News From Fort Schuyler

June 14, 1998 - Volume 2, No. 29

STEERING THE TITANIC - The puzzler posed by JOHN BORTNIAK, Class of 1976, in the June 11 issue of NFFS, generated answers -- and more questions, too. Here is a sampling.

BOB WHITE, Class of 1986, writes: "I read somewhere that at the time the commands were not which way to turn the ship, but which way to turn the rudder. (But what would I know, I wasn't a 'deckie.')"

Another angle from KEN PETERS '54 "(or to be Y2K correct, 1954)" who notes that: "I believe it is a carryover from the days of tiller. You would put the helm (tiller) to port to turn the vessel to starboard. Again with the first implementation of a wheel to replace the tiller, a line was lead from one side of the rudder yoke through a block, then around the drum on the wheel, through another block, to the other side of the rudder yoke. Now, stay with me on this one. If you turn the wheel to port, its the same as moving a tiller to port, and the rudder turns the vessel to starboard.

Later vessels were rigged with the lines leading to the yoke crossed so that a turn to the right resulted from turning the wheel to the right. There is still an inconsistency with TITANIC, however. Perhaps by then the lines leading to the yoke steam steering engines were still not crossed. Thank heaven the navy finally got it right - left and right, that is. Rudder/helm commands are given as left and right. Port and starboard commands refer to the engines/propellers. You want to turn the vessel to the right, you turn the wheel to the right, the rudder goes right, and all goes right, hopefully."

Here's the explanation that JERRY HASSELBACH, Class of 1969, heard "... when I posed the same question. At the time the British still set up the wheel to turn the opposite way that wheels are set up now, the theory being that when you move the tiller to starboard the rudder goes to port and vice versa. All Brits being good sailing men, would be more comfortable moving the wheel like they would a tiller. The sad part is that if the ship were actually turned into the berg rather than away from it, the damage would have been confined to one or two sections of the ship and she would not have sunk. I was also surprised seeing the engine room with reciprocating engines. I was expecting a steam turbine, not steam reciprocating engines."

According to JOHN A. SICKLICK, Class of 1984: "I recently had a discussion on this very topic with JIM SULLIVAN, Class of 84. The helm order was actually "helm hard astarboard", the important thing here is to notice the 'a' in front of "starboard". The command was telling the helmsman which way to turn the wheel, which was in the opposite direction of where they wanted the bow to go (to port).

Now I'm a little fuzzy at this point, but as I understand it the TITANIC's helm was rigged the same way as the helm on sailing ships, which in turn were based on the fact that a tiller would operate this way (you would push the tiller to the starboard side in order to turn the bow to port)"

SMOKING ON THE TITANIC- "Another TITANIC movie error to point out, this one from the engineering side" is pointed out by DON BOYE, Class of 1980. "In the movie as she proudly sails away on her maiden voyage you see smoke billowing from all four stacks. The aftermost stack was a "false stack", there only for geometric symmetry to provide smoothness to her lines. This false stack was well aft of the boiler rooms, aft of the two engine rooms which drove her outboard propellers, and actually resided over the turbine room which drove the centerline prop. In the last photograph ever taken of the TITANIC as she steams off to meet with her tragic fate, black smoke is seen from three stacks, the aft stack standing proudly silent."

STEAMING AHEAD ON THE TITANIC? Finally, here's a rhetorical question about the TITANIC from JERRY HASSELBACH: "Did you know that the port and starboard propellers were moved by steam reciprocating engines but the center (centre) prop was turned by a steam turbine, using the waste steam from the other two, and only went in an ahead direction, since there was no astern turbine on that propeller?"