Talk:SS Arctic disaster

Main Page Summary

The paragraph on the main page linking this article is awful.

"Only 88 people survived the sinking of the SS Arctic on September 27, 1854, out of more than 400 on board. The paddle steamer SS Arctic (pictured), bound for New York, sank off the coast of Newfoundland. When Captain Luce ordered the lifeboats launched, a breakdown in discipline saw the boats swamped by members of the crew and the more able-bodied male passengers; most of the rest went down with the ship, four hours after the collision."

What collision? It's not referenced anywhere else in the paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.254.236 (talk) 22:52, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Effects

Collin's fleet of wooden paddle steamers quickly became celebrated for their use of extravagent shoreside excesses from marble tables and gilded mirrors to oil paintings and stained glass windows. . . . After the Arctic and Pacific were lost within a short span of time, public confidence in the concern eroded as people concluded that getting there was more important than luxuriating amid ornate trim for a fortnight; and the new iron ships did seem much safer.

Gibbon, John Townsend (1990): Palaces that Went to Sea, p. 10. Minneapolis, Nerus Publishing. ISBN 0-9625082-0-9.

Captain Luce

The following is the obituary of Captain James C. Luce in the New York Times, July 11, 1879. Here the author gives an account from Captain Luce's perspective. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A07E6D71E3FE63BBC4952DFB1668382669FDE HJKeats (talk) 13:06, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

The account in the obit is quoted from Luce's statement to Edward Collins, which is copiously used as a source in the article. Thanks, however, for the link, which I will try to work into the article somehow. Brianboulton (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

On a side note Brian, if I may call you Brian, I thoroughly do enjoy your well researched articles.HJKeats (talk) 17:28, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The speed of telegraphy

The article states: "The rudimentary telegraph facilities of the time meant that news of Arctic's loss did not reach New York until two weeks after the sinking." This is very puzzling, and the article would be improved by reliable sourcing which accounts for the delay. It says that it took some time for news to reach Halifax, and that a telegram was then sent to New York. In the 1850's it did not take weeks for a telegram to traverse the connected telegraph grid. The message would have traveled hundreds of miles at a jump, basically at the speed of light, and then it would have been manually retransmitted to the next node. It would have taken maybe four retransmissions to cover the 900 miles from Halifax to New York City with probably less than an hour elapsed. So when did the message actually leave the Halifax telegraph office? Were there lines down somewhere? Or did it take many days for the information to reach Halifax and for someone to decide on what message to send? By 1852 there was a telegraph line from New York City to Boston, from Boston to Portland, Maine, thence to St. Johns, thence to Halifax, per "Historical sketch of the electric telegraph including its rise and progress ..." by Alexander Jones (1852), page 78. The same book says that by 1852 a message could be telegraphed with but 4 retransmissions from New York to New Orleans, over 2000 miles, but that under good conditions magnetic relays could carry it that distance without any manual retransmission. Another 1854 book says that transmission in 5 minutes with one repeat had been achieved from Halifax to New York City, which was one quarter of the earlier time with 4 or 5 repeats. So whence the claimed 14 day telegraphic delay? Did the message get intentionally stopped at some point for whatever reason? Edison (talk) 02:57, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the answer is in the third paragraph of the Rescue section. "Because St John's lacked a telegraph service, these reports were taken by the steamer Merlin to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they could be wired to New York." So the rudimentary telegraph facilities refers to the fact that there were not many telegraph stations, not any technological deficiency. Angrhoiel (talk) 08:59, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I wonder what had happened to the St Johns facility which was there in 1852? And did the steamer travel a 1 mile per hour? I read this on the main page and it struck me as unencyclopedic nonsense to just attribute such a long delay to the telegraph. Edison (talk) 12:47, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

The article says that Arctc sank 27 Sept and word reached New York 11 Oct. Is there any basis for supposing otherwise? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.158.212 (talk) 13:43, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

