Unsinkable Titanic (eBook)

CHAPTER 2

INTRODUCING TITANIC

‘The Titanic stood for the “last word” in naval architecture. Not only did she carry to a far greater degree than any other ship the assurance of safety which we have come to associate with more size; not only did she embody every safeguard against accident known to the naval architect … she was built at the foremost shipyard of Great Britain.’

The Scientific American, 27 April 1912

As legend goes, Titanic was born on a July evening in 1907 during a dinner party at Downshire House, Lord and Lady Pirrie’s mansion on London’s fashionable Belgrave Square. Invitations extended solely to Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, and his wife, Florence. As the meal came to a conclusion, in typical Edwardian convention, the two wives withdrew from the room to allow their husbands to talk business. Messrs Ismay and Pirrie, operator and builder, immersed themselves in conversation to contrive a plan with which to unseat Lusitania and Mauretania and with it Cunard’s stranglehold on British North Atlantic shipping.

With Cunard raising the standards of luxury at sea higher than ever, Ismay and Pirrie knew that their companies had reached a crossroads; they could either fight back or succumb to mediocrity. There was only one response the two would entertain, and they mused over a long-term desire to build a trio of liners that would surpass the Cunard pair both in scale and luxury. Featuring three funnels and four masts, the new super-ships were to be identical and form the set pieces of White Star’s prestigious weekly crossings between Southampton and New York. The new ships would outweigh Lusitania and the then-unfinished Mauretania by 10,000 tons and out-measure them by 100ft but, more importantly, they would become the most palatial craft ever to strut the ocean.

Launching the most magnificent class of ships ever seen would also allow White Star to replace their aging Big Four express liners and recapture the limelight on shipping’s most coveted route. Billed as the Olympic Class of liners they would propel White Star to the pinnacle of luxury travel and underscore Harland & Wolff’s prominence as the greatest shipbuilder of them all. With this new class White Star had played not one ace card but three, hammering down a belligerent statement to their rivals that the stakes in Atlantic transportation had been raised significantly. In addition, each of White Star’s ‘Olympic’ trio would surpass its sibling in size and splendour and widen this margin even further. Their famous counter-attack had begun.

No time was wasted in putting the creation of the Olympic Class into motion. The first would begin its career mid-1911, the second following closely in the early half of 1912, eventually being joined by a third sometime in 1914; together the three would amass a combined tonnage exceeding 140,000. The first two would become Harland & Wolff’s fifty-third and fifty-fourth commissions for the White Star Line and, to keep to this schedule, were to be constructed in tandem.

Lord Pirrie would set the general arrangement and dimensions of the ships himself, delegating the more detailed work to his team of naval architects. Preliminary designs increased the number of funnels for each of the ‘Olympics’ from three to four and reduced their proposed masts to just two, in a bid to instil these leviathans with a more stately and mighty persona.

The names of the first of the class, as chosen by Bruce Ismay, were announced in April 1908. Olympic was given to the first ship, with the name for her younger sister confirmed one week later on the 22nd as Titanic. Their final blueprints were greeted with approval from White Star’s management on 29 July 1908 and two days later signed the agreement to commence construction. Work on Olympic began that December and just three months later on Titanic, inaugurating a project of unprecedented scale.

Table 1: The Olympic Class of Liners

As was the practice with all shipbuilders, Harland & Wolff assigned an identification number to each contract in the chronological order of when the project was commissioned. Bibby Line’s Venetian of 1859 was Harland & Wolff’s first, job number 1, and by the time White Star ordered Olympic she had become the yard’s 400th, followed immediately by Titanic – known throughout Belfast as simply ‘401’.

Construction on job 401 was begun on 31 March 1909; its steel framing was complete on 6 April 1910 and fully plated by 19 October. With the shell complete the date for the launch of 401 was set for the spring of 1911.

At the firing of a rocket at 12.13p.m. two hydraulic triggers released the empty hull of 401. Sporting her newly incised nameplates, Titanic slid stern-first along the Queen’s Island slipway, attaining a speed of 12.5 knots. Emblazoned with customary flags spelling out ‘SUCCESS’ across her bow to wish her luck and prosperity, sixty-two seconds later, at 12.15.02p.m., six anchors eased Titanic gently to a halt in the river Lagan. The day of the launch was right on schedule – a gloriously bright Wednesday 31 May 1911. To maximise publicity for the event, after which followed a brief lunch, at 2.30p.m. Harland & Wolff then hosted the rite of signing the now newly completed Olympic over to her operator, White Star Line; a moment formally marking the dawn of her commercial service. Two hours later the guests from the launching ceremony departed for Liverpool aboard the proudly finished Olympic, closing a day which had seen the wharves of the Belfast yard hold two of the world’s largest hulls at the same time, chalking up one of the most significant occasions in the annals of maritime development.

It had taken 23 tons of soap, oil and beef tallow to grease Titanic along the 772ft run of slipway number 3. The launch was no mean feat: the 24,600-ton hulls of Titanic and Olympic were at the time the largest movable man-made structures in existence. And, adhering to company tradition, White Star would resist the fanfare of christening the two ships. Yet the launch of Titanic drew vast crowds, vying keenly for a glimpse of the world’s largest liner waterborne for the very first time. Across the other side of the wharf, Belfast’s Albert Quay was packed with 10,000 onlookers; however, watching from the yard itself was a ticket-only affair. In a specially built stand flanking her vertiginous portside hull sat the VIPs, among them Bruce Ismay, Robert James McMordie (Lord Mayor of Belfast) plus the ship’s owner J.P. Morgan himself. Occupying a stand strategically positioned and directly in front of her imposing bow thronged ninety members of the press. Two further stands were similarly filled to capacity.

The launch was a meticulous event, superintended personally by Lord Pirrie. It had proceeded flawlessly, and Belfast was euphoric. The sentiment of occasion was palpable throughout the town: ‘by what it had done in assisting the White Star Line in its great and commendable enterprise, Belfast could lay no small share in the maintenance of the prosperity of the British Empire’, proclaimed The Belfast News Letter the following morning. With Olympic now in commercial service, work completing Titanic had still to be done.

Within minutes of making water, Titanic was floated to the yard’s outfitting bay at the nearby Alexandra Wharf where she would spend the next ten months receiving all her machinery, fixtures and fittings. Work continued apace. Her funnels were added by January 1912, then on 3...