For many people, the Titanic is only remembered for its tragic accident; but Bill Hammack (aka engineerguy) takes us on a tour through the fascinating engineering details that build not only the famous ship, but also its more successful siblings:
Bill shares fascinating images and information gleaned from the 1909 to 1911 editions of the Journal The Engineer. It includes photos of the construction of the Titanic and its twin the Olympic, the launching of these Olympic-class ships, and accidents that occurred. The video includes engineering details of the ship’s engines, steering mechanism, and propellers.
Bill made the [presentation] to some geek news sites a while back with an interesting analysis of a 100 year old mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis.
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In the 1980s oceanographer and Naval Reserve commanding officer Robert Ballard found the resting place of the Titanic. It turns out that as part of the deal to get funding for the search from the US Navy, he was to first find the two missing nuclear submarines, the Thresher and the Scorpion, both of which sank in the 1960s. After finding both submarines, he located the remains of the Titanic in only 8 days by finding and following its debris trail, leaving the last 4 days of the mission to examine the wreck.
It starts in 1982, when Ballard, who had performed a number of top-secret Naval missions during the Cold War, was developing his own remotely-operated underwater vehicle.
Unable to get science grants, he asked Deputy Chief of Naval Operations Ronald Thunman if the Navy would help fund his project. "He said, 'All my life I've wanted to go find the Titanic.' And I was taken aback by that," Thunman recalled. "I said, 'Come on, this is a serious, top secret operation. Find the Titanic? That's crazy!'"
Thunman did say yes, but only if Ballard used the funds and the time to find two missing U.S. nuclear submarines – the Thresher and the Scorpion – which had sunk in the Atlantic in the 1960s.
Earlier on SN:
Titanic Engineering Facts (2015)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Friday February 13 2015, @08:01PM
Titanic and its twin the Olympic,
Britanic was Titanic's twin, Olympic was a slightly earlier design, upon which the later ships were based. Both of the others had structural changes after Titanic sunk in an attempt to prevent a similar clearance.
Britannic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic [wikipedia.org]
Same fate as Titanic, Sunk, but induced by hitting a single mine, and sank within 55 minutes, (Much lower loss of life).
Olympic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic [wikipedia.org]
The only ship of the three that had a long and successful career, despite being involved in two collisions, both of which were the fault of her captains.
One woman survived the sinking and the accidents of all three of these ships: Violet Jessop was aboard Britannic when it hit the mine, was also one of the survivors of Britannic's sister-ship Titanic, and had even been on the third sister, Olympic, when she collided with HMS Hawke.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Nerdfest on Friday February 13 2015, @09:20PM
Why do people even let her on board?
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Friday February 13 2015, @09:38PM
Reminds me of Jinxo [wikia.com] from Babylon 5.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by karmawhore on Friday February 13 2015, @09:54PM
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 3, Funny) by fadrian on Saturday February 14 2015, @07:53AM
Wimminx on shipx is bad lucx -- Popeye the Sailor
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday February 14 2015, @04:38PM
Why do people even let her on board?
Quite. One of many superstitions among sailors is that it is unlucky to have a woman on board. It's no wonder the Titanic sank, there were lots.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @08:02PM
Both videos are informative, up tempo and interesting. The EngineerGuy can make the basics of just about anything interesting.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 13 2015, @09:06PM
What I enjoyed in the movie was the mix of technology. Late steam punk, in a way. Still have steam power and massive steel parts held together with millions of giant rivets. But they also have electricity. The ship is lit with light bulbs, not kerosene lanterns or candles or gas lights. They don't have radar yet, so they have men up in a crow's nest. But they do have the still relatively new telephony, so those men can call the bridge when they spot the iceberg, rather than yelling down to someone below. Then, the signal to change speed to full astern is sent not by telephone, but by an old mechanical chain system. I observed how the officer on the bridge did not move the handle directly to the new speed, but first moved it all the way to one end. I don't know why, but suppose it could be to ring a bell down below. The steering was done by the traditional large spoked wheel which I guess drove the rudder through purely mechanical action, no "power steering" for ships yet? Because if it has some sort of assist, there is no need for the wheel to be so large.
In the engine room, they're still shoveling coal. No oil burning engines yet. No system to automatically feed coal into the boilers, no end loader, it has to be shoveled by hand. It may not have been obvious to all viewers that an abrupt switch to "full astern" in the middle of the ocean is an "oh s***" signal. They reversed as fast as they could, not waiting for the shafts to come to a complete stop.
Wood is mostly gone from the ship's structure. It's all steel. But wood lingers in the decor.
Then there's the well known business of the radio. They have radio communication, a new technology that first hit the markets only 15 years before, but it proves useless because it was customary to shut the radio off for the night, so no one heard the distress calls. There's no good reason for that, it's not like the radio takes a lot of power, and people have to be on watch all the time anyway. That custom changed after the Titanic. Unlike the telephone, the radio signal was sent not in voice but in Morse Code. Voice over radio had been done by then but didn't become the norm until WWI. They also have distress flares, which also fail to attract any attention.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Friday February 13 2015, @09:26PM
More Interesting facts: http://history1900s.about.com/od/1910s/a/titanicfacts.htm [about.com]
Flares did attract attention, but they were the wrong color, and were ignored.
