Steam Technology on the Titanic and Battleship Texas

Editor's note:  Slightly off topic, but a fascinating article about steam technology and its applications in a non railroading environment.  I doubt many of our readers will complain.  Regardless, you may find James Hefner's Surviving World Steam Project website of interest (which does cover steam locomotives), as well as the Steam Lizards Yahoo Group.  Thanks to James for sharing this experience with us - Hume Kading

Earlier this year, I joined John and Cathy Mandell in a "hard hat" tour of the Battleship Texas. These tours are held several times a year, and includes areas not accessible to the general public. You can get more information at the Hard Hat Tours website.

Battleship Texas.

I have learned quite a bit more about the U.S.S. Texas since I visited there over a year ago. The Hard Hat Tours website is a great resource, as also is Charlie Moore's website, which includes a drawing of the engine room. I have also added my pictures to the Battleship Texas photo album in the Surviving World Steam Lizard Photo Gallery at this link.

Back in August, I took the Steam Lizards Group on Yahoo on a virtual look at the steam lizards aboard the ocean liner RMS Titanic. The Titanic, the Texas, and their sister ships were the penultimate application of reciprocating steam engine technology. (The Titanic's sister ships were the Olympic and Brittanic, the latter of which also met tragic end.  The Texas' sister ships were the New York and Oklahoma; another sister ship BB-33 Arkansas was powered by a steam turbine.)

The U.S.S. Texas was laid down on 17 Apr 1911 at Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock, and launched on 18 May 1912. The Titanic was laid down in 31 March 1909 at Harland and Wolff Shipyard, and launched on 31 May 1911. However, while the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage after striking an iceberg; the Battleship Texas had a long and charmed career. She participated in both World Wars, but suffered only one wartime fatality when a shell exploded between her pilot house and conning tower; killing the sailor at the wheel and severely injuring the others on the bridge. Another time, a shell is thought to have bounced off the water and penetrated the hull butt end first; damage control found it unexploded and rolling around the deck! They secured it with mattresses until they could reach a port where bomb experts could defuse and remove it. No wonder she was known as the "Lucky T"!

Like our Titanic "virtual tour," we started our "hard hat" tour above deck with a tour of the chart room, pilot house, and Turret One. We then descended down below for the remainder of our tour.

Like the Titanic, the Texas was originally fitted with coal fired boilers. However, while the Titanic was fitted with twenty-nine Scotch fire-tube boilers in six boiler rooms; the Texas had fourteen large water tube boilers in four boiler rooms. Between July 1925 and November 1926, the Texas was modernized; at which time these boilers were replaced with six oil fired water tube boilers. They were installed in pairs in three boiler rooms; the fourth boiler room space was used for the Plotting and Secondary Battle Telephone Switching Room, oil tanks, and a cofferdam. As part of our tour, we paid a visit to Boiler Room #2.

There, a Texas State Parks volunteer proudly showed us one of the newly restored boilers. In between the two boilers we found a large vertical simplex steam pump. Surprisingly, this one boiler feedpump supplied both boilers; a failure of this one pump would have knocked out both boilers. This pump has a discharge pipe on each side; each lead to a long manifold behind the pump. Several small tubes lead from the manifolds to the steam drums on top of each boiler.

On the opposite side of the boiler room was an even larger vertical simplex pump. This pump used its powerful suction to draw fuel oil from the ship's bunkers to the engine room. The oil then passed through a filter into a receiver, where four turbopumps (two for each boiler) pumped the fuel oil to the burners of the boilers. Once again, there was no backup for this pump; I found it amazing that the ship's propulsion system relied on these six pumps in the three boiler rooms. I brought a ruler with me; but forgot to estimate the bore and stroke of these large pumps!

The starboard engine room is not included in the "hard hat" tour because it is open to the public; however, you can visit it and the other public spaces after your tour. Our tour started at 1:00 and finished at 4:00; we then visited the engine room from which I emerged, exhausted but smiling, at 5:15 that evening.

