Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic (4 page)

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Authors: Daniel Allen Butler

BOOK: Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic
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The
Titanic’s
keel was laid down on March 31, 1909. Designated Hull No. 401 (Olympic had been Hull No. 400), she was fully framed by April of the next year.
13
More than 3,000 workmen swarmed over her growing shape, as her shell plating was gradually laid over her frame and her internal structure was completed. There were a total of ten decks, starting with the uppermost, the Boat Deck, then lettered A through G, with two lower decks below that for the ship’s machinery, the Orlop and Tank Top decks. A Deck was also called the Promenade Deck, and the two names were used interchangeably. The ships were framed entirely of mild steel, which was also used for the huge shell plates that formed the hull. These plates, some of which measured six feet high and thirty-four feet long, varied from three-quarters to seven-eighths of an inch thick.
14
Overseeing the immense task of building such a huge ship was the yard’s managing director, Thomas Andrews. Born in February 1873, he was the second son in his family, which had a long and honorable reputation in Ulster. His father, also named Thomas, had early on established himself as a local politician of some note, and in 1870 he had the good fortune to marry Eliza Pirrie, Lord Pirrie’s daughter. The Thomas Andrews who would build the Titanic had from the earliest shown a marked fascination for ships, along with a remarkable gift for things mechanical. Consequently it came as no surprise—least of all to him—when at the age of sixteen he became a premium apprentice at the shipyard of Harland and Wolff.
Andrews’s experience as an apprentice was typical of those of young men who were destined for supervisory and management positions at Harland and Wolff. The apprenticeship lasted for five years, beginning with three months in the joiner’s shop, followed by a month in the cabinetmaker’s shop, then two months actually working on ships. After that came two months in the main store (warehouse), then five months spent with the shipwrights, two in the moulding loft, two with the painters, eight months with the iron shipwrights, six months with the fitters, three with the patternmakers, and eight with the smiths. Andrews completed his term by spending a year and a half in the drawing office.
As in any apprenticeship there was a certain “gofer” element in Andrews’s five years, but he was also expected to learn the tasks performed in the various shops, for a bright future had been projected for Andrews. An especially sharp aptitude for mechanical engineering and construction had marked him as a potential senior manager, a direction that was reinforced by the long stint in the drawing office. He learned not only the tasks required to build a ship, but came to know the men who performed them.
15
Ships at the turn of the century were put together almost entirely with rivets, not welded as they are today, and while the keel and framing of the ships were riveted hydraulically, almost all the riveting of the shell plating was done by hand. Driving rivets was hard work, but the men who built the ships were equal to their task. They were strong, tough men, usually more wiry than big, and because of the physical demands of their job they would brook neither weakness nor slack. Their workday began at 6:00 A.M. and ended at 5:30 P.M. Working in teams of four, they were paid by the number of rivets each team drove each day—and if it rained they didn’t work. First the “heater boy” (who could really be of any age) would work up a fire in a coke brazier, using a foot bellows to keep the heat up. Using long tongs he would heat a rivet until it was red hot. (For shell plating the rivets used were squat, nail-like slugs of iron three inches long and an inch thick.) Once a rivet was ready, the heater boy would toss it up to the “catch boy,” who caught the rivet in a wooden bowl, then used a pair of tongs to place the rivet into the hole of two overlapping steel plates. The third man, the “holder-up,” then placed a heavy hammer over the head of the rivet, while the fourth man, the “basher,” working from the opposite side of the plate, would beat the rivet down until it filled the hole.
