Quoting Michael Askin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 7:11 PM, Ron Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>> To my understanding Titanic was going too fast for the conditions, and >> >> ISTR that the rudder was also on the small side. It also amazes me that the >> ship did actually turn considering it had three screws all going full >> astern. > > I believe the best turning would have been performed with the center, > turbine driven, prop ahead, probably with port screw astern. The > center prop was the only screw in front of the rudder. Why this didn't > happen I don't know.
The centre prop was driven by a small turbine operating off the *very* low pressure steam exhausted from the LP cylinders of the main triple expansion engines driving the port and starboard props. The turbine was non-reversible and would have been disengaged, either automatically or manually, when going astern. There's no doubt Titanic was going too fast for the conditions. Then again, so was every other liner plying the Atlantic at the time as crossing times were absolutley critical. Titanic actually wasn't a particularly fast liner - she certainly had no chance whatsoever of challenging for the Blue Riband. As Clarkson put it in one of his better comments, she was merely trying to prove that she wasn't *that* slow when she proved that she wasn't that well built either! Ismay didn't need to apply any on scene pressure to persuade the Captain to keep his foot down, Smith knew full well that arriving late was simply not an option. (And if you think any lessons were learnt, just look at the radar plot for the channel on a foggy day with a continuous procession of bulk carriers charging through one of the most congested shipping lanes in the world at maximum economical speed. Scary!) What is particularly interesting about the Titanic disaster is the amount of attention it attracted at the time and the way it has stayed in the public conciousness ever since. In the overall scheme of things, the loss of the Titanic was just another entry in a very long list of ships lost in the Atlantic. Many ships, before the advent of Marconi radio, simply vanished without trace and many thousands of souls perished crossing the Atlantic. Bru
