The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Fridge => History Section => Topic started by: The Chronicler on September 23, 2010, 09:20:11 PM
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_...in_titanic_book (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_life/us_britain_titanic_book)
According to this article I recently read, it seems the Titanic could have avoided hitting the iceberg had it not been for a case of human error. Basically, the man at the wheel had panicked and turned it the wrong way.
Interesting how we never knew about this until now.
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it would have taken them noticing the iceberg at a good distance to miss the iceberg given Titanic's size and its speed. Ships that large don't turn on a dime..
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There are many "mistakes" (e.g. leaving behind of binoculars for the watch, too high speed) as well as adversary circumstances (e.g. unusually calm sea making the iceberg more difficult to spot), and extreme bad-luck (e.g. that the Titanic scratched exactly alongside the iceberg when a few more moments would have resulted in her missing the iceberg and a few less moments would have resulted in a not fatal frontal collision). A lot has been written about what could and should have been done but not all of the good advise with the benefit of hindsight would have been possible at all. For example one can often read that if instead of ordering "full speed astern" (and there is even contradictory evidence as to whether or not that order had been given at all) officer Murdoch ought to have ordered "full speed astern but only to the portside screw. However, according to what I read the Titanic did not have a separate control system that would have allowed for one screw to be turned in another direction separately.
The tragedy of the Titanic is a story full of human blunder and there are several individuals who, by not committing their particular blunder might have made up for all of the other blunders. This however is no good reason to put all of the blame on the shoulders of a single individual. In case of some (by no means all) of the blunders it is rather easy to talk with the benefit of hindsight on something that did appear right at the time the respective blunder was committed respectively was committed under extreme pressure of time and responsibility that may have a negative effect on human judgment.