be summoned. The middle ground of having to abandon everyone to the lifeboats until help did arrive wasn’t very well considered.
I’m not sure if having lifeboats for everyone would have helped much anyway. Panic and social class separation seems to have made for very inefficient use of what they had.
On a tract vehicle a stopped track has good traction with the ground.
With a ship screw there is not that kind of traction. I doubt the full astern bell slowed the ship by a full knot before hitting the ice burg. A Full astern bell and full rudder would have turned the ship maybe a degree or two.
I was on a turbo electric T-2 tanker when the ship ran into a thick fog bank. Just as the 2nd reach the throttling flat to relieve me of the watch. I got a emergency full astern bell. I stopped the main motor, put it in astern, and opened the throttle full. We went through the relieving of the watch and the 2nd took over. I walked out of the engine room and onto the deck. As I looked forward I saw the reason for the bell. Or rather could not see. From the aft house I could not see the forward house. About the time I got on the main deck I heard the EOT ring up stop engines. This would have been in the range of 20 minutes or more. I looked over the side and we still had some way on.
This was a 16,000 ton tanker with a 6,000 Hp main motor. And we were doing around 16 knots. Ships at full speed to not respond to course changes or speed changes very fast.
With such a small deceleration, I can imagine that it probably isn’t very (or at all) noticeable that you’re changing speed one way or the other. But robbby’s post above got me wondering:
In the situation you describe (a very different vessel I understand), is there any indication of what the ship is trying to do, as far as shaking, noise, or whatever? If you look over the back end is it stirring up a serious froth?
(Also, in the second sentence of yours that I quoted, are there any words missing or something? I get the basic gist of what you’re saying but I feel like I’m missing just a bit and can’t quite figure it out.)
Merchant ship at stop bell no way on. A full ahead bell is given. you begin to feel movement and vibration. look over the fantail and the water will begin to churn. As the ship begins to move churning decreases and a wake begins to form. When the ship gets up to speed very little churning and just a propeller and ship wake with little air bubbles in the wake.
A full astern bell is rung up. A lot of vibration and some bouncing and a change in the movement of the ship. The ships wake is there but greatly disturbed. As the ship slows the churning water will be pushed along the hull of the ship. As the ship slows the churning water will travel up the length of the hull. When the ship begins to move backwards futher up the hull.