The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons (17 page)

Submarine signalling apparatus

There are occasions when wireless apparatus is useless as a means of
saving life at sea promptly.

One of its weaknesses is that when the ships' engines are stopped,
messages can no longer be sent out, that is, with the system at
present adopted. It will be remembered that the Titanic's messages got
gradually fainter and then ceased altogether as she came to rest with
her engines shut down.

Again, in fogs,—and most accidents occur in fogs,—while wireless
informs of the accident, it does not enable one ship to locate another
closely enough to take off her passengers at once. There is as yet no
method known by which wireless telegraphy will fix the direction of a
message; and after a ship has been in fog for any considerable length
of time it is more difficult to give the exact position to another
vessel bringing help.

Nothing could illustrate these two points better than the story of how
the Baltic found the Republic in the year 1909, in a dense fog off
Nantucket Lightship, when the latter was drifting helplessly after
collision with the Florida. The Baltic received a wireless message
stating the Republic's condition and the information that she was in
touch with Nantucket through a submarine bell which she could hear
ringing. The Baltic turned and went towards the position in the fog,
picked up the submarine bell-signal from Nantucket, and then began
searching near this position for the Republic. It took her twelve
hours to find the damaged ship, zigzagging across a circle within
which she thought the Republic might lie. In a rough sea it is
doubtful whether the Republic would have remained afloat long enough
for the Baltic to find her and take off all her passengers.

Now on these two occasions when wireless telegraphy was found to be
unreliable, the usefulness of the submarine bell at once becomes
apparent. The Baltic could have gone unerringly to the Republic in the
dense fog had the latter been fitted with a submarine emergency bell.
It will perhaps be well to spend a little time describing the
submarine signalling apparatus to see how this result could have been
obtained: twelve anxious hours in a dense fog on a ship which was
injured so badly that she subsequently foundered, is an experience
which every appliance known to human invention should be enlisted to
prevent.

Submarine signalling has never received that public notice which
wireless telegraphy has, for the reason that it does not appeal so
readily to the popular mind. That it is an absolute necessity to every
ship carrying passengers—or carrying anything, for that matter—is
beyond question. It is an additional safeguard that no ship can afford
to be without.

There are many occasions when the atmosphere fails lamentably as a
medium for carrying messages. When fog falls down, as it does
sometimes in a moment, on the hundreds of ships coasting down the
traffic ways round our shores—ways which are defined so easily in
clear weather and with such difficulty in fogs—the hundreds of
lighthouses and lightships which serve as warning beacons, and on
which many millions of money have been spent, are for all practical
purposes as useless to the navigator as if they had never been built:
he is just as helpless as if he were back in the years before 1514,
when Trinity House was granted a charter by Henry VIII "for the
relief...of the shipping of this realm of England," and began a system
of lights on the shores, of which the present chain of lighthouses and
lightships is the outcome.

Nor is the foghorn much better: the presence of different layers of
fog and air, and their varying densities, which cause both reflection
and refraction of sound, prevent the air from being a reliable medium
for carrying it. Now, submarine signalling has none of these defects,
for the medium is water, subject to no such variable conditions as the
air. Its density is practically non variable, and sound travels
through it at the rate of 4400 feet per second, without deviation or
reflection.

The apparatus consists of a bell designed to ring either pneumatically
from a lightship, electrically from the shore (the bell itself being a
tripod at the bottom of the sea), automatically from a floating
bell-buoy, or by hand from a ship or boat. The sound travels from the
bell in every direction, like waves in a pond, and falls, it may be,
on the side of a ship. The receiving apparatus is fixed inside the
skin of the ship and consists of a small iron tank, 16 inches square
and 18 inches deep. The front of the tank facing the ship's iron skin
is missing and the tank, being filled with water, is bolted to the
framework and sealed firmly to the ship's side by rubber facing. In
this way a portion of the ship's iron hull is washed by the sea on one
side and water in the tank on the other. Vibrations from a bell
ringing at a distance fall on the iron side, travel through, and
strike on two microphones hanging in the tank. These microphones
transmit the sound along wires to the chart room, where telephones
convey the message to the officer on duty.

There are two of these tanks or "receivers" fitted against the ship's
side, one on the port and one on the starboard side, near the bows,
and as far down below the water level as is possible. The direction of
sounds coming to the microphones hanging in these tanks can be
estimated by switching alternately to the port and starboard tanks. If
the sound is of greater intensity on the port side, then the bell
signalling is off the port bows; and similarly on the starboard side.

The ship is turned towards the sound until the same volume of sound is
heard from both receivers, when the bell is known to be dead ahead. So
accurate is this in practice that a trained operator can steer his
ship in the densest fog directly to a lightship or any other point
where a submarine bell is sending its warning beneath the sea. It must
be repeated that the medium in which these signals are transmitted is
a constant one, not subject to any of the limitations and variations
imposed on the atmosphere and the ether as media for the transmission
of light, blasts of a foghorn, and wireless vibrations. At present the
chief use of submarine signalling is from the shore or a lightship to
ships at sea, and not from ship to ship or from ship to the shore: in
other words ships carry only receiving apparatus, and lighthouses and
lightships use only signalling apparatus. Some of the lighthouses and
lightships on our coasts already have these submarine bells in
addition to their lights, and in bad weather the bells send out their
messages to warn ships of their proximity to a danger point. This
invention enables ships to pick up the sound of bell after bell on a
coast and run along it in the densest fog almost as well as in
daylight; passenger steamers coming into port do not have to wander
about in the fog, groping their way blindly into harbour. By having a
code of rings, and judging by the intensity of the sound, it is
possible to tell almost exactly where a ship is in relation to the
coast or to some lightship. The British Admiralty report in 1906 said:
"If the lightships round the coast were fitted with submarine bells,
it would be possible for ships fitted with receiving apparatus to
navigate in fog with almost as great certainty as in clear weather."
And the following remark of a captain engaged in coast service is
instructive. He had been asked to cut down expenses by omitting the
submarine signalling apparatus, but replied: "I would rather take out
the wireless. That only enables me to tell other people where I am.
The submarine signal enables me to find out where I am myself."

