Hi

Does anyone here know anything about the fire that happened in the coal bunker for Boiler Room 5? I know that they got it out eventually and tried to "clean up" the bulkhead. Experts say that the bulkhead was weak and that it callapsed while the ship sank due to the fire. I figure that makes sense. Anyone else know anything more about this? I think it is kind of weird that the bulkhead collapsed and probably helped the ship to sink faster and that it all started with a fire that they had in port.

Thanks

I tend to view a lot of that as inaccurate. In particular, I don't agree that the bulkhead collapsed. These bulkheads were of considerable strength when we examine their scantling.

Cal Haines wrote a fascinating article covering this in great detail back in 2000:

http://titanic-model.com/db/db-03/CoalBunkerFire.htm

Best wishes,

Mark.

The bulkhead was weakened due to the firing in the coal bunker. It had been burning before she even went on her "test drive" from Ireland. When fireman Hendrickson and his crew finally extinguished it, he said it was dinged up and missing much of the paint. He believed it was due to the fire....making the bulkhead more brittle. The night of the disaster, leading fireman Barrett was in No. 5 before as he claimed "a wave rushed through the room." This was likely due to the bulkhead collapsing. I of course don't know for sure if it did collapse, I have heard that water was entering from below to floor panels where pump valves and what not would be as well.


Hope this helps.

I tend to disagree with part of that article. Fires were not all that common in the bunkers. When Hendrickson testified and they asked him "So this is a common event on ships?" He replied "No." and went on to say not in his 4-5 years of service with the White Star Line. I'm sure it did happen occasionally, but not as frequent as we think.

Also, if a fire is blazing, and as we know based on eye witness accounts that the steel was actually out of place and pushed in before she stuck ice. I would imagine the bulkhead would weaken a little. With the amount of water rushing in, the brittle bulkhead couldn't hold up. Again, based on what Hendrickson and Barrett have said, this seems considerable.

Wow.

I did not know that the fire had been going since before her trials. I guess it is one of those "whatever could go wrong, did" kind of things. Kind of weird.

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When you consider the bulkhead's height, had the entire bulkhead given way then the amount of water released into boiler room 5 would have been far more substantial than the flooding observed by Barrett. We're talking about a forty-foot head of water. Lord Mersey's technical assessors concluded that several hundred tons of water had flooded into the boiler room, 5, when the bunker doorway failed, as the bunker was not intended to bear a considerale head of water. I tend to agree.

Another point to consider is that the collapse of the bulkhead would have had ramifications for the hull itself. Edward Wilding is on record as stating that the watertight bulkheads provided some transverse strength, which was all the more valuable for when the ship was in drydock and the hull largely supported toward the keel. We know that both the plating and the frame spacing exceeded even Lloyd's regulations by a considerable amount, and the watertight bulkheads' connections to the decks were strong. Even if part of the bulkhead lost its watertight integrity, it would be far harder to imagine the entire bulkhead failing as portrayed in some accounts.

Best wishes,

Mark.

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I think that may be so. Perhaps the key issue is that fires were not as uncommon as some have said.

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I don't think there's any question of that, if those reports were accurate. However, the difficulty to my mind is projecting that localised damage elsewhere.

Best wishes,

Mark.

Yes too bad we won't know the extent of the damage and what failed below that night....

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No kidding...no kidding...

Thanks, that post was constructive. Just let it be known that we won't know exactly if the bulkhead collapsed and doomed the ship in No. 5.