Morse code gets through in situations where voice is unreadable, and code could be taken down letter by letter even by non-english speaking crews of other ships. Morse was use well into WWII, because it could be encoded (encrypted).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 14 2015, @01:48AM
I don't know the details, but my understanding is that that speed change order was a telegraph. Perhaps by moving the handle all the way to one side, it enables the transmission of every step of the way.
My father was in the Navy; his ships always had hand-operated winches that used chains to move the rudder in case it lost steering, typically during a battle but it could happen due to simple mechanical failure. He told me that isn't typically done on civilian ships.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 14 2015, @03:31AM
Navy. Every time I read about a mishap at sea, I wonder about the training of the crew. As a US Navy veteran, I recall the endless hours of drill, drill, drill, training for every conceivable casualty, whether battle casualties, weather, collision, shipboard disaster - anything you can imagine. Those endless drills pay off when the shit hits the fan. A man reacts without taking precious split seconds to think about what needs to be done. Men react without worrying whether their mates are performing their jobs.
Examples? We drilled at Gitmo for weeks, passing PEB and all the rest. When setting General Quarters, you have three minutes. We managed to do it in two minutes a couple times, but then, the harder we were pushed, the slower we got.
Couple months later, there was an explosion. A minor explosion, but an explosion, in the middle of the night. In only 90 seconds, the crew reported that it was battle ready. One and a half minutes, from a dead sleep, to battle ready. Now, THAT is impressive!
Oh - the explosion? Some skinhead had pocketed a concussion grenade earlier in the day, and dropped it over the side of the ship just to see what it would sound like. No one above the water line heard it, but all the crew sleeps below the water line, and we were ALL awakened!
Imagine the bridge crew wondering why all the crew was unexpectedly reporting in on the 1MC that all stations were manned and ready, in the middle of a dark, dark night. "WTF is going on here? I didn't hear anyone pass the word for a drill!"
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday February 14 2015, @07:36PM
if I had mod points, I would give +5 for this. There's nothing like a sprinkling of practical experience to colour a story.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Nuke on Saturday February 14 2015, @05:23PM
Hey, steam is not that old. I was in the British Navy on a steam turbine ship, built in the 1960's, and nuclear powered ships have steam final drive.
My ship, about 1/3 the displacement of Titanic, had a mechanical engine room telegraph. The Stop/Half/Full telegraph was accompanied by a rpm request dial. Utterly reliable and utterly clear. There was a phone as well in case the telegraph was put out of action. Yes, the telegraph is moved its whole range before settling on a new setting, which rang the bell twice. Normally the telegraph was only ever on "Half-Ahead" (or Half Astern or Stop) even for maximum speed (which was requested by the rpm dial). I never saw "Full Ahead" because that was only for emergencies - wreck the engines if need be, like when an iceberg ahead..
The ship's wheel was the traditional pattern but smaller, and, this being a warship, it was not on the bridge. The Quartermaster (steersman) sat in a compartment the size of a toilet deep down in the ship, a really boring job. He was surrounded by voice tubes and dedicated phones from several parts of the ship, in case the bridge was knocked out, and at least two compasses AFAIR.
There is no way that the Titanic would not have had power steering. It would have been by hydraulic rams on a massive tiller as it was on my ship. Hydraulics were sophisticated by 1912; hydraulic rams and motors (swashplate) did jobs that electric motors and actuators do today. My warship had all sorts of alternative steering - there was a further steering wheel in the rudder compartment (with all the phones again) and also hand pumps to actuate the rams if power failed. I would not like to have needed to work those hand pumps, it is bad enough jacking a car up. Also hand winches. Remember the Bismark was defeated by steering failure.
It was on my engineering rounds to check the steering flat, and I would stand there for 5 or 10 minutes until there was a movement. There would be a sudden low groaning noise and the rams and tiller would move slightly as the Quartermaster made an adjustment.
When I first saw a Titanic film (a 1950's one) I could not understand why the watch on another ship in sight saw the distress rockets but "Wondered why the Titanic was firing rockets". I had not realised at the time that ships might fire rockets to entertain the passengers. The law at sea now forbids fireworks other than distress signals.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday February 14 2015, @05:28PM
I never saw "Full Ahead" because that was only for emergencies - wreck the engines if need be, like when an iceberg ahead..
Ramming speed!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Saturday February 14 2015, @05:40PM
It seems this is no longer in effect for some reason. Recent TV commercials show a Disney cruise ship with fireworks lighting up the night sky. When checking to see if this was just happening while docked at or leaving a port, it seems they're not the only company that does fireworks at sea either.
http://disneycruiselineblog.com/2013/01/disney-cruise-line-no-longer-the-only-line-with-fireworks-at-sea/ [disneycruiselineblog.com]