The shipyard workers were a close-knit bunch, and they extended their respect only to those who could bear up under the hard work. Clearly Andrews could sustain such labor: as his apprenticeship passed, he grew into early manhood, a six-foot, broad-shouldered, and handsome young man. But also his character grew, as he developed that indefinable something called “leadership,” and he earned the admiration of the workmen and board members alike, in turn treating all with the dignity they deserved. The reputation for integrity that Andrews carried, were it not so well documented, would be hard to believe. In Thomas Andrews,
Shipbuilder,
author Shan Bullock paints a detailed if somewhat breathless portrait of the man in the Harland and Wolff yard:
One sees him, big and strong, a paint smeared bowler hat on his crown, grease on his boots and the pockets of his, blue jacket stuffed with plans, making his daily round of the Yards, now consulting with his Chief, now conferring with a foreman, now interviewing an owner, now poring over intricate calculations in the Drawing Office, now in company with his warm friend, old school-fellow and co-director Mr. George Cumming of the Engineering department, superintending the hoisting of a boiler by the two hundred ton crane into some newly launched ship by a wharf. Or he runs amok through a gang—to their admiration be it said—found heating their tea-cans before hornblow; or comes upon a party enjoying a stolen smoke below a tunnel shaft and, having spoken his mind forcibly, accepts with a smile the dismayed sentinel’s excuse that “ ’twasn’t fair to catch him by coming like that into the tunnel instead of by the way he was expected.” Or he kicks a red-hot rivet, which has fallen fifty feet from an upper deck, missing his head by inches, and strides on, laughing at his escape. Or he calls some laggard to stern account, promising him the gate double quick next time without any talk. Or he lends a ready hand to one in difficulty; or just in time he saves another from falling down a hold; or saying that married men’s lives are precious, orders a third back from some dangerous place and himself takes the risk. Or he runs into the Drawing Office with a hospital note and a gift of flowers and fruit for the sick wife of a draughtsman. Or at hornblow he stands by a gangway down which four thousand hungry men, with a ninety foot drop below them, are rushing for home and supper and with voice and eye controls them ... a guard rope breaks ... another instant and there may be grim panic on the gangway ... but his great voice rings out, “Stand back, men,” and he holds them as on a leash until the rope is made good again.
16
Andrews clearly loved his work, his men, and most of all his ships. Sometime in the spring of 1910, Andrews brought his wife Helen to the shipyard at night. They had been married in June of 1908, and Helen, knowing full well the extent of her husband’s responsibilities and ambitions, described their life in terms Jane Eyre could have understood: “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.” That night, as they stood together on the half-finished decks of the Titanic, she was pregnant with their first and only child, a daughter to be born in 1910, named Elizabeth. The earth at that time was deep within the tail of Halley’s Comet, and the nighttime sky that spring seemed alive with fire, creating an awesome backdrop as Andrews, nearly bursting with pride, showed his wife his newest creation.
17
So the ship grew. By the end of October 1910, the shell plating was completed, and shortly thereafter the launching date was set for May 31, 1911.
That last day of May was to be one of the happiest days in the history of the White Star Line. Not only was the Titanic to be launched, but the Olympic was scheduled to be handed over to the Line that same afternoon. The day dawned bright and clear—“a glorious day,” as one writer described it—and the crowds began to gather at the yard as early as 7:30 that morning. Curiously enough, neither Harland and Wolff nor the White Star Line was making much of a production out of the launch—certainly not the brass-banded, bunting-behung, speechifying auspicious occasion the launch of the Olympic had been the previous October. Of course, the Olympic was the first of the three sisters to be launched, so a certain amount of celebration was to have been expected. The Titanic needed no outside tub-thumping; she created her own. It was known that the Titanic was to be “the Olympic perfected,” and that she would carry special amenities and modification that her sister lacked. The news that J. Pierpont Morgan, chairman of International Mercantile Marine, would be on hand created its own sensation, so it was hardly surprising that by noon, nearly 100,000 people had lined the banks of the River Lagan or clambered onto rooftops and or onto gantries scattered about the shipyard to watch the
Titanic’s
launch.
Just before noon Lord Pirrie began to receive his guests at the shipyard’s offices on Queen’s Road. They included of course Morgan, along with J. Bruce Ismay, his wife and children, Thomas Andrews, and various local dignitaries. Promptly at noon Pirrie led his entourage down to a specially constructed grandstand before Slip No. 3, directly in front of the
Titanic’s
bow. The great gantry itself was hung with the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, and a string of signal flags spelling out “Good Luck.” The press quickly filled the grandstand behind the official party. Looming before the grandstand, straight, sharp, almost knifelike, the great bow of the liner stood motionless. The upper hull gleamed from a fresh coat of black paint, and red lead antifoulant glowed below the waterline. Everything was set.
