Olympic strikes

Was there Olympic hysteria in 1912? No no!  I'm not talking about the Olympic games!  I'm talking about RMS Olympic, the older sister of the Titanic.

Just imagine the situation 100 years ago.  The whole world was still reeling in shock after the loss of the 'unsinkable' Titanic, and White Star Line had made no secret of the fact that Titanic was the second of its Olympic Class liners.  There is no way that anyone boarding Olympic would have done so without a measure of concern for their own safety.

Olympic and Titanic - sister ships

White Star Line was obviously aware of this too.  When Olympic arrived back in England they hurriedly arranged for an additional 40 lifeboats to be provided in case of another disaster.  Good for them!  Except this did not actually satisfy everyone.

Strike reported in New York Times, 25th April 1912

The reason for the dis-satisfaction was that these additional lifeboats were not brand-new seaworthy craft like those that were already in place.  In reality it would not have been possible to procure so many, let alone immediately to fit the ship out to launch them swiftly.  In fact these new lifeboats were hurriedly purchased, second-hand, collapsible, and in some cases rotten and nonfunctional.  The men who worked in the engine rooms of the ship were not convinced that they added sufficiently to their safety and the sent a delegation to the owners.

On 25 April a deputation of strikers witnessed a test of four of the collapsible boats. Only one was unseaworthy and they said that they were prepared to recommend the men to return to work if it was replaced.  However, 54 of them were arrested when they left the ship, and charged with mutiny!  The court found them guilty but imposed no punishment and most of them returned to work in time for the ship to sail on 15th May.

Less than 5 months later, the ship was withdrawn from service for a refit, which included fitting 64 'proper' lifeboats and improving the double hull.  When she re-entered service with a gross tonnage of 46,359 tons, she was again the largest ocean liner in the world - at least for a few months!

At least in 1912, Olympic hysteria achieved something useful!  It won't be the same in 2012.

Highly visible

Working for a large organisation, rules are sometimes applied in strange and inconsistent ways.  After an unfortunate road accident on-site, in which a pedestrian's leg was broken, one of our partner organisations introduced a rule that their employees must wear high visibility jackets whenever they are outdoors.

Maybe this is sensible, maybe not, but fortunately that rule has not been rolled out to the rest of us.

Wouldn't it have been rather ironic to have to wear a high visibility vest on top of the smart black 'low-visibility' jacket that was issued last year?  Strangely though, it is exactly the sort of thing that I could easily imagine happening.

On a 'partner site' a few years ago a rule was introduced to stipulate that all cyclists must wear cycle helmets.  That is not required on the public roads in UK, and there are statistics from other countries that have implemented such a law to suggest that accidents might even increase.  On that particular site there are also outdoor areas where it is mandatory to wear a hard hat.

I speculated to one of the directors that I might find it difficult to decide what to do if I had to cycle through a hard hat area.

It seems that that very argument had already been rehearsed for real.

Such is the fun of working for the government!