Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic (5 page)

The two reciprocating engines were the largest such engines ever built. As
Shipbuilder
explained, they were of the four-cylinder, triple-expansion, direct-acting inverted type. Each engine stood nearly forty feet tall, with the largest of its cylinders nearly nine feet in diameter. It could turn at a top speed of eighty revolutions per minute, driving massive three-bladed propellers that were twenty feet in diameter.

Taking advantage of the exhaust venting from the two reciprocating engines, the steam was bled from the fourth cylinder of each engine and ducted to the low-pressure turbine, which drove the center shaft. Spinning at a much higher speed than the reciprocating engines, the turbine created almost no vibration itself, while the other two engines turned in opposite directions, effectively damping each other out and creating one of the smoothest powerplants in operation, which translated a very gentle movement to the structure of the ship. The center turbine did have one drawback: it could not be reversed, meaning that for the ship to go astern or if the other engines were reversed for an emergency stop, the turbine would be useless. However, this was considered to be no more than an inconvenience.

But for the turbine to spin and the reciprocating engines to turn, steam was needed in greater quantities than any ship had ever before generated. To create this giant head of steam, 29 boilers were installed: 25 double-ended (that is, with fireboxes at each end) and 4 single-ended. Each end had three fireboxes, making a total of 162 furnaces that had to be stoked with coal, a shovelful at a time. Nearly 600 tons of coal a day were needed to maintain a speed of 22 knots. Two hundred grimy, sweating stokers, firemen, and trimmers—who would move the coal from the bunkers, shovel it into the fireboxes, and keep the fires burning evenly across the firegrates—would be needed to feed the insatiable maws of these boilers, which stood fully two stories tall, twenty one feet in diameter.
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While it may seem that such figures and statistics of equipments and machinery amounts to little more than “rivet counting,” they were the subjects of innumerable discourses and arguments over many a pint in the local pub, in the drawing rooms of middle-class families, and over cigars and brandy when the ladies withdrew after dinner in some of the finest houses in Britain and America. In many ways, the steamships of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had become the secular equivalent of medieval cathedrals. They were the source of endless pride to the communities and nations that built them, and were just as much an expression of men’s hopes and dreams of technical perfection as the great churches had once been of hopes for spiritual purity. And as in the days of the cathedrals, each level of society contributed to the great seagoing structures’ creation and upkeep. The upper classes endowed them by paying for their most elaborate and expensive accommodations; the burgeoning middle class supplied their material needs by being purveyors of the foodstuffs and cellars, linens and cutlery, fuel and accouterments that each vessel required in prodigious amounts; and the working classes built them, investing a level of craftsmanship not seen since the raising of Salisbury or Winchester.

Every steamship line had its proponents, every vessel her partisans. Marine engineering had come to be regarded as the pinnacle of human achievement. Yet while the Titanic may have been a marine engineer’s dream come true, the splendors of such details were lost on the general public. Instead, most people were more interested in the ship’s accommodations. Here, as in every other aspect of her design, the results were breathtaking.

In an era when the comings and goings of titled or monied men and women on both sides of the Atlantic were followed by the lower classes with the same devotion that later generations would devote to professional athletes and popular entertainers, the style in which these rich and famous persons traveled had to be on a par with their station in society. Consequently, as far as First Class was concerned, the passenger accommodation was, again in the words of the magazine
Shipbuilder,
“of unrivaled extent and magnificence.” The periodical continued:

The centerpiece of the
Titanic’s
decor was the Grand Staircase. Beginning under an opulent, white-enameled, wrought-iron skylight on A Deck, it descended through four decks to the First Class entrance on D Deck, in an elaborate William and Mary style, surrounded by a Louis XIV balustrade. The landing on D Deck admitted directly to the First Class Dining Saloon. The largest such room yet seen in a ship, it was over 114 feet in length, and ran the full width of the hull. With a 500-seat capacity, it presented a vast sea of spotless white linen tablecloths, glittering crystal, and gleaming silver, with the chairs tastefully decorated in Scottish thistles, English roses, or French fleurs-de-lys.

The First Class Smoking Room, located on the Promenade, or A, Deck, perhaps best served to epitomize the care and expense lavished on the
Titanic’s
interior. A carefully orchestrated assembly of carved mahogany-paneled walls, inset with leaded glass panels and etched-patterned mirrors, enclosed the handsomely linoleumed floor, on which sat massive leather-covered armchairs beside lovingly carved, marble-topped tables. The First Class Smoking Room was an unbreachable bastion of masculinity and affluence carefully blended on a scale never seen before or since. The entire atmosphere immediately evoked images of silk waistcoats, gold watch chains, expensive cigars, and the deep baritones of rail barons, shipping magnates, international publishers, and millionaire businessmen. Nowhere else on the Titanic was the incredible investment of time and talent as evident—an investment no shipbuilder could ever afford to make again.