The range of the apparatus is not so wide as that of wireless
telegraphy, varying from 10 to 15 miles for a large ship (although
instances of 20 to 30 are on record), and from 3 to 8 miles for a
small ship.

At present the receiving apparatus is fixed on only some 650 steamers
of the merchant marine, these being mostly the first-class passenger
liners. There is no question that it should be installed, along with
wireless apparatus, on every ship of over 1000 tons gross tonnage.
Equally important is the provision of signalling apparatus on board
ships: it is obviously just as necessary to transmit a signal as to
receive one; but at present the sending of signals from ships has not
been perfected. The invention of signal-transmitting apparatus to be
used while the ship is under way is as yet in the experimental stage;
but while she is at rest a bell similar to those used by lighthouses
can be sunk over her side and rung by hand with exactly the same
effect. But liners are not provided with them (they cost only 60 Pounds!).
As mentioned before, with another 60 Pounds spent on the Republic's
equipment, the Baltic could have picked up her bell and steered direct
to her—just as they both heard the bell of Nantucket Lightship.
Again, if the Titanic had been provided with a bell and the
Californian with receiving apparatus,—neither of them was,—the
officer on the bridge could have heard the signals from the telephones
near.

A smaller size for use in lifeboats is provided, and would be heard by
receiving apparatus for approximately five miles. If we had hung one
of these bells over the side of the lifeboats afloat that night we
should have been free from the anxiety of being run down as we lay
across the Carpathia's path, without a light. Or if we had gone adrift
in a dense fog and wandered miles apart from each other on the sea (as
we inevitably should have done), the Carpathia could still have picked
up each boat individually by means of the bell signal.

In those ships fitted with receiving apparatus, at least one officer
is obliged to understand the working of the apparatus: a very wise
precaution, and, as suggested above, one that should be taken with
respect to wireless apparatus also.

It was a very great pleasure to me to see all this apparatus in
manufacture and in use at one of the principal submarine signalling
works in America and to hear some of the remarkable stories of its
value in actual practice. I was struck by the aptness of the motto
adopted by them—"De profundis clamavi"—in relation to the Titanic's
end and the calls of our passengers from the sea when she sank. "Out
of the deep have I called unto Thee" is indeed a suitable motto for
those who are doing all they can to prevent such calls arising from
their fellow men and women "out of the deep."

Fixing of steamship routes

The "lanes" along which the liners travel are fixed by agreement among
the steamship companies in consultation with the Hydrographic
departments of the different countries. These routes are arranged so
that east-bound steamers are always a number of miles away from those
going west, and thus the danger of collision between east and
west-bound vessels is entirely eliminated. The "lanes" can be moved
farther south if icebergs threaten, and north again when the danger is
removed. Of course the farther south they are placed, the longer the
journey to be made, and the longer the time spent on board, with
consequent grumbling by some passengers. For example, the lanes since
the disaster to the Titanic have been moved one hundred miles farther
south, which means one hundred and eighty miles longer journey, taking
eight hours.

The only real precaution against colliding with icebergs is to go
south of the place where they are likely to be: there is no other way.

Lifeboats

The provision was of course woefully inadequate. The only humane plan
is to have a numbered seat in a boat assigned to each passenger and
member of the crew. It would seem well to have this number pointed out
at the time of booking a berth, and to have a plan in each cabin
showing where the boat is and how to get to it the most direct way—a
most important consideration with a ship like the Titanic with over
two miles of deck space. Boat-drills of the passengers and crew of
each boat should be held, under compulsion, as soon as possible after
leaving port. I asked an officer as to the possibility of having such
a drill immediately after the gangways are withdrawn and before the
tugs are allowed to haul the ship out of dock, but he says the
difficulties are almost insuperable at such a time. If so, the drill
should be conducted in sections as soon as possible after sailing, and
should be conducted in a thorough manner. Children in school are
called upon suddenly to go through fire-drill, and there is no reason
why passengers on board ship should not be similarly trained. So much
depends on order and readiness in time of danger. Undoubtedly, the
whole subject of manning, provisioning, loading and lowering of
lifeboats should be in the hands of an expert officer, who should have
no other duties. The modern liner has become far too big to permit the
captain to exercise control over the whole ship, and all vitally
important subdivisions should be controlled by a separate authority.
It seems a piece of bitter irony to remember that on the Titanic a
special chef was engaged at a large salary,—larger perhaps than that
of any officer,—and no boatmaster (or some such officer) was
considered necessary. The general system again—not criminal neglect,
as some hasty criticisms would say, but lack of consideration for our
fellow-man, the placing of luxurious attractions above that kindly
forethought that allows no precaution to be neglected for even the
humblest passenger. But it must not be overlooked that the provision
of sufficient lifeboats on deck is not evidence they will all be
launched easily or all the passengers taken off safely. It must be
remembered that ideal conditions prevailed that night for launching
boats from the decks of the Titanic: there was no list that prevented
the boats getting away, they could be launched on both sides, and when
they were lowered the sea was so calm that they pulled away without
any of the smashing against the side that is possible in rough seas.
Sometimes it would mean that only those boats on the side sheltered
from a heavy sea could ever get away, and this would at once halve the
boat accommodation. And when launched, there would be the danger of
swamping in such a heavy sea. All things considered, lifeboats might
be the poorest sort of safeguard in certain conditions.