Captain Edward J. Smith of the White Star liner Olympic did not expect anything to go wrong as his command entered a narrow channel called Spithead off the Isle of Wight. It was the liner’s fifth voyage to New York, having departed from Southampton earlier that day, 20 September 1911. The ship was the largest vessel afloat, registered at more than 46,000 tons and measuring over 882 feet in length. She had fabulous accommodations for her passengers. “The Olympic is a marvel, and has given unbound satisfaction,” the chairman of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, cabled the ship’s builders in Belfast at the end of her maiden voyage.1
It was natural that the line chose Captain Smith to command the new ship. He joined the company in 1880. By 1911 he had commanded no fewer than 17 ships for the White Star Line. In 1907 he told reporters, “When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience of nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say ‘uneventful.’”2 Up to that time he had never experienced an accident worth mentioning.
But the Olympic was the largest ship Smith had ever driven. Prior to her, the biggest vessel he commanded was less than 500 feet in length. It could be that he did not know how to handle ships nearly 900 feet long. The case was born out during the maiden voyage of the Olympic in June of that year. While in New York, several tugs assisted her into her slip. A sudden reverse burst of the liner’s starboard propeller sucked one of the tugs, the O. L. Hallenbeck, against the ship, causing $10,000 in damage.3 Few people realized that the incident portended problems in handling ships that size.
But that was in June. This was 20 September. The crew of the Olympic had to be on their toes, for the Spithead channel was narrow. Captain Smith was nominally in command, but the liner was under the supervision of the pilot. Chief Officer Henry Wilde was on the forecastle head. First Officer William Murdoch was aft on the poop. The second officer was in the crow’s nest with the lookouts, while the third was positioned by the standard compass, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth were on the bridge with the captain.4
HMS Hawke Spotted
The Olympic rounded Calshot Spit and was coming up to North Thorn buoy when the lookouts spotted the Royal Navy cruiser Hawke, under the ; command of Commander William Frederick Blunt. This cruiser was much smaller than the Olympic. Built in 1891, she measured 360 feet in length and displaced 7,600 tons. The Edgar-class Hawke was one of the oldest protected cruisers in the Royal Navy.5
At 1240 that afternoon the Olympic reached the Thorn Knoll buoy. She was making 19 knots, but when she made the tight turn around the Bramble and into Spithead, her engines were stopped and put astern and her helm was put to the starboard. The liner gave two short blasts from her whistle to warn the Hawke that she was taking the eastern channel.6
Commander Blunt at this time came on the bridge after eating his lunch. He observed the White Star liner come on the scene. The officer on the watch pointed her out to the cruiser’s captain.
“He won’t have much room to turn,” Blunt said. To give a wider berth, he altered course to round Egypt Point. The Olympic at this time rounded the Bramble and put her engines ahead. Speed at 1243 was about 12 knots, but it began to increase to about 15 knots.7
The two vessels were about 150 yards apart when Blunt ordered the helmsman to port five degrees “and steer for the right-hand fort.” The Hawke began to turn toward the starboard, then suddenly she stopped and began to turn toward the Olympic. Blunt cried through the voice-pipe to the helmsman, “What are you doing? Port! Hard a-port!”
Collision Course
Seeing the ships were coming closer the commander shouted: “Stop port! Full astern starboard!”
The helmsman screamed, “The helm’s jammed!”
Blunt rushed to the engine room telegraph and put the engines at full astern. But it was to no avail, for the cruiser continued toward the liner at 15 knots. A few seconds later the two vessels collided.8
Captain Smith of the Olympic observed the cruiser turn as if she had been starboarded. “He is starboarding. He is going to hit us!” he called out to the pilot. The pilot ordered, “Hard a-port!” in an effort to turn the Olympic’s stem away from the oncoming ship.9
Ashore, Reuben Speed was standing alongside a man with a camera who was taking a photograph of the White Star liner. Speed noticed that the two vessels “steamed alongside of one another for some little way then all of a sudden the Hawke turned in.” Speed said to his companion: “There’s going to be a collision. Look she’ll hit her.”
The man with the camera replied, “No, the Hawke will go under her stern.” In the next instant, Speed heard “a tremendous blow.”10
On board the Olympic, first-class passenger Colonel Saxon White, a yachtsman, was standing on the port side of the promenade deck with his daughter when they noticed the cruiser some four miles away. When their ship began to turn, the two went to the starboard side to continue to observe her. When the liner completed her turn, the cruiser was about 500 yards astern on the starboard quarter. Then the Hawke began to catch up and came to about 100 feet abaft the Olympic’s bridge. The gap between the two vessels, according to White, was about 300 yards.
