Posted by Scott Andrews on October 02, 2000 at 19:16:36:
In Reply to: Scavenged Boat Parts posted by Norm Olsen on September 29, 2000 at 18:43:04:
: Bob, Pete, I definitely agree they must have had spare blades. After all you spend all the money on building a ship like the Olympic, you want it in service, not in the ship yard. It seems logical from any point of view. Thanks, Norm
Most definitely there were spares. These built-up propellers had blades provided in matched sets. Blades had to be equal in weight, length and pitch in order to be replacable on the same boss. In the event of losing a blade, without a number of matched spares stored someplace, you'd be in big trouble. There were spares for the Titanic as well as for the Olympic at H&W. The shipyard donated Titanic's to provide the bronze used in casting a number of the memorial plaques and statues found which were erected after the disaster. I suspect one of the reasons for this gesture was that they weren't of any value to H&W or White Star at this point anyway, since the diameter and pitch of all three of the Olympic's screws were changed during the 12/12-3/13 refit.
There is also a post WWI photo taken of Olympic's forward well deck taken at H&W during a public inspection just prior to her return to peacetime service showing a spare set of wing screw blades and a spare center screw lashed down to the deck. Since there are no other photos showing these spares lashed to the deck, in all probability they were being transported to either Southampton or New York to provide a set of spares at one of the repair facilities. By this time, Southampton had a drydock large enough to accommodate the Olympic and other ships of similar size, which finally allowed for such repairs with out the otherwise necessary return to Belfast. In the US, similar facilities were available in the Navy Yard at Boston. If these spares were intended for her western terminus, they would have been unloaded in NY and sent by rail to Boston.
Scott Andrews