Titanic

[Chilidog]

Supposedly, the Titanic struck the iceberg because the helmsman turned the wheel the wrong way.

Patten, who made the revelations to coincide with the publication of her new novel "Good as Gold" into which her account of events are woven, said that the conversion from sail ships to steam meant there were two different steering systems.

Crucially, one system meant turning the wheel one way and the other in completely the opposite direction.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_life/us_britain_titanic_book

Does this make sense to anyone here?

 

[Paul J. Rusyniak]

I've tried to follow this since it came out a couple of weeks ago, and, no, it doesn't make sense to me yet.

The part I'm not understanding is:
...the conversion from sail ships to steam meant there were two different steering systems. Crucially, one system meant turning the wheel one way and the other in completely the opposite direction.

Anyone know what the two different systems were?

So far, sounds sounds like a PR stunt to sell her book???

 

[Chilidog]

It appears that there is confusion over the difference between tiller and wheel steering.

From conventional accounts, it appears that the order was given “hard a-starboard,” and the ship was turned to the port.. My assumption is that they simply kept using the same steering commands when ships historically switched from tillers to wheels. My assumption is that the author is unclear about this point and assumed that the command “hard a starboard” meant to turn the boat to starboard.

 

[Bob Poff]

From what I've read....

The confusion comes from "traditional" terminology refering to the direction a tiller was moved. Then carrying that through to using a wheel.

To command a turn to starboard the officer would say "Put your helm to port". Which with a tiller turns the vessel to starboard.

The helsman reacted, rather than think, and turned as if he were at a tiller.

True? At least that's what I've read.

Not a new revalation by the way...... I've seen it mentioned in several books.

 

[Chilidog]

Why would an experienced helmsman make such a mistake? certainly no large ships were still being steered by tiller then.

 

[Don12364]

One pushes a tiller or a whipstaff the opposite way to a wheel so there could be some substance in this - but I think unlikely.
The first automobiles were tiller steered until 1894 and even by 1912 when the Titanic sank they were not all that common.

Any ideas Roger L?

 

[Rick D]

Without Reseaching...

...I recall that the steering on the ship was 'reversed' as most English and other ships were at the time to correspond to what would be learned on a tiller-steered vessel. I understand it was a transitional period. This is purely off the top of my head tho, and I don't recall the source.

 

[Dennis T]

Wheels were not a new idea.

Wheels had been used to stear ships for hundreds of years before the conversion to steam. Beyond a certain size, you just can't physically handle a tiller without block and tackle. I'm sure that the orders than Captain Jack Sparrow gave to the helmsman of the Black Pearl would have been the same as those used by the captain of the Titanic.

 

[Anchor Down]

Hard a Starboard! No, You Idiot, the ship's Starboard!

Is this really trying to make the argument that there was a period during the early 20th Century when large ships, which had been using wheel steering for centuries, were rigged to steer backwards, so as to mimic the helm response of a tiller, a piece of equipment that had no place on a ship of any size for hundreds of years? That seems completely illogical to me.

Is there any example of any cruise liner, at any time, in any part of the world, using backwards wheel steering?

What is the conventional theory about the Titanic's demise? Is it so weak that this theory has any attraction?

 

[sinnettc]

Well . . .

I can't speak for the helmsman of the Titanic, but I will say that the first time I took a gust in Dad's Bristol 24 after he converted to wheel steering, I nearly lost him overboard. I instinctively reacted by pushing the top of the wheel away to bring us up into the wind, as I would have with a tiller. He was bent over working on something on the lee side and just about went for a swim as we really heeled over.

I had a similar learning curve with the spinlock cleat on my main sheet. Due to the design of the fiddle block, or maybe the way the PO set things up, I have to pull it DOWN to uncleat the sheet, instead of UP which has been the norm on all other boats I've owned. Took a while to get used to and I've given serious thought to swapping the spinlock for a harken cam cleat.

 

[Rick D]

Orders, Not Steering Gear

My memory was flawed. According to this note, the issue wasn't in the method of steering, rather in the method orders were given:

http://users.senet.com.au/~gittins/wheel.html

 

[Freedom77]

I heard this report on NPR. The author is, I think they said, the grandaughter of one of the survivors. Sound like a Titanic load of crap. Somebody else trying to cash in on history. The Boat Sank, Leonardo Died, Get Over It! Fair Winds

 

[kloudie1]

Brings to mind the old joke in our company about Captn' Hazlewood .. "I said HARD Right, NOT Bud Light!

 

[Roger Long]

There is a lot of fog around this issue because analysis of it depends on what people said in testimony much later about things they said and did before they realized they would have to account for them.

The general consensus is:

It was a period of transition from one wheel direction to the other but this wasn't a factor.

The ship was steered properly.

The confusion arises from the helmsman or watch officer (I've forgotten which) saying, "I tried to port around it." "Porting around" is something most of us have done and has nothing to do with the direction of the turn. When an object is suddenly identified straight ahead, you turn hard and then reverse the helm to swing the stern out of the way. With large ships, this involves large distances.

If Titanic had been 6-10 feet to port, we probably would have forgotten her name by now. The fact that the damage is confined to the forward part of the ship indicates that the stern was probably moving away from the iceberg as the impact was taking place. This doesn't mean the ship was steering towards the iceberg but that it was being properly handled. The lookout simply spotted it a bit too late.

 

[Tim R.]

Thanks for clearing this up Roger.

 

[Winkfish]

I never knew that move had a name, Roger. I like it.

My father-in-law, retired Royal Navy and a keen sailor, always says "hard a-lee" or "lee-ho" when coming about whether he's at a wheel or a tiller.

 

[Joe]

re: Roger's explanation..... makes perfect sense to me. Nice... If the Titanic had been designed with water tight bulkheads... there would have been no block buster movie, either.

 

[Roger Long]

If the Titanic had been designed with water tight bulkheads...

She was and, in some respects, her watertight subdivision was in excess of what would be required today (more bulkheads).

Much has been said about her bulkheads not going high enough but this is a bit of a red herring. They didn't all go to the deck that they would be required to under modern regulations but they were tight to decks that isolated machinery from passenger areas. If you think about the atmosphere of steam machinery spaces, you'll realize that everything would have been done to make a tight boundary. There were bulkheads in the boiler rooms that could be over topped in what has been called the ice cube tray effect but, by the time she was trimmed that much, she was doomed by flooding through passenger spaces that couldn't be made tight because of all the doors and windows.

Titanic was actually very intelligently designed and compares very favorably with modern ships in her arrangement and strength. She simply suffered the misfortune to hit with a glancing blow that opened up more compartments than she could survive. The same thing could happen to any modern cruise ship.

 

[kenn]

My father-in-law, retired Royal Navy and a keen sailor, always says "hard a-lee" or "lee-ho" when coming about whether he's at a wheel or a tiller.

Yeah, I had an instructor who would say "Helm a-lee!". Around here, I still hear "helm a-lee" or "hard a-lee!" alot.