The White Star liner increased speed, and White noticed that the cruiser began to fall behind. Then he saw her turn toward the port in the direction of his ship. White wondered if the Olympic would turn, but he soon realized she wasn’t turning. He glanced once more at the Hawke and surmised that she would pass under their stem. He began to walk to the port in anticipation of seeing the warship pass by, when his daughter cried out, “She’s struck!”11 Passenger Frank Munsey, a magazine owner, was eating his lunch in the restaurant when he heard someone say that a warship was coming alongside the ship. Munsey went to the window and observed the cruiser. He then returned to his meal when a minute or two later he felt “a tremendous wrenching of the ship which sounded as if it had struck a rock.”12
First class passenger Waldorf Astor was in his cabin when the collision took place. He felt two jars, “the first being like butting something and then came an ominous scraping sound.” Astor went outside and saw the Hawke with her bow crumpled.13
Colonel White by contrast did not feel a thing. But he saw the accident and realized that the cruiser was badly damaged. The colonel saw the warship pull away from the liner with a heavy roll.14 The damage to the two vessels was extensive. The Olympic had about 40 feet of plating tom open on her quarter about 80 feet from her stem. The Hawke's bow was badly damaged. The captains of both vessels ordered the watertight doors closed and collision mats rigged.
Initial Fallout from the Crash
Fortunately, no lives were lost on either ship. The Hawke continued on to Portsmouth, while the Olympic canceled her voyage to New York and made her way to Osborne Bay. Later, she steamed to Cowes. There, the liner’s mail was taken up by the Mauritania, while her passengers faced the difficult problem of securing passage on other New World-bound steamers.15
At first, many people blamed the Hawke for the accident. Most of the passengers on board the Olympic claimed that the cruiser had turned into the liner. The New York Times came to the defense of Captain Smith, stating, “nor could there be a cooler headed captain.”16
Commander Blunt, by contrast, denied that the helm of his ship was put toward the White Star liner. He insisted that he put his helm to the port. Four other crew members on the bridge corroborated his contention.
One thing virtually everyone agreed on was the safety of the Olympic. The liner was never in any danger of foundering. Her watertight compartments were constructed in such a way as to make her and her sister ship, in the words of the press at the time, “unsinkable.”17
Inquiry Board Hears the Case
An official board of inquiry concluded that the Olympic was at fault. The Hawke, coming up the channel toward Portsmouth, had the right of way. The liner was coming down from Southampton and was the overtaking ship. She forced the cruiser in the narrow fairway over the Prince Consort buoy. The overtaking ship must stay clear of the other one if that vessel is in danger after she changed course.18
The White Star Line took the issue to court. In the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company versus Commander William Frederick Blunt, Royal Navy, the White Star Line maintained that the Hawke was the guilty party. The Royal Navy countered by going on record that the Olympic did not signal the Hawke of her turn, when in fact she did.19
There was the question of speed. Captain Smith estimated that his speed at the time of the collision was 16 knots and denied that his ship was doing 20 as the Royal Navy suggested. A naval architect who examined the damage estimated that the two vessels were traveling at about the same speed at the moment of impact.20
The lawyers for the Royal Navy brought up another interesting theory, that of suction. They claimed that the suction from the Olympic’s huge propellers pulled the Hawke into the liner’s side.
This theory was tested in a laboratory setting at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. There, wax models of the Olympic and the Hawke were constructed and placed in a water tank. A small motor was used to operate the “Olympic," and the two models were put on parallel courses at speeds in which the two ships were traveling at the time of impact.
The results of the experiments bore out the Admiralty’s theory. In the first experiment, the model of the cruiser swerved toward the liner. In the second, the helm of the “Hawke" was put over 20 degrees, yet she still swerved toward the model of the liner.21 Present at the nine experiments was naval constructor David Watson Taylor of the U.S. Navy. He concluded that if the positions of the two ships were as the witnesses from the cruiser had stated, the “vessels would develop a strong suction tending to draw the Hawke toward the Olympic. The sheering of the Hawke’s bow would be against the helm, and would rapidly become irresistible, so that no hard-to-port helm of 35 degrees could stop it.”22
Taylor further went on to say that it would have been impossible for the cruiser to overtake and pass the liner even if she were the faster ship. He stated, “the tendency to sheer in as she got up toward the Olympic would become stronger and stronger, and in my view she would not be able to get her stem abreast of the center of the Olympic. She would fast get into the position of the maximum sheering tendency.”23
Professor John Biles, a naval architect at Glasgow University who was present at the experiments, agreed. “Assuming the vessels to be parallel,” Biles concluded, “1 do not think the Hawke could come through the danger zone and get bridge to bridge at a lateral distance of 100 yards. She would turn in.”24
Others disagreed. The pilot of the Olympic said that in all of his years of piloting, he never heard of the theory'.25 Captain Smith stated, “I don’t know anything about it, but it might do so.”26 The captain of the Mauritania testified that he never experienced this phenomenon.27
Experiments with “Light Toys”
Still others who did not testify were also skeptical of this theory. Nautical Magazine, which often voiced the opinion of the British merchant marine, found the experiment with “light toys” in a tank not to be the same as vessels “weighting thousands of tons” in the sea. The people at the laboratory at Teddington were playing with these models like children playing with toys in a bathtub, “in pleasant remembrance of younger days.”28
In the end, the court agreed with the Admiralty. The president of the court did not openly use the word “suction” but concluded that the Hawke was “carried towards the Olympic in a swerve beyond her control.”29 The court also ruled that “the Olympic had ample room and water in the channel to the northward. She came too close to the cruiser on the south side of the channel. She did not take proper steps to keep out of the way.”30
Then, in the spring of the following year, came an incident that gave credence to the suction theory. On 10 April 1912, the sister ship of the great Olympic, the Titanic, departed from Southampton on her maiden voyage under the command of Captain Smith. The liner steamed at a speed of six knots in the harbor assisted by six tugs. As she moved down the channel she came across two liners, the White Star Oceanic and the American Line New York, moored at the quay on the left.
