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Camber
- A ship’s decks are horizontal platforms which extend across the hull at various
heights above the inner bottom. The decks within the hull are bounded by the shell plating
and are connected to the beams and to trunk and hatch openings. The beams and plating are
arched upward; this arching is referred to as camber, or “round of beam.” Camber
is built into a deck so any water on it will run to the scuppers and drain overboard.
Camber is usually measured in inches or fractions of inches per each foot of the breadth
of a ship. Titanic’s decks had an overall athwartship camber of 3 inches.
Technically speaking, her decks had a camber of 3 inches in 92 feet, meaning that. . . (continued) |
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Image above, Planing Machine - A typical electric deck-planing
machine. Not many years before the building of Titanic, wood decks were planed by
hand, by wood shipwrights working on their hands and knees. With this invention of this
electrically powered tool, the job was made easier and considerably faster, with only the
tight spots having to be done by hand. Author’s
collection
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Wooden deck
planking - Titanic used two types of pine for her deck planking. Yellow
pine was used throughout except in areas that would undergo excessive wear; these latter
surfaces were laid with pitch pine. (One exception was the area of the Forecastle Deck in
the area of the chain runs; here, teak planking was used.) Pitch pine is distinguished
from yellow pine by its peculiarly rough, dark bark, and by its abundance of resin. The
planking was laid running longitudinally and was secured to the steel deck by galvanized
iron bolts and nuts. With the deck planks tightly held down from above, the bolt holes
were drilled from below, the previously punched holes in the steel deck plates guiding the
drill. After the holes had been drilled through, they were counterbored from the topside
of the decking in order to provide recess for the bolt heads and deck plugs . . . (continued) |
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Interior
deck sheathing - While wood planking could be laid directly onto the coated
steelwork of the decks, deck materials such as those just enumerated required some form of
substrate material to be laid beneath them. This substrate layer served in some cases to
protect the steelwork below from the effects of moisture, while in other cases, it served
to insulate the spaces it was laid in from noise and heat which might be transmitted
through the deck; in all cases, this sub-layer also provided a fair, even surface on which
to lay the “finished” deck coverings and partition joinery. Beneath ceramic and
brick tiles, a layer of Portland cement was laid down over the steel deck; the thickness
of this layer of cement could be up to 2 inches depending on the thickness of the plate
seams beneath. The tiles were then bedded in a thin mortar troweled over the cement, after
which the seams were grouted. Beneath other types of deck coverings, where constant
wetting or high heat was not a consideration, magnesite compositions of one type or
another were generally adopted. Such materials were as easily mixed and applied as
Portland cement, but were only half as heavy, and were also better at insulating against
the transference of noise and heat. In the case of Titanic, the composition
chosen was Harding’s patent Litosilo, supplied by C. S. Wilson & Co. of Liverpool
. . . (continued)
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Other topics in this chapter:
Steel deck construction - Waterway and scuppers - plus general specifications of sheathing
and waterways for individual decks |
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