Page 127 - British Inquiry into Loss of RMS Titanic Day 1 - 5

The Commissioner: It came from the direction of No. 6? The Solicitor-General: Yes, my Lord. Your Lordship will remember you asked him just at the close yesterday whether his impression was that the thing had come with a rush, as though something had given way, and he said that was his impression. I think the only other material evidence up to date is that I asked him whether he had noticed that the ship was tipping, was going down by the head, and he said he had noticed it; and I asked him when it was he first noticed it, and he said that he had first noticed it when the fires were being drawn, and that it got worse. To the best of my recollection, that is the whole. The Commissioner: I wanted to ask you a question. Can you account for the lights going out and coming on again? The Solicitor-General: My Lord, his suggestion was that they were changing over from one dynamo to the other. The Commissioner: There is a sort of reserved dynamo on board, which may be put into operation and which will keep all the lights in what you may call the public part of the vessel alight. It will not keep the lights in the cabins and such like places alight; and it may have been that when the main dynamo stopped, the whole ship was in darkness for a short time. Then when they got the supplementary dynamo to work, the lights would come in the passages and in the engine rooms and in places of that kind. The Solicitor-General: I did ask him, if your Lordship remembers, whether, when he went up to get the light, he found the lights were also out in the alleyway, and he said, “No; the lights were burning in the alleyway.” The Commissioner: I do not understand it. The Solicitor-General: It seems to have been a local failure. FREDERICK BARRETT, Recalled. Further examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL. The Attorney-General: Your Lordship has No. 3 plan. The Commissioner: Yes. 2076. (The Solicitor-General - To the Witness.) Before we go on there are just two things you told us about yesterday that we want a little more information about. First of all, about the lights. You told us yesterday that the electric lights went out in No. 5? - Yes. 2077. And so you were sent to get some lamps? - Yes. 2078. And that you went up the ladder to the alleyway, and then sent along to the engine room? - Yes. 2079. When you got to the alleyway, were the electric lights burning there or had they gone out? - They were burning there. 2080. As far as you know had the electric lights gone out elsewhere in the ship except in No. 5? - That I cannot tell. 2081. You do not know? - No. 2082. Did the electric lights continue to burn in the alleyway until those lamps were brought and you went down again? - When I went down with the lamps the lights were burning in the fireroom again. 2083. The fireroom is the stokehold? - Yes. 2084. How long should you suppose the lights were out in that stokehold? - I could not estimate. After I went up and got the lamps and came back again they were lit. 2085. That would not take very long? - No; you have to run along the alleyway and down the engine room to the stores and come back again, and down the escape ladder.