The staterooms and suites for the First Class passengers were, of course, on a scale in keeping with the other First Class amenities. Instead of the usual bunk or berth typical of the transatlantic liner of the day, each stateroom had its own full-sized, wrought-iron bedstead, as well as a washstand with hot and cold running water. If a passenger was willing to spend the extra money, whole suites of three, four, or five rooms could be booked, in decors that included several Louis (XIV, XV, and XVI), Empire, Jacobean, Georgian, Queen Anne, Regence (as the British insisted on spelling “Regenry” for years), and Old or Modern Dutch. The most exclusive of these suites were located on B Deck, and even featured a private promenade—at a cost of $4,350, that is, nearly £1,000-for a one-way passage: the equivalent of over $80,000 in 1997 dollars. At close to $40 a front foot, the
Titanic’s
promenade suites, handsomely half-timbered in a mock-Tudor style, were the most expensive seagoing real estate ever.
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The craftsmanship and meticulous construction were carried over fully into Second and Third Classes as well. Indeed, Second Class rooms, public and private, could have been mistaken for First Class on almost any other ship on the North Atlantic, including the Dining Saloon, Smoking Room, and Library. The six decks that comprised Second Class were served by an electric elevator (First Class had three, but in 1911 any elevator was a novelty), and while the Second Class staircase may not have been as grand as that of First Class, it was still an exceedingly handsome structure. In what was certainly a bonus for Second Class, both First and Second Classes shared a common galley, one of the finest in existence afloat or ashore. (There are few four-star restaurants today that could duplicate the menu from First or Second Class for April 14, 1912.)

Third Class was a story unto itself. A great many myths have built up around the flood of immigrants that flowed to the shores of the New World at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, aided by a spate of romanticized reporting, photographs, and artwork from the period. All too often these steerage—as Third Class was commonly known—passengers are portrayed as “tired, poor ... huddled masses,” as babushka- and shawl-beclad mothers gripping the hands of small, wide-eyed children, or as young men in ill-fitting clothing clutching their few belongings in loosely tied bundles, all hoping to find their fortunes in such exotic locales as New York, Pittsburgh, or Chicago.

The truth, as with so many subjects of the journalism of that day, was a good deal more mundane. Despite the increasing numbers of central and southern Europeans emigrating to America, the majority of those leaving the Old World for the New were still Anglo-Saxon. Many were Germans, whose Fatherland was undergoing a rapid transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial juggernaut, with all the attendant social dislocations; many others were Britons, often skilled or semiskilled workers, forced to seek employment in America as Britain began her slow decline industrially and economically. To these people a ship was transportation, its sole purpose to take them from Southampton (or Cherbourg or Queenstown) to New York.

Passengers like these were not influenced by Grand Staircases, electric elevators, swimming baths, or Smoking Rooms. Their interests lay in clean quarters and decent food. In this respect the Titanic served them admirably.

Third Class berthing was divided between the fore and after ends of the ship. Single men and married couples were berthed forward, while single women and families were accommodated aft. (There was a Puritanical streak in the White Star Line, apparently peculiar to the company, that did not allow single men and women to have cabins anywhere near each other.) The cabins were spacious, spotless, and if a bit austere, by all reports comfortable enough. The unmarried men or women would share a room with three to five other passengers of the same sex, while married couples and families had rooms to themselves.

Third Class accommodations included a large number of permanent cabins both fore and aft, as well as large sections of berths formed by movable wooden partitions, so that the numbers and sizes of the cabins could be adjusted to the number of passengers, and the unused space given over to open common areas. The days of the cramped, dark hold, reeking of unwashed humanity and bilge, were long since a thing of the past in British and German liners, but, as in so many other ways, the Titanic set new standards. The Third Class galley provided a fare that, though unspectacular, offered good food and plenty of it; in some cases, especially those from the more impoverished Irish counties, the steerage passengers ate better aboard ship than they ever had at home. All in all, it was a good deal more than most would be expecting when they paid for their passage.
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The
Titanic’s
maiden voyage had originally been scheduled for February 1912, but unforeseen events got in the way. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic had collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke, and was returned to Belfast for repairs. These took six weeks to effect, the workmen being pulled off the Titanic workgangs. In February 1912 the Olympic lost a propeller blade, again necessitating a return to Harland and Wolff, again causing work to be suspended on the Titanic for another three weeks. The time was not wasted, though, since the decision had been made to incorporate a number of modifications to the Titanic based on the in-service experience with the Olympic, and the delays allowed the plans for these modifications to be drawn up. Most of them were minor: the beds in some First Class cabins seemed too springy; there should be cigar holders in the WC’s; the crew’s galley needed an automatic potato peeler, and so on.

One modification, though, was to permanently alter the
Titanic’s
appearance and instantly distinguish her from the Olympic: the forward two-fifths of the Promenade Deck were enclosed by glass and steel windows because First Class passengers on the Olympic had complained about spray thrown up by the bow in rough or choppy weather being blown across the open deck. This final modification was completed less than two weeks before the
Titanic’s
scheduled sailing day of April 10.

On the morning of April 2, 1912, the most magnificent sight Belfast would ever see presented itself as the Titanic, drawn by four tugboats, slowly made her way down the Victoria Channel to the Belfast Lough to begin her sea trials. One by one the boilers were lit until twenty had been fired. Just before noon Capt. Edward J. Smith ordered the blue and white signal flag “A” (“I am undergoing sea trials”) hoisted from the bridge and three long blasts given from the Titanic’s siren. The next several hours were spent making a prolonged series of twists and turns, followed by a succession of runs straight across the Lough and back. The highest speed she was able to reach during these runs was 18 knots, and during one of these runs Captain Smith made a test to see how quickly she could stop. With both engines reversed and the turbine stopped the Titanic came to a halt in three minutes, fifteen seconds; the distance was 3,000 feet.

By dusk, both owners and builders seemed satisfied. The Titanic returned to Belfast to drop off most of the Harland and Wolff workers who had accompanied the ship on her sea trials. Eight remained on board, including Thomas Andrews, who would make the maiden voyage to assist in solving any technical problems that might come up during the crossing. That night the Titanic steamed down the Irish Channel and around the Lizard to Southampton, to begin coaling and provisioning. Sailing day would be April 10.
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