Smith was in charge. It was his last voyage before his retirement and they had asked him to stay on to take Titanic on her maiden voyage because he had fulfilled that role for a number of years as the “senior” captain. But Smith was not a bad captain. Luck was against him. Remember, there were any number of EXTREMELY unusual circumstances that night. First, the North Atlantic was a mill pond; there were not only no waves, BUT NO SWELL. Had there been swell, water would have broken on base of the berg and made it visible for miles. Secondly, the berg had just “turned over”, that is, it was upside down and the area exposed to view was made up of “black ice” rather than the very visible white coloring with which people are familiar when they think of ice bergs. Third, there was just a hint of mist in the air which is rather natural as it was dead calm (hence, no swell). There was just enough mist or fog that the “black burg” with no wavelets at its base was VERY difficult to see. There was no moon although the night was fairly bright with stars. However, the lighting on the ship was such that it would have been difficult for the men on lookout to be able to see without any moonlight to assist. There were no binoculars in the crow’s nest; along with many other things on the brand new Titanic, the matter of insufficient binoculars had yet to be addressed. The problem of the “newness” of the crew also did much to cause problems with filling and lowering the lifeboats as many crew members – and even some of the officers – were not well versed in their lifeboat duties. Captain Smith had chosen not to have any life-board drills on the ship because (and this may have been Ismany’s doing) it was believed that such drills made the passengers uneasy, making them think about disasters – NOT the atmosphere the White Star Line was attempting to create for its VERY well paying customers.

The biggest problem with Ismay is that he did not – like Smith and the other officers – go down with the ship. Andrews, the designer, chose to remain on board and was drowned, but Ismay got into a half empty life boat and was saved. Of all the incidents that night, Ismay’s perceived cowardice in taking a place in one of the lifeboats (though the boat was only half filled and other men were in it) forever sealed his doom as at least one of the scapegoats of the tragedy. But there was blame enough to go round, frankly.

There is no doubt, however, that the high carbon steel was brittle and certainly contributed to the disaster. Another thing that also contributed was the way the ship was designed. When the berg was sighted, the Officer of the Watch order her “full astern” to slow her down as well as ordered her “hard to port” (again, if I remember aright) to turn away from the berg. Now to go full astern from almost full ahead required the engines to come to “all stop” and then on to “full astern” just as with a car you cannot go from drive to reverse without stopping the car. The Titanic was designed so that when the engines went to “all stop” THE RUDDER WAS DISENGAGED. That meant that the ship did not begin her turn (it only took second to bring the device on the bridge to “all stop”) until the engines stopped and then restarted backing water. That period of about 12 to 15 seconds was enough to insure that she traveled too far to miss the berg. Had Murdoch (the Officer involved) brought the ship to “slow ahead”, she would have begun to turn immediately and MAY have missed the berg altogether even though she continued moving forward. It’s, of course, speculation, but the fact is that by moving the “throttle” (don’t know what you call the device) to “all stop”, the rudder was disengaged and the ship continued on her original course until the engines began to move again at “all back full”.

As for the keel pieces found, they came off when the ship broke apart. In the videos they showed no signs impact damage.

As for the Olympic she had problems with hull cracks that developed after a few years. She eventually had to operate under speed restrictions.

I read not long ago (don’t remember where) that an intact, 60-foot long section of Titanic’s keel has been found a couple of miles from the main wreckage site. It apparently was torn off during the collision which indicates that the bottom of the ship, not just the side, hit the iceberg.

If only one side had been breached, wouldn’t the ship have listed heavily to that side? My understanding is that she settled more or less evenly by the bow. Is that not correct?

Doesn’t seem to me that any number of popped rivets would have added much to the damage done by that missing chunk of keel.

Nor does the Olympic’s experience seem relevant here. It isn’t likely that she ever hit anything remotely as hard as the Titanic hit that iceberg. I’d think that the rivets might well have been fine for the normal design stresses but that even much higher quality rivets would have popped from the impact with an iceberg.

Just my thoughts.

Oh, and I do know that during that most recent, godawful movie I was rooting for the iceberg. I’ll take Clifton Webb and Barbara Staywyck any day.

Jim Morgan