Posted by Bruce on October 26, 2000 at 19:26:07:
The gangway was stowed inside the E deck passageway as Roy stated. it was handeled
manually. Robert Hahn has a book somewhere that talks of these removable gangway stairs.
Lightoller bitches about the manual handeling of the gangway when he talks about the Oceanic
during WWI. he states that it was a mess to lower it away because the Navy had to give out
orders to certain sailors and so on. He states that when a ship is in the civilian service, the men
just go and do their job without being ordered to do it. He is talking about a group of men who
manually lower it out of the opening from inside. As for the book that Robert has, I forgot what
ship they referenced. The gangway was used to embark passangers onboard in ports that
were serviced by tenders. The pictures of the Britannic wre taken just before or after recieving
wounded, that is why you see it deployed. I'm sure that O and T used it at Cherbourg and
Cobh.
Bruce