Boiler Room 6 was the foremost boiler room of the Titanic. Where the other boiler rooms had 5 boilers, BR6 only had 4 double-ended boilers. The boilers generated steam for the reciprocating engines. These boilers were connected to the 1st funnel.
The forward coal bunker had a coal fire that weakened the bulkhead. The fire was put out on Sunday, April 14th, the day of the collision. At the time of the collision engineers Hesketh and Shephard inspected this room together. As the ship is put to Full Stop, the men rapidly shut the dampers to draw the fires. Seconds later, this room was compromised when the ship hit the iceberg and started flooding at once, ripping the entire side open, blasting men down.
Titanic Boiler Room Flooding
Engine room flooding as the name indicates, means filling up of the engine room space with water. Engine room flooding can affect the water tight integrity of ship. In this article we will find out what are the main reasons for engine room flooding what has to be done in case of engine room flooding.
Engine room flooding can take place due to leakage in the engine room space from machinery or sea or fresh water system. Leakages can generally be from big sea water pump, from sea water or fresh water cooler, leakage from boiler feed water system etc.
The leak can also take place from any of the fresh or sea water pipeline due to which a lot of water can enter the engine room space. Leakage of any ballast water tank in the double bottom of the engine room, leakage from manhole, or crack in the water tank can also lead to engine room flooding.
Hence raising the bulkhead between Boiler room 4 and 5 by one deck, around 2-3 metres, should have saved the ship. Other calculations such as the diminishing rate of water influx before the overflow into boiler room 5 tends to confirm this.
The ship began to flood immediately, with water pouring in at an estimated rate of 7 long tons (7.1 t) per second, fifteen times faster than it could be pumped out.[58] Second engineer J. H. Hesketh and leading stoker Frederick Barrett were both struck by a jet of icy water in No. 6 boiler room and escaped just before the room's watertight door closed.[59] This was an extremely dangerous situation for the engineering staff; the boilers were still full of hot high-pressure steam and there was a substantial risk that they would explode if they came into contact with the cold seawater flooding the boiler rooms. The stokers and firemen were ordered to reduce the fires and vent the boilers, sending great quantities of steam up the funnel venting pipes. They were waist-deep in freezing water by the time they finished their work.[60]
Each bulkhead could be sealed by watertight doors. The engine rooms and boiler rooms on the tank top deck had vertically closing doors that could be controlled remotely from the bridge, lowered automatically by a float if water was present, or closed manually by the crew. These took about 30 seconds to close; warning bells and alternative escape routes were provided so that the crew would not be trapped by the doors. Above the tank top level, on the Orlop Deck, F Deck and E Deck, the doors closed horizontally and were manually operated. They could be closed at the door itself or from the deck above.[61]
Captain Smith felt the collision in his cabin and immediately came to the bridge. Informed of the situation, he summoned Thomas Andrews, Titanic's builder, who was among a party of engineers from Harland and Wolff observing the ship's first passenger voyage.[63] The ship was listing five degrees to starboard and was two degrees down by the head within a few minutes of the collision.[64] Smith and Andrews went below and found that the forward cargo holds, the mail room and the squash court were flooded, while No. 6 boiler room was already filled to a depth of 14 feet (4.3 m). Water was spilling over into No. 5 boiler room,[64] and crewmen there were battling to pump it out.[65]
Meanwhile, other crewmen fought to maintain vital services as water continued to pour into the ship below decks. The engineers and firemen worked to vent steam from the boilers to prevent them from exploding on contact with the cold water. They re-opened watertight doors in order to set up extra portable pumps in the forward compartments in a futile bid to reduce the torrent, and kept the electrical generators running to maintain lights and power throughout the ship. Steward Frederick Dent Ray narrowly avoided being swept away when a wooden wall between his quarters and the third-class accommodation on E deck collapsed, leaving him waist-deep in water.[102] Two engineers, Herbert Harvey and Jonathan Shepherd (who had just broken his left leg after falling into a manhole minutes earlier), died in boiler room No. 5 when, at around 00:45, the bunker door separating it from the flooded No. 6 boiler room collapsed and they were swept away by "a wave of green foam" according to leading fireman Frederick Barrett, who barely escaped from the boiler room.[103]
