![]() ![]() At the base of the ships, a double bottom 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) deep supported 300 frames, each between 24 inches (61 cm) and 36 inches (91 cm) apart and measuring up to about 66 feet (20 m) long. They were designed essentially as an enormous floating box girder, with the keel acting as a backbone and the frames of the hull forming the ribs. The construction of Titanic and Olympic took place virtually in parallel, with Olympic‘s hull laid down first on 16 December 1908 and Titanic‘s on 31 March 1909. Both ships took about 26 months to build and followed much the same construction process. A separate floating crane, capable of lifting 200 tons, was brought in from Germany. It accommodated a number of mobile cranes. The Arrol Gantry stood 228 feet (69 m) high, was 270 feet (82 m) wide and 840 feet (260 m) long, and weighed more than 6,000 tons. Their construction was facilitated by an enormous gantry built by Sir William Arrol & Co., a Scottish firm responsible for the building of the Forth Bridge and London’s Tower Bridge. Harland and Wolff had to demolish three existing slipways and build two newslipways, the biggest ever constructed up to that time, to accommodate the giant ships. The ships were constructed on Queen’s Island, now known as the Titanic Quarter, in Belfast Harbour. The sheer size of Titanic and her sister ships posed a major engineering challenge for Harland and Wolff no shipbuilder had ever before attempted to construct vessels of this size. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |