When First Officer William Murdoch spotted the iceberg two miles away, his "hard a-starboard" order was misinterpreted by the Quartermaster Robert Hitchins, who turned the ship right instead of left. Even though he was almost immediately told to correct the mistake, it was too late.
According to Louise Patten, the granddaughter of the only senior officer to survive the wreck, Charles Lightoller, Titanic hit the berg because the man at the wheel made a mistake, misunderstanding an order and turning right instead of left.
The Titanic was about 20,000 times heavier and had the full momentum of all that weight driving it forward. Though the engines were immediately thrown into reverse and the rudder turned hard left, slowing and turning took an incredible distance because of the tremendous weight (or mass) of the ship.
Hard a Port actually turns the vessel to the right (starboard), by bringing the STERN a bit to the left as the bow moves to the right. So the officer ordered a hard turn, which was not enough to avoid the iceberg. As he made contact he reversed the turn, so that the stern was not going to be pressed into the iceberg.
Titanic received six warnings of sea ice on 14 April but was travelling at a speed of roughly 22 knots (41 km/h) when her lookouts sighted the iceberg. Unable to turn quickly enough, the ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled her starboard side and opened six of her sixteen compartments to the sea.
When First Officer William Murdoch spotted the iceberg two miles away, his "hard a-starboard" order was misinterpreted by the Quartermaster Robert Hitchins, who turned the ship right instead of left. Even though he was almost immediately told to correct the mistake, it was too late.
Cooper, the author of a book on Captain Smith, Smith was not ignoring the ice warnings; he was simply not reacting to them. Ice warnings were just warnings that a ship sent saying that they had seen ice at a certain location (Kasprzak, 2012).
1. Icebergs – the ultimate hazard. The poor navigation of icebergs is undoubtedly the most well-known and momentous of mistakes that caused the sinking of the Titanic. Indeed, the collision between the Titanic and an iceberg – on 14 April 1912 at 11:40pm – is what caused the tragedy.
American and British inquiries accused the SS Californian and its captain, Stanley Lord, of abandoning the Titanic. Decades later, the discovery of Titanic's wreck exonerated Lord and the Californian's role in the disaster, re-opening accounts that implicate another ship.
The Titanic sank from human error. According to the granddaughter of the second officer of the Titanic, Louise Patten, a new steering system led to a mistake by the steersman, Robert Hitchins, into going "hard a port" instead of "hard a starboard" and straight into the iceberg instead of away from it.
As time has passed, the Titanic has degraded, leading to its structural integrity becoming very flimsy. Any movement could destroy the ship. The most successful operation took place in 1998 when a company called the RMS Titanic Inc.
Did anyone survive the Titanic that was not in a lifeboat?
In researching his genealogy he has connected with distant cousins who descended from his grandmother Evelyn Kearney Connors side of the family. It was her sister, Edna Kearney Murray who survived the sinking of the Titanic but it wasn't in an overloaded lifeboat.
Would Titanic have sunk if it hit the iceberg head on?
Answer: That's wrong – it would probably have survived. When a ship hits an iceberg head on, all the force would be transferred back to the ship, so it wouldn't have ripped open, but crumpled round, so only 2-3 compartments would have been breached. It was built to survive with 4 compartments breached.
As the stern sinks into the ocean, you would think the suction would draw you into the depths—but survivors report no such thing. Joughlin claimed his hair was never even mussed. Still, you may experience what is called the cold-shock response. You'll gasp uncontrollably and perhaps even hyperventilate.
How close to America was the Titanic when it sank?
The ship was near Newfoundland, Canada, when it sank. It was just about 400 miles off the coast. Most of the Titanic wreckage remains about 350 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, according to NOAA.
Boxhall, tasked with determining the Titanic's position, revises the coordinates. The location is now given as 41°46' N 50°14' W in the distress signals.
Those changes, along with the advent of superior technologies for navigation and communication, have made the seas much safer since 1912. As such, it is unlikely that the specific circumstances leading to the sinking of the Titanic will recur. But the ocean remains an unpredictable place, fraught with hazards.
Evans's message that SS Californian was stopped and surrounded by ice was heard very strongly on Titanic due to the relative proximity of the two ships and drowned out a separate message Phillips had been in the process of receiving from Cape Race, bringing Phillips to rebuke Evans: "Shut up, shut up!
It is this final act of leadership that has become the most enduring image of Captain Smith. While we cannot know for sure how he spent his final moments, it is known that Captain Edward Smith perished in the North Atlantic along with 1517 others on April 15, 1912. His body was never recovered.
Smith was accused of ignoring ice warnings from other ships and failing to reduce the ship's speed to fit the conditions at hand. The British inquiry essentially exonerated him, saying he did nothing other captains wouldn't have done. The American inquiry was only slightly harsher in its judgment.
The sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic in April 1912 and the accompanying loss of life might have been averted if the ship's designers or the vessel's officers been made aware of certain engineering and damage control principles.
"As the waters rose to the bridge, his last command rang out to his officers and men: 'Be British'," the Rev Gordon told the mourners at Shelton church. "When next seen he is holding a little child in his arms, and handing it into one of the boats, saved. His last greeting was, 'Good luck, and God bless you. '
Did the captain of the Titanic hit the iceberg on purpose?
LONDON (Reuters) - The Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912 because of a basic steering error, and only sank as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue sailing, an author said in an interview published on Wednesday.
If Titanic hadn't collided with the iceberg, she would probably have fared no different. After completing her maiden voyage, she would have captured media attention and held temporally the title of the biggest ship afloat. This title would be lost in June 1913 to the new Hamburg-American Line's SS Imperator.