There is a basis for doubting the correctness of the article's statement that any significant portion of the delay involved the "rudimentary telegraph facilities" since other contemporary sources say the telegraph routinely carried messages in minutes to a couple of hours over thousands of miles by the time of this incident. It does a disservice to the readers to imply that any telegraph message took days from origin to destination in the year of this event. I will try and get the book that the article uses as a ref to see if it provides a better timeline. I wonder if there is confusion between Saint John near Halifax and St. Johns where the survivors landed, when iI read about a line to "St John, Canada." Different provinces. Edison (talk) 19:13, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Mr Edison should stop chasing shadows and reading things into the article that aren't there. "Rudimentary", i.e. at an early stage of development, is a reasonable description of the telegraphic facilities then in existence between Newfoundland and the mainland, before submarine cables were operating. That's not to say that any telegraph message took days to reach its destination. As to the "1 mile per hour" comment, it is not clear when Merlin left St John's, but it may have been several days after Baalham's arrival on 3 October. It made a detour to look for further survivors, and called at Sydney, Nova Scotia on 9 October before proceeding on to Halifax where it arrived on 11th. There is no reason to doubt any of this; conjectures about cables being stopped, broken lines etc, are without any foundation or evidence. The article is based on what the sources say. If he can get hold of it, Mr Edison should read page 122 of Women and Children Last. Brianboulton (talk) 22:44, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I look forward to reading the book. I just note that in the year of the incident, there was great interest in getting news from ships arriving at St Johns, Newfoundland to New York, to the point that newsmen used carrier pigeons and chartered steamers to do express runs with little regard for the cost. I will look for good sources and will consider better phrasing than what is in the article at present, to clarify that the telegraph was not the slow part. It might have been delay in other parts of the message chain. (BTW, just Edison is sufficient without the "Mr.") There still seem to be unaccounted-for days of delay. This is very lame for a "featured article." Edison (talk) 23:50, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

There are no "unaccounted for" days of delay, except in your imagination or surmise. Apart from the book referred to above, I have read dozens of contemporary newspaper acccounts of the disaster, not one of which refers to breakdowns in the message chain. The sequence of events is clear; no sensible reader is going to infer from the article that it was the speed of the telegraph that caused the delay in New York's receipt of the news. The delay was due to the time it took to reach the telegraph in Halifax. Brianboulton (talk) 07:45, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

There still seem to be unaccounted for delays, or very slow travel by a steamer. If you have a reliable source stating when the message reached the telegraph office in Halifax, please add it to the article or identify it here. There seems to be no basis for "rudimentary" being used to describe the telegraph system of that time. How about if we say "Due to the lack of a direct telegraph line to St. John's, Newfoundland news of Arctic's loss did not reach New York until two weeks after the sinking, when a steamer carrying the news report reached Halifax, which had a telegraph line." Edison (talk) 14:07, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

That's more or less the wording used in the body of the article ("Newfoundland" section, third paragraph), and there's no point in saying the same thing in the lead. However, since it's the word "rudimentary" to which you mostly seem to object, I have changed this to "limited". I have also added a sentence in the Newfoundland section specifying that Merlin reached Halifax on 11 October. You may be interested to know that a lot happened in the following ten years to extend and develop the telegraph system in that region, including the laying of undersea cables. Had the sinking occurred in 1864 rather than 1854, news could have been transmitted to New York as soon as the survivors reached St John's. Brianboulton (talk) 18:05, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Edison (talk) 19:42, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

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Crossing the ocean

It wasn't a "theory" that ships couldn't cross the ocean on coal, it was a fact. The continuing advances in steam technology meant that with the latest generation of ships, it became possible to do so. These weren't idiots, they knew perfectly well what the coral consumption of a vessel was, and that it was impossible to carry enough coal to cross with the early engines, or later, if you could make it across, it would be by using so much storage space for coal that your couldn't carry a paying cargo, or it wouldn't be cost effective with the amount of space taken up and the cost of coal. The amount of coal used per horsepower halved and then quartered and kept falling during the 1800s. The cost of coal dropped, coaling stations were opened, etc, and they found that eventually it could be done cost effectively. It's not like everyone just thought "oh, you can't do that, it'll never work" until some genius tried it and found out you could.

8.48.253.102 (talk) 00:47, 27 September 2022 (UTC)