Posted by Scott Andrews on September 21, 1998 at 23:46:13 in spider-to071.proxy.aol.com:
In Reply to: REF: PHOTO, READ ME posted by Bruce Beveridge on September 21, 1998 at 09:58:30:
Bruce,
First, you are correct! Both Bob and I read
your post and both Bob and I completely mis-
understood what you were trying to say. For
that I apologize. Now, on to a little history AND
geography lesson.
The photo IS the Olympic, docked at pier 59
on her maiden arrival in the Port of New York.
The pier next to the ship is one of the "Chelsea
Piers", pier 59 of the White Star Line. Beyond
the pier, off to starboard, is 17th St and the city
of Manhattan. The Chelsea Piers are as unmis-
takable to anyone, such as myself, who grew
up in the NY-NJ area as the Empire State Bldg
and the Statue of Liberty. The photo on pg 61
was taken at the same pier on the same day.
The exposed steelwork at the sides of pier's
roof is visible to starboard. In the photo on pg
91, again taken at the same pier on the same
day, across the Hudson River can be seen the
city of Hoboken, NJ. Up on the hill to the left is
one of the original buildings on the campus of
Stevens Institute of Technology. It is still there
today. Olympic was the only one of the three to
ever reach this port. Two common threads thru
these three photos are the fact that the crew
has "dressed ship" (all of the flags in the rigging,
which are all blowing in the same direction as is
the smoke from N0. 3 funnel) and the common
direction of the shadows, which by their length,
given the ship's orientation, would indicate mid-
morning.
Now for the history part. In that photo, you are
seeing the Olympic as completed in 1911. The
The two missing cowl vents and the missing
galley skylight visible on Marriott's pg 39 weren't
added until later on, possibly during repairs after
the Hawke incident, but more likely during the
post-disaster refit. The Marriott photo, H1827,
was taken in Dec., 1912 according to records
kept with the H&W photo archive at Ulster Folk
and Transport Museum. If you look very closely
in the Marriott photo, you will also see that the
small curl vent aft of the breakwater is still there,
partially obscuring part of the new galley sky-
light and blanking out the rails and the bottom
of the ratlines behind it. The photos in T@2
were published in the Titanic Commutator nearly
25 years ago, and were the basis for the fo'c'sl
on the Entex model. From "T" photos, it was
clear that some of the ship's ventilators were
different from "O". The ones that were picked
up on were changed. The existance of the
galley skylight on "T" wasn't proven to exist
until 1985 when the wreck was found, just as
the existance and/or relocation of skylights over
the Marconi room, officer's lavatory, chartroom
and so forth. That's the reason so much of that
is missing in the first place.
Regards,
Scott