Like the Titanic, the Battleship Texas has two four-cylinder triple expansion engines. I believe less than six examples of this type of engine remain; those aboard the Texas are the largest examples of their kind above water, the closest thing to the Titanic still afloat. The arrangement and steam flow through the cylinders would have been similar to that of the engines on the Titanic.

The following is a comparison between the two sets of engines. Note the builder of the Texas's engine:

The access ports on the sides of the engine are open; allowing you to see crankshafts as tall as a man, and cylinders large enough to stand on.

As impressive as the engines themselves is the force that not only broke the Titanic in two, but broke off the forward LP cylinder on one of the engines as the ship sank.

It is nearly impossible to take a good picture of the engine in the confines of the engine room; several walkways obscure your view of the engine. I did take picture down the side of the base plate.

Like the Titanic, the Texas used centrifugal pumps driven by vertical cylinder compound engines to circulate water through the condensers. The Texas has two, one for each engine room. There was a huge pipe sitting behind the circulating pump; this may have been used to allow the pump to pull water out of the bilge of the ship instead of the outside of the hull. They are believed to have been built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock; the builders of the Texas.

A George F. Blake 14 x 35 x 21 vertical duplex pump is installed as an air pump, one in each engine room. (In steam pump notation, 14 inches is the steam cylinder bore, 35 inches is the air cylinder bore, and 21 inches is the stroke. Since both pistons are on a common piston rod, the stroke is the same.) With a height of 10' 10"; it is the largest steam pump I have found in this part of the country outside of McNeill Pumping Station. Wedged between the condenser and main feed tank, it is difficult to photograph. I took a picture of it through the grating above, and some detail pictures.

Notice the pump has a rocking beam between the two piston rods. As the axle this beam is mounted on was rocked back and forth, it pushed a  thin rod up and down using a small crank. This rod in turn moved a horizontal rod using another crank. The horizontal rod was connected to the steam valve; and simultaneously switched the steam and exhaust flow for both cylinders. (Unlike a steam locomotive; the two steam pistons on this pump are not "quartered." On a steam locomotive, when one piston is in the middle of its stroke, the other piston is at one end of its stroke. On this pump; both pistons would be in the middle; both reach the opposite ends of their stroke at the same time. Hence, they used the same steam valve.)

The Blake air pumps discharged into the main feed tank, a large box that is next to it. Built into the main feed tank is a feedwater heater.

A pair of vertical simplex main feed pumps, mounted on the outboard end of the forward bulkhead ahead of the main feed tank, pumped the feedwater forward to the boiler rooms. Since the air pump was built by George F. Blake Manufacturing Co.; I believe that the remainder of the vertical simplex pumps on this tour are Blake pumps as well. I guesstimate this pair is 14 x 9 x 21 in size.

Walking inboard along the forward bulkhead, we find three vertical simplex pumps in the corner. The grime around them and the engine room drawing I have confirm these are lube oil pumps. The Titanic had three lube oil pumps in each reciprocating engine room as well; one was allocated to the steam turbine rotor bearings and thrust block, one to the reciprocating engine thrust blocks and shaft bearings, and one was a stand-by. (The two engines on the Titanic exhausted to a low pressure steam turbine which drove the center screw; the Texas does not have either a steam turbine or center screw.) The ones on the Texas probably lubed the main engine and all of the pumps and compressors in the engine room; none of them have their own independent lubricator. The lube pumps in the starboard engine room are numbered 1, 3, and 5. I assume lube oil pumps 2, 4, and 6 are in the port engine room.

Walking down the center bulkhead alongside the engine bed plate, we come to the inboard rear corner of the engine room. Here, we find four vertical simplex air compressors mounted on the walls; two on the middle bulkhead and two on the rear bulkhead. I measured one of them with my ruler, and determined it had both a cylinder and pump bore of 11 inches.

I found a diagram of a Westinghouse 11 inch single cylinder air compressor of the type used on steam locomotives. I believe these four pumps were also made by Westinghouse; in which case they had a 12 inch stroke, or were 11 x 11 x 12 in size.

