The most discussed naval accident of modern times is now more than a century old.
One thing that cannot be debated is that the Titanic tragedy of April 1912 resulted from a whole series of bad choices.
Many have been well documented.
The first such decision, directed by the owner, the White Star line, was to half the number of lifeboats originally specified by the shipbuilder, Harlan & Wolfe.
Evidently, the senior management of the line did not want to clutter the boat deck and, thereby, possibly alarm the first class clientele.
The reduced number of boats was still four more that that required by the British Board of Trade at the time.
This ill-advised decision doomed about half the passengers the moment the ship struck the iceberg. The second was that the Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, choose to enter the known ice field in the dark at 22 knots, the ship’s cruising speed. Whether he was “egged-on” by Bruce Ismay, the White Star president, is still not known with certainty.
This is the most often mentioned disastrous choice.
There were several key flaws in the basic design of the Olympic class ships.
Some were corrected after the sinking and some have been found only decades afterward using computer models and methods that the original engineers, men who were armed only with slide rules and adding machines, could never have imagined.
Some of these were:
1. The design of the hull expansion joints was a true design flaw on Titanic. They were corrected on the Britannic, the third ship constructed (this has been confirmed by recent explorations of both wrecks).
2. The watertight compartments were open at the top and the walls did not reach high enough to prevent water from cascading from one compartment to another as in a giant “ice-cube tray.”
3. The rudder was far too small for a ship that size.
4. A final engineering choice that slowed the ship’s ability to turn was that when the engines were reversed, the third screw, the one directly behind the rudder, stopped turning (as it was driven by a steam turbine fed by the exhausts of the outboard piston engines).
This further reduced the effectiveness of the rudder.
Extended sea trials could have demonstrated the turning problems to the crew but Ismay directed the trials curtailed in order to maintain the scheduled departure date.
And, lest we forget, a very prudent captain made another bad decision, in another ship close enough to come to the rescue of everyone aboard the stricken liner.
Stanley Lord, master of the Californian, had wisely decided to stop for the night, rather than risk sailing into the ice field in the dark.
A wise decision but he did not further direct that the Marconi wireless be manned throughout the night. (Lord has been blasted to this day for his decisions).
The list seems almost endless, but the Titanic’s First officer, William Murdoch, made the final bad choice: the one that mean life and death for most of the passengers.
When Frederick Fleet telephoned the bridge from his position in the crow’s nest, high above the foredeck with his cry, “Iceberg, dead ahead,” Murdoch was in command.
He had to make a decision in a matter of seconds.
He basically had three choices, none of them good.
He could attempt a sharp turn to port, hoping to miss the iceberg completely, much as a modern motorist would steer around an obstacle that suddenly appeared.
Of course, a ship nearly three football fields in length doesn’t turn like an automobile.
Second, he could reverse the engines and apply full power; an attempt to slow the vessel in time, knowing a collision with the iceberg was very likely.
In that case, the ship would suffer a severely damaged bow, possibly bad enough to kill or injure several of the third class passengers, all unaccompanied men, berthed there.
Or he could try to do both. This third choice, the one that seems so straightforward, was, with hindsight, the worst one he could choose.
And that’s the one he took, leading to over 1500 deaths, including his own.
Murdoch has been often portrayed in film versions of the tragedy as an incompetent.
This simply wasn’t true.
His performance as a White Star officer over his sixteen-year career with the line was exemplary.
This was the case on the fateful night.
He simply made a “wrong call,” the one most mariners would have made.
Modern analysts, aided by modern tools and with exhaustive research, have determined that the liner would have cleared the iceberg if the engines had not been reversed while executing the hard turn to port.
Worst case, she would have struck the ice with her stern, where the powerful bilge pumps were located.
A minority of the same experts have the opinion, had the ship struck the iceberg dead on, thus crushing the bow, that the vessel was doomed anyway.
Most, however, cite the two cases where ships of the period, albeit smaller, suffered such collisions and limped into port.
A wise decision Murdoch had made earlier, the only action taken by any senior officer in response to the ice warnings, to have the forecastle lights dimmed, at least allowed Fleet in the crow’s nest to see the iceberg early enough for Murdock to try to avoid it.
Thus his third choice, the one that seemed so logical, caused the ship to graze the iceberg with her starboard bow, buckling plates and shearing rivets.
The vessel was designed to remain afloat with four compartments breached, but six were flooded.
She sank within three hours.
Did the tragedy affect history? No one can say for certain.
Over 1500 little known people at the time were lost.
Some were eager immigrants; others well educated business, scientific and professional men.
What effect they might well have had on the still new twentieth century can never be known.