When his guests were seated, Lord Pirrie set out on a quick inspection of the launching gear. With him went Ismay. A picture of them walking together that day still exists. Both men are impeccably dressed in their suits, vests, and watch chains. Ismay has the inevitable bowler perched on his head, and in his right hand he carries a walking stick. Outwardly he is every inch the confident, self assured—one could almost say smug—shipowner, the very picture of the turn-of-the-century businessman. Lord Pirrie, fully a head shorter than Ismay, appears almost jaunty, with a yachting cap set squarely on his head. His gaze is directed just off to his right, as if something has just caught his attention. Both men appear highly pleased, especially Lord Pirrie: on top of everything else happening this day, he and Lady Pirrie are also celebrating their birthdays.
At 12:05 P.M. a red flag was raised at the
Titanic’s
sternpost, a signal for the tugs standing by, as well as any small craft belonging to spectators, to get well clear. At 12:10 a rocket was launched, signaling five minutes to go. The sound of hammers, saws, bellows, pistons, and engines began to fade, along with the noise of the assembled crowd. At 12:14 a second rocket was fired, the signal to launch. The valves on the hydraulic triggers were opened and restraining balks were knocked away, but for some seconds the Titanic seemed to remain motionless. Then came the first faint tremor of movement; the workers standing on her decks felt it and raised a cheer. Hearing this the crowds ashore looked closely—then they too could see the great hull beginning to move and their cheers joined in. Gathering momentum, the Titanic slid down the ways, her passage eased by twenty-one tons of tallow and soap, and into the water until, just sixty-two seconds after the launch signal was fired, she floated high and proud on the River Lagan.
Interestingly, there was no christening—that is, no bottle of champagne, wine, grape juice, or sea water was broken across the ship’s bow as a signal to launch. Harland and Wolff didn’t go for that sort of thing. As one of the shipyard’s workers put it, “They just builds ‘er and shoves ’er in.”
The launch was not entirely without mishap, though. When the valves were opened, triggering the hydraulic rams that started the ship moving down the ways, a signal was sent to warn the workers who were in the slip. Some of them were to knock out shoring timbers holding the hull in place; others were there to watch for anything that might foul the ways and halt the launch or damage the hull. One of these men, James Dobbins, was pinned when a mass of shoring timbers were knocked away, crushing his left leg. Though he was rushed to a nearby hospital, the injury was so grave that he died the next day.
A special tender took Lord and Lady Pirrie, the Ismays, and Morgan out to the Titanic, where Morgan inspected the section of A Deck that would be devoted to a suite reserved for his exclusive use. They then ferried back to the shore for a luncheon at the yard offices. At 2:30 the entire party traveled down the River Lagan to Lough Swilly, where the Olympic lay waiting, having completed her sea trials. She would carry the party back to England, arriving at Liverpool on June 1, and once there she would be thrown open for public inspection.
Meanwhile, a flotilla of tugs had pushed the Titanic into the graving dock, where the long process of fitting out would be completed. There was machinery to install, the superstructure to finish, the four tall funnels to be stepped, and, of course, the interior to be completed. All in all the fitting out would take ten months, twice being interrupted by mishaps to the Olympic, which required pulling workers off the Titanic to make repairs to her sister. Also, experience gained with the Olympic would lead to modifications to the Titanic, most of them minor, but time consuming nonetheless.
18
The heart of the ship was her engines. Cunard had drawn heavily on Admiralty experience with turbines in building the
Lusitania
and
Mauretania,
but Harland and Wolff wasn’t able to utilize Admiralty design expertise, so the Titanic had to rely on “old-fashioned” reciprocating engines to drive her port and starboard wing screws, while her center screw was driven by a revolutionary low-pressure turbine. Though not necessarily as up-to-date as the turbines of the big Cunard liners, the design proved to be a near-perfect compromise, generating very little vibration and being quite economical. The three engines together produced about 55,000-shaft horsepower, sufficient to push the 45,000-ton Titanic to a designed top speed of 24 to 25 knots, which was two knots slower than the Cunard ships, but fast enough to make her competitive on the North Atlantic, and there would be compensations for the slower speed.

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