In boiler room No. 4, at around 01:20 according to survivor Trimmer George Cavell, water began flooding in from the metal floor plates below, possibly indicating that the bottom of the ship had also been holed by the iceberg. The flow of water soon overwhelmed the pumps and forced the firemen and trimmers to evacuate the boiler room.[104] Further aft, Chief Engineer Bell, his engineering colleagues, and a handful of volunteer firemen and greasers stayed behind in the unflooded No. 1, 2 and 3 boiler rooms and in the turbine and reciprocating engine rooms. They continued working on the boilers and the electrical generators in order to keep the ship's lights and pumps operable and to power the radio so that distress signals could be sent.[46] Several sources contend they remained at their posts until the very end, thus ensuring that Titanic's electrics functioned until the final minutes of the sinking, and died in the bowels of the ship. According to Greaser Frederick Scott at the British inquiry, at around 02:05 when it became obvious that nothing more could be done, and the flooding in the forward compartments was too severe for the pumps to cope, he and some of the engineers and other crewmen came up onto Titanic's open well deck, but by this time all the lifeboats had left. Scott testified to seeing eight of the ship's 35 engineers gathered at the aft end of the starboard boat deck.[105] None of the ship's 35 engineers and electricians survived.[106] Neither did any of the Titanic's five postal clerks, who were last seen struggling to save the mail bags they had rescued from the flooded mail room. They were caught by the rising water somewhere on D deck.[107]
By 01:30, Titanic's downward angle was increasing, but not more than 5 degrees, with an increasing list to port. The deteriorating situation was reflected in the tone of the messages sent from the ship: "We are putting the women off in the boats" at 01:25, "Engine room getting flooded" at 01:35, and at 01:45, "Engine room full up to boilers."[131] This was Titanic's last intelligible signal, sent as the ship's electrical system began to fail; subsequent messages were jumbled and unintelligible. The two radio operators nonetheless continued sending out distress messages almost to the very end.[132]
This is a complete animation; not a short animation that was slowed down to match real time. This is also highly accurate, though we have already documented improvements we plan to make for the final game. The animation includes text frequently appearing with what is happening on board the ship. This includes visuals of various interior rooms flooding, lifeboats launching, rockets firing, and the Californian on the horizon.
The lower funnel sections were encased in large vertical shafts which ran through the decks, with networks of ladders leading upwards to the top of the casing. As a side note, everybody is familiar with the collision scene in Titanic in which the firemen (the crew who shoveled coal into the boilers) tried to escape the flooding boiler rooms by racing to get through the watertight doors as they close. This was pure drama, as they would not have done this. They were not trapped, either. they would have simply used the aforementioned ladders to escape the boiler rooms and the flooding. those ladders would not have been sealed off either by the watertight compartments closing, as the watertight compartments were not sealed at the top. That was, of course, a fatal design flaw which doomed Titanic.
Maybe you remember the short scene when Jack and Rose ran through the boiler room, startling one of the workers. How that scene transpired would have been entirely different if it was inside the Titanic's real boiler room. Both Jack and Rose would have been covered in a copious amount of soot.
Notably, there is a deleted scene from 1997's Titanic that shows Jack and Rose kissing in the boiler room. Thankfully, that scene didn't get put into the movie, or the film would have reached a new level of fiction and became a disaster of its own.
They immediately reported their sighting to the bridge, and to most of the passengers aboard, it seemed that the ship was successful in avoiding a substantial collision. The ship merely seemed to slide by the iceberg, causing only a slight disturbance. But down in the boiler rooms, the damage was instantly obvious. The sea was rushing in through a large gash and Fireman Fred Barrett and Assistant Second Engineer James Hesketh had to jump through the watertight door as it slammed shut.
