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Granting the decision to run through the icefield, if she had a powerful searchlight, the bergs could have been sighted more easily. Without a searchlight, if extra lookouts had been stationed on the wings of the bridge, to give oral warnings directly and not by telephone, the vital moments of time would have been gained. If her rudder had been designed to function more efficiently at full speed, she would have veered to port more sharply. Who knows what's ahead?" he said, quietly, then added, "I'm sorry for Smith of the Titanic. After all the newspaper boasting, she's proved a slowcoach on her maiden voyage, and now this ice field will make him lose more time if he steers to the southward around it, as I suppose he will! She must be a wonderful ship, but all their newspaper bragging seems a kind of blasphemy, claiming that she's 'unsinkable' and all that kind of thing." As Captain Smith, and also First Officer Murdoch, had gone down with the ship, they had atoned for any errors of judgment which might have been ascribed to them. Their view of the sequence of events could never be ascertained; but this disaster was too tremendous to be explained away by finding one scapegoat, or two, or three, to bear the brunt of the blame. It could be explained, and was explained ultimately, as the fatal culmination of a long and complicated sequence of interrelated causes which lay deep in human nature itself—the errors of judgment made by many fallible men, in greater and lesser degrees of responsibility.
Already the Carpathia was being turned around. The Captain was in the chartroom, working out the course. He came out onto the bridge and said briskly to the helmsman, "North 52 West! Full ahead!" And think of all the work for her people. She'll carry a crew of a thousand seamen, firemen, trimmers, stewards." As they were in no fit condition to climb safely up the short Jacob's ladder to the side door, bosun's chairs were lowered, also canvas bags into which we placed the children, and, one at a time, they were all hauled to safety.
Atlas of Ocean Adventures
Captain Rostron stood silently gazing ahead, and to the sky, and then turned to the north, watching the play of light from the Aurora Borealis. I knew better than to interrupt his meditations. Presently he raised his cap a few inches from his forehead, and uttered a silent prayer, moving his lips soundlessly. The keel of the Olympic was laid in December, 1908. She was 882 feet in length overall (100 feet longer than the Mauretania) and 92 feet beam. Harland and Wolff's shipyard had to be enlarged to accommodate her. The biggest vessels built there previously had been the Adriatic (24,541 tons), launched in 1907, and the Baltic (23,876 tons), launched in 1904 – these two having provided the challenge which Cunard had answered with the Mauretania and Lusitania.
On the Captain's drowsily murmured instructions, the Second Officer had tried to signal to the liner with a morse lamp, but had failed to get a response. This was not surprising, as the officers of the Titanic were at that time occupied in lowering the lifeboats. When the Titanic sank at 2.20 A.M., the Second Officer of the Californian thought that she had finally dipped below the horizon, going away to the southwestwards. If she had not veered to port after striking the berg, he would not have made this tragic error of observation. His view of the sinking ship had been stern on, at nighttime, in the "graveyard watch," from ten miles away-and in those circumstances there was some excuse for his wrong thinking. I walked with the Captain in the darkness to the port wing of the bridge. The weather was calm, the sea smooth, with no wind. The sky was clear, and the stars were shining. There was no moon, but the Aurora Borealis glimmered like moonbeams shooting up from the northern horizon. The air was intensely cold. As we fastened one of the women into a bosun's chair, I noticed that she was wearing a nightdress and slippers, with a fur coat. Beneath the coat she was nursing what I supposed was a baby, but it was a small pet dog! "Be careful of my doggie," she pleaded, more worried about her pet's safety than her own. When these two messages were handed to Captain Rostron, he envisaged for the first time the possibility that the Titanic might actually be foundering. Until then, he had assumed that she was seriously damaged-otherwise she would not have sent out a distress signal—but he expected that she would remain afloat, and that possibly the whole of her passengers, crew, and mails would have to be transferred to the Carpathia, or to other steamers which might hasten to the rescue.