The compressed air from these pumps was used to blow ashes out of the main gun barrels after each firing, and prevent burning embers from falling into the gun turret. Compressed air was also used to drive an air motor; this air motor returned the ship's catapult to its starting position after each launch. I assume a similar quartet was also found in the port engine room.

Walking along the rear bulkhead towards the outer hull, we find two more large vertical simplex pumps in the rear outboard corner of the engine room. These are fire and bilge pumps, and also appear to be roughly 14 x 9 x 21 in size. Another pair must have also been found in the port engine room.

Summing up all of the pumps we have seen so far, we have:

For a total of 44 pumps so far. We documented 47 pumps aboard the Titanic; a large steamship like these had dozens of pumps on board.

However, there were areas of the ship we could not visit. There is also a compressor room forward for the forward main guns; it is not known how many or what kind of air pumps or compressors can be found there. An electric fire pump is installed in each of two rooms, one forward, one aft of the machinery spaces. Their may have been pump installations as well.

We learned that the Titanic had four generators aft of the engine rooms, each driven by a two cylinder vertical steam engine. The Battleship Texas has four generators as well; but they have steam turbine drives, and are divided between two generator rooms located fore and after of the machinery spaces.

Finally, in order to ensure its survival in combat, the Texas has multiple redundant systems on board. In several cases, there is a primary system, a backup system, and an additional backup of human power.

One such example is the ship's steering. In the inside aft corner of the starboard engine room, between the two pairs of air compressors, is a small room containing the vertical two cylinder engine that turned the ship's rudder using steam power.

Further aft in the stern of the ship is the steering room. We toured this room as part of the "hard hat" tour where we were shown the electric motor drive that was an alternate means of turning the rudder. Electricity was in its infancy when the Texas was built; and its designers thought the electric drive would be for backup use only. However, it was much easier to operate than the steam drive using the ship's wheel, so the steam steering in reality was for backup use only. (We actually visited two ship's wheels during our tour; one up in the pilot house, the other in central station.)

The manual way of turning the ship's rudder was also found in the steering room. It consisted of four ship's wheels mounted on a single shaft. Sixteen sailors, four to each wheel, were needed to turn the rudder manually. Even then, the rudder was slower to move than the primary and backup means. Over and over again, this pattern of backup systems was seen in the ship's armament, communications, defensive, and navigation systems during our hard hat tour. They were all intended to keep the ship functioning and fighting as long as possible regardless of how much damage she sustained and where.

The Battleship Texas has several items that remind one of railway preservation. It also illustrated well the tribulations of preserving a large vessel. Most of the ship is closed to the general public; they are confined spaces with stale air, no light, and rusted out decks. (On one short segment we had to walk across a plank; I missed the plank and nearly put my foot through the deck plate.) Before handing the vessel over for preservation, the U.S. Navy cut every wire and line throughout the ship; making restoration to operating condition an impossible task. It also made wiring the ship for modern lights a challenge to say the least, any wire aboard the ship could be a modern live wire, a dead old wire, or an old wire that is actually live.

I strongly recommend taking the "hard hat" tour should you ever be in the area. They are by reservation only; contact Barbara Tankink at 281-479-2431 x234 or Barbara.Tankink@tpwd.state.tx.us. A $30.00 donation is required; since all of the guides are unpaid volunteers, 100% of this money goes to the upkeep and ongoing restoration of the vessel. Appropriate shoes and clothing and a flashlight are also recommended. The Park will provide a hard hat, or bring your own.

The Texas is the sole remaining dreadnought in existence anywhere in the world. It is an example of the type of early battleship that was the transition between early ironclads and protected cruisers like the U.S.S. Olympia, and the modern steam turbine powered battleships such as the Iowa class of which several have been preserved. Her starboard engine room is also the closest thing to the Titanic; and you don't have to get your feet wet when you view it.

(James Hefner)