Titanic: Below DecksWith thanks to Scott Andrews and Bruce Beveridge(copies of the deck plans can be purchased here)The first few minutes after the calamity to the Titanic have enriched manyof the Titanic message boards and forums; did the ship turn to face northward?What was the nature of the engine orders from the bridge? Time and again, thesetopics are debated and argued over, but no 100% consensus is reached. This is not one of those works.About twenty minutes after the collision, the focus of the drama shifts frominside the ship to the top decks where the boats were being readied for lowering.But what was happening inside the ship? That is the point of this essay; todescribe as fully as possible the frantic efforts to determine the damage, whether theship could be saved, and what was said and done. This essay is necessarily technical,but the relevant diagrams will help, I hope, to provide a picture in the reader's mindof just where important events and exchanges took place. In some cases, it has provedimpossible to reconcile testimony from survivors, and this is noted.The sections in italics are designed to act like footnotes, amplifying and expandingthe main bodies of the text.The "traditional" locations of water inside the ship. The areas outlined in red stationed third class passengers.The Fore-peak and Hold No.1Lamp Trimmer Samuel Hemming and John Foley (storekeeper) were in theirquarters on C Deck. Hemming was roused by the impact and looked outof the porthole but saw nothing, surmising it to be ice as he couldsee no vessel nearby to attribute to the shock. Then, their attentionwas diverted to a nearby hissing noise. Going forward to the forepeakstoreroom, they both climbed down to the top of the tank but foundnothing amiss. Clambering up the ladder, they then found the source:an exhaust pipe that permitted surplus air to be expelled from the tankas water entered. Alfred Haines, the boatwain's mate, and Chief OfficerWilde had just arrived, and the latter asked what the noise was, andHemming reported to him. Wilde returned to report to the bridge. Hemmingand Foley returned to their bunks for a few minutes. The joiner[sic - carpenter?] came to their room with an alarming report; "If Iwere you, I would turn out, you fellows. She is making water [in holds]one-two-three, and the racket court is getting filled up." Then, as thejoiner left, the boatswain came with his own report. The ship's builder,Thomas Andrews, had evidently been on a rapid inspection tour of the damagedareas, and the news was relayed thus; "Turn out, you fellows, you haven'thalf an hour to live. That is from Mr.Andrews. Keep it to yourselves andlet no one know."Fireman William Taylor was one of many who saw the rising water; he said at the US Inquiry, "I was in my bunk asleep at the time, and then when we got called up again the water was still coming up through the hatches...[the water] went into our room afterwards." He estimated that it took about three quarters of an hour. His quarters were right outside hatch No.1 on F deck. Although he seems confused about his location, he is certain that his quarterswas "three decks down" from the top and "Our deck was lower than those decks, because you came off of those decks down to the well deck." He also estimates that his room was twenty or thirty feet from the bottom of the ship (which indicates that he was berthed in the fireman's quarters on F deck rather than D deck). It is possible that the "45 minutes" was conjecture too and that he was on deck. As he said later, "I was asleep when the accident occurred; sir. The alarm bell for accidents rang outside of our door. I went up on deck, and could not see anything. I went down in our room again. I stayed in the room about 10 minutes, and somebody reported that there was water in No. 1 hatch. Then we packed our bags, took them in the mess room, in the alleyway, to wait for orders ... we saw [the water] come bursting up through the hatches ... I was in my bunk asleep at the time [of the collision], and then when we got called up again the water was still coming up through the hatches."The crew's area under the forecastleThe mention of Mr.Andrews presents a puzzle. We do not know when heinspected the damage to his vessel, but from the conflicting, fragmentsof evidence, he would be analysing the wounds to the Titanic sometimearound midnight. Of course, he may have encountered the boatswainduring his soujourn and been imparted with the "half an hour to live"message comparitively early during the evening's events. We mustalso recall that 4th Officer Boxhall was told by the Captain himselfduring the boats' preparation that "Mr. Andrews tells me he gives her from an hour to an hour and a half." The boatswain may have been exagerrating to impart some urgency into his colleagues. Also, did the carpenter not sound boiler room 6,which was also flooding? Although Hemming was clear on hearing the Andrews' news at both inquiries,his testimony indicates that he was perhaps less than truthful. If he is to be believed, most ofthe lifeboats went away with lamps, which he provided. However, only a few of the boats residentsreported that they had lights. 2ff7e9595c
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