Suddenly, the New York began to drift out of control toward the Titanic. Her mooring cables snapped like string. The captains of both vessels ordered collision mats to be rigged. A collision seemed certain.31
The pilot on the White Star liner stopped her engines. Then, at what seemed like the last possible moment, the tug Vulcan came alongside the New York and passed a line to the drifting vessel. The tug then stopped the New York and escorted her back to another berth.
The Titanic restarted her engines. As she passed the Oceanic, that vessel heeled over several degrees toward the huge liner. It appeared as if her mooring lines would also snap, but as the Titanic rounded the bend in the river, the Oceanic righted herself.32
“In piloting,” remarked pilot George Bowyer, “there is always something to be learned.”33 These near accidents convinced many people the suction theory was valid.
Collision Could Have Changed History
The near accident between the New York and the Titanic was a tragedy in that it was avoided. Had the two liners collided, the Titanic would have been too damaged to continue her maiden voyage. By the time repairs would have been affected, she would have missed the fabled ice field completely.
The White Star Line appealed the decision over the collision with the Hawke. In 1913, the case was heard yet again. This time, the line had pieces of the cruiser’s wreckage as evidence, claiming it showed that the Hawke was not as far north of midchannel as the liner’s original position. Yet in the end, the court reaffirmed the lower court’s decision that the Olympic was at fault.34
It is apparent that Blunt did not put the helm to the starboard, as the crew of the Olympic claimed. All five men on the bridge of the cruiser testified that the helm was not starboarded. The suction theory, by contrast, seems valid. It is true the captain of the Mauritania never had such problems, but his ship was only two-thirds the tonnage of the Olympic. Besides the test conducted at Teddington, there is the near collision of the New York and the Oceanic with the Titanic, which seems to prove the theory.
The Olympic-Hawke collision is important not only because it revealed the problems of handling large ships but because of the shakeup involving officers on the Titanic. Originally, William Murdoch was to serve as the chief officer, Charles H. Lightoller as the first, and Davy Blair as the second. But with the Olympic tied up for repairs, it was decided to have her chief officer, Henry Wilde, serve as chief officer of the Titanic just for her maiden voyage. Thus Murdoch was to be the first officer and Lightoller was to act as second. With no room for him, Blair was transferred to a different ship. But before leaving the Titanic, Blair, who was in charge of the binoculars, had the ones for the crow’s nest locked in his quarters without notifying Lightoller or anyone else.35 Thus, the lookouts on the Titanic had no binoculars on the fateful night of 14-15 April 1912.
But that’s another story.
1.John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon, (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), p. 364-
2.Walter Lord, The Night Lives On, (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1986), p. 39.
3.Ibid., pp. 39-40.
4.Peter Padfield, An Agony of Collisions, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), p.46.
5.“The Hawke-Olympic Collision,” Scientific America Supplement, 24 February 1912, p. 116.
6.Padfield, p. 47.
7.Ibid.
8.Ibid., p. 49.
9.Ibid., p. 51.
10.New York Times, 22 September 1911, p. 1.
11.Padfield, p.48.
12.New York Times, 22 September 1911, p. 2.
13.Ibid.
14.Padfield, p. 48.
15.New York Times, 22 September 1911, p. 1.
16.Ibid, p. 12.
17.Lord, p. 28.
18.New York Times, 28 October 1911, p. 1.
19.Padfield, p. 50.
20.Ibid. p. 51.
21.“The Hawke-Olympic Collision,” Scientific America Supplement, 24 February 1912, p. 117.
22.Ibid.
23.Ibid.
24.Padfield, p. 53.
25.“The Hawke-Olympic Collision,” Scientific America Supplement, 24 February 1912, p. 117.
26.Ibid.
27.Padfield, p. 51.
28.Lord, pp. 42-43.
29.Padfield, p. 53.
30.Ibid.
31.Geofrey Marcus, The Maiden Voyage, (New York: Manor Books, 1969), pp. 43-44.
32.Ibid., p. 44
33.Ibid., p. 45.
34.Padfield, p. 54.
35.Patrick Stenson, The Odyssey of C. H. Ligtholler, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984), pp. 144, 148.