Considering that there were lookouts.....ya know, looking out for icebergs and other hazards, why weren’t they able to prevent a collision between the Titanic and the iceberg which caused it to ultimately sink? Was this primarily due to weather conditions? We’re they bored and drinking? Could they have been high? All jokes aside what did lead up to this fateful encounter?
Hi there,
Wanted to correct the misinformation that was included in the original response to your post.
There are several reasons why Titanic hit ice that night in April, all of them out of her control.
The spring of 1912 was unseasonably warm, so warm in fact that ice was pushed further south into the shipping lanes than was usual at the time of year. We get incredibly dicey almost immediately because we have testimony from three surviving deck officers (Lightoller, Pitman, and Boxhall) that, combined with where we now know Titanic sank, give us evidence to suggest that Titanic adjusted course on April 14th including and up to shortly before the collision, most likely and obviously, to avoid ice.
The next thing to account for is the weather. Titanic's conditions that night were perfect, which is, ironically, what contributed to her collision. There are two major ways to spot ice at sea at night. The first is to watch for waves breaking at the base of an iceberg. Titanic was sailing on a "sea of glass", that is to say, absolutely no waves at all, a completely still ocean. The day before, April 13th, she encountered rough seas, but tonight? Oddly calm, so calm in fact that Charles Lightoller later testified he hadn't seen anything anything like it ever before.
The second is that moonlight will reflect off the ice. Unfortunately , there was no moon that night for the iceberg to reflect and while it was a brilliantly starry night, it still didn't matter because of the third point-
3)...which is that Titanic didn't just hit an iceberg, Titanic hit a blue berg (described as a "black mass" by lookout Fred Fleet). A blue berg (or a black berg) is an iceberg that has just turned over, is still wet, and has yet to freeze up which makes it white. Instead, the running and melting water- being obviously clear- reflects the black and sea and black night, rendering it almost invisible until it is exposed to the air long enough to freeze.
These environmental conditions alone were enough to put Titanic in danger and are actually the true cause of her collision (more on that in a bit). The iceberg was so difficult to see that between Fleet's initial sighting and the collision- the time elapsed was 35 seconds.
So, let's get to that 35 seconds. Fred Fleet rings the bell and picks up the phone. Testimony allows us to break these next few moments down pretty succinctly.
By the time Fleet is on the phone with Sixth Officer James Moody, First Officer Will Murdoch has most likely already spotted the berg from the starboard wing and runs on to the bridge in order to give two orders- "hard a starboard, full astern". What Murdoch is trying to do is have Titanic's bow miss the iceberg, but then also swing her stern out of the way so as not to hit her on the backend by a sharp turn.
The problem here is two fold. 1) Titanic runs on steam and it took nearly 30 seconds in order for the rudder to respond (and remember, they only have 35 seconds). 2) This maneuver requires Titanic to essentially go into reverse. Not only does this also take time, you can't reverse the center turbine. What you can do is stop it, which in turn stops the center propeller. What this does is make the rudder relatively ineffective, meaning Titanic can no longer turn as sharply as she might have.
In layman's terms- Murdoch cut the wheel and slammed on the brakes.
It is very likely that if Murdoch had simply called "hard a starboard" and not "full astern", Titanic's bow would have missed the iceberg by a few feet. However it is also incredibly likely that her stern would have struck instead.
That's the general gist, and now to clear up a few misconceptions that come up, and came up in the original answer to your post.
The rudder. There is a prevailing theory that Titanic's rudder was too small for her size. Technically, yes, the Olympic class liners had rudders that were a fraction too small, but there is no evidence that they impeded their steering in any way or had a negligible effect on Titanic's collision. Had her rudder been a fraction bigger, it still would have suffered from ineffectiveness due to the center propeller being stopped.
It is true that the lookouts did not have binoculars, and it is also true that Fred Fleet testified that, when asked if binoculars would have helped, he said "maybe enough to save her". However, there was no such thing as the binoculars. Every officer on Titanic had a pair (we've recovered three from the wreck site), and binoculars in a crows nest aided only a little in sighting obstructions (and again, remembering, they were running into a black mass against a black sky on a dark night). Lookouts on the forecastle deck and the bridge were actually more effective (which is why there's good evidence, with testimony to back it up, that upon hearing three warning bells, Murdoch was able to see the berg from the bridge and was already making his way to the wheelhouse by the time Moody picked up the phone).
Also, as a side note, they weren't locked in a cabinet in Southampton. Titanic had a last minute (literally the day before she sailed) officer reassignment, which transferred original Second Officer David Blair off Titanic. In the last minute shuffle, he took with him the keys to the crows nest lockbox.
Titanic was traveling a standard and conservative speed for her conditions that night on a route adjusted to avoid ice (although they were prepared to approach it that night), in an unusually warm season, on a incredibly rare still sea, with no moon, directly into a freshly turned over iceberg that was invisible until it was almost on top of them.
In his testimony, when asked to answer the very question you've asked here, Second Officer Charles Lightoller answered- "it seemed everything was against us". That about sums it up.