The Titanic heads West into the Atlantic to begin it's crossing to New York, carrying around 2,200 passengers and crew, the Titanic is only 2/3 full.
April 11th to April 12th. Thursday and Friday were uneventful. Everything was normal on board. First class enjoyed tea in the Lounge and cafe's, the First Class men enjoyed brandy and cards in the Smoking room. Titanic covers 386 miles.
Once again, Friday 12th is an uneventful day, calm seas and passengers going about their every day routine.
The wireless operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, send and receive passenger messages all day.
Titanic also recieves her first ice warning from the steamship Rappahannock. The Titanic covers another 519 miles.
Saturday, April 13th 1912. Chief Engineer Joseph Bell reports a coal fire blazing in boiler room 6 on the starboard side of the ship, the side that will hit the iceberg later in the voyage. The stokers were concerned as the fire was pretty bad and they feared it may get out of control. Two men from each Stoker's shift spent four hours each to try and put it out. They were ordered not to say anything about it as none of the passengers knew of it. Areas of the boiler room were draped to try and contain the coal dust, which is easily ignighted from friction sparks from the shovels.
Because of this fire "The Black Gang" or coal trimmers had to stay in the boiler rooms instead of having their shore leave drinks in the saloon. Much of the coal was removed from the starboard side which may have contributed to Titanic's list during the sinking.
At around 3pm, Captain E. J. Smith and Bruice Ismay discuss the crossing in the 1st Class D Deck Reception Room. Ismay talks about beating the Olympic's crossing time. He urges a reluctant Captian Smith to speed the ship up and light the last four boilers. He aims to get the ship to New York on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday morning.
Later that night, a burnt wire cause the wireless system to short out. This will take Bride and Phillips up untill 5am Sunday morning to fix which causes a huge backlog of messages.
Sunday April 14th 1912.
A life boat drill was schedualed for 9am this morning, however the captian decided to cancel it because of the church service that was to be held in 1st and 2nd class at 10:30am. Captain Smith would hold the 1st class service in the Dining Saloon. It was optional to attend and hyms would be sung, including "For Those In Peril On The Sea", an ironic choice.
Titanic also receives her 2nd ice warning from the steam ship Caronia. It read "Bergs, growlers and field ice in 42oN, from 49oN to 51oW". This gets passed onto the bridge where it is posted in the chart room.
At 11:40am, Titanic receives her 3rd Ice warning from the steamship Noordam simply saying "Much ice". Again this is passed onto the bridge.
At 1:42pm, Titanic receives her 4th ice warning from the Baltic. "Icebergs and large quantities of field ice in 41oN 51'N, 49o 52'W...wish you and Titanic all success"
Captain Smith passes this message onto Bruice Ismay who shows the message to some passengers making them uneasy. However, Ismay still does not want the ship to slow down.
Captain Smith swings the ships bow slightly south to try and go around the rapidly approaching ice field. He does this further south than was planned, hoping that this will clear the ship of the ice.
At 7:30pm the Titanic receives her 5th ice warning from the S.S Californian however this message does not go to the bridge as it is not addressed to Titanic, the warning read "42o 3'N. 49o 9'W. Three large bergs 5 miles to the southwards of us".
At around 9:40pm, Titanic receives her 6th ice warning from the S. S. Masaba. "42o to 41o 25'N, 49o to 50o 30'W saw much heavy pack ice and great number of large icebergs, also field ice, weather good, clear". This was probably one of the most important ice warnings, however it failed to reach the bridge as the wireless operators were so backed up with work they decided to leave it until later when they had cleared a lot of the messages out of the way. If this message had been posted in the chart room, Titanic may have been slowed down and may even have altered course some more and avoided collision altogether.
At 10:30pm, the Californian, only about 10 miles away, sent Titanic this message:
"We are stopped and surrounded by ice." However this message was interrupted by Phillips replying with "Keep out! Shut up! You are jamming my signal. I'm working Cape Race" this meant he was sending ship to shore messages for the passengers, much of it the back log. This was the last message about ice that Titanic received.
To be continued.....
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