In the middle of the night, the Carpathia received a distress call from the sinking Titanic. The intrepid little ship heroically changed course and headed straight into the frozen sea to help save as many people as it could. Follow the Carpathia as it risks everything to navigate remote, treacherous ice fields in the dark and come to the rescue of passengers on the world-famous ocean liner. The wireless distress call was not sent out immediately. I had heard nothing new from Cottam at midnight, when I was relieved on the bridge by First Officer Dean. I handed over the Carpathia's course and details to him, and went to my cabin below the bridge. Captain Rostron's cabin was in darkness. He had gone to bed two hours previously. As the Carpathia thrust on into the night, Captain Rostron stood silently beside me for a minute, his cap raised a little from his brow, and his lips moving in silent prayer. Then, like an electric spark, he was hurtling around, galvanizing everybody to activity. The White Star people in New York were exultant at the news that the Titanic had completed her trials on April 1–April Fools' Day–with a speed of 22 knots. and that she had arrived at Southampton on April 3, in readiness for her maiden voyage, scheduled to begin from Southampton on Wednesday, April 10, with calls at Cherbourg and Queenstown. If she maintained an average speed of 22 knots, she would arrive in New York on Tuesday, April 16. The Olympic was due to leave New York on Sunday, and the Titanic would berth two days later at the vacated pier. The two gigantic ships would probably sight one another in midocean. It would be a dramatic history-making encounter. As soon as the Pilot was on the bridge, our engines were rung to Full Ahead, and we steamed through the channels of the entrance shoals, and into the Lower Bay, followed and accompanied abeam by our escorting fleet, some of the small craft continuing to range alongside, as reporters continued their efforts to "get the story" in megaphone interviews.
Though the night was cloudless, and stars were shining, the peculiar atmospheric conditions of visibility intensified as we approached the icefield with the greenish beams of the Aurora Borealis shimmering and confusing the horizon ahead of us to the northwards. My face was smarting in the frosty air as I stood on the wing of the bridge, keeping a lookout for icebergs. Many excuses were subsequently put forward to explain why the Master and officers of this 6,000-ton steamer had so tragically failed to rise to the opportunity which had been theirs of saving the lives of perhaps every person in the Titanic. Rescuing Titanic begins by introducing the ship itself and the key crew and passengers. It explains in concise, clear language the technicalities of navigation and the structure of ocean-going liners while cute and perky illustrations work with the words to clarify complexities. As the story unfolds, and intertwines with the fate of the Titanic, the mood darkens and the atmospheric illustrations increasingly add to the feeling of dread.Typical of the way in which mental adjustments lagged behind technical progress were the regulations of the Board of Trade for lifeboats. The Titanic was certified to carry a total of 3,547 persons, passengers and crew. Yet the regulations for lifeboat accommodation were based on an old rule that was hopelessly out-of-date. This rule, made in 1894, stipulated that "vessels over 10,000 tons" must carry sixteen lifeboats, with a total capacity of 5,500 cubic feet, plus rafts or floats with 75 per cent of the capacity of the lifeboats, that is, an additional 4,125 cubic feet. As lifeboat accommodation is based on the calculation that one person requires ten cubic feet, the Titanic was therefore compelled by law to provide lifeboat and raft floatage for only 962 persons, while at the same time she was certified by the Board of Trade to carry 3,547 persons! Apparently no one in authority had noticed this discrepancy. The Titanic had sixteen wooden-planked lifeboats and four "Englehardt" patent collapsible boats or rafts. The total cubic capacity of this floatage was sufficient for 1,178 persons, scarcely more than half of the 2,207 persons carried in the liner on her maiden voyage. This was in excess of the Board of Trade requirements, but no one thought that lifeboats would be needed in an "unsinkable ship." No provision was made for boat-drill, or for lifeboat training of the crew. The regulations merely classified this huge vessel of 46,000 tons as "over 10,000 tons" and the tragic incompetence of that definition was not apparent, until too late. It seemed incredible that the great "unsinkable ship" could actually sink. At 1.45 A.M., her wireless signals became faint. This indicated that the electric power plant had failed, and that the reserve batteries were being used. At 2.05 A.M., her wireless signals ceased entirely. At this time the Carpathia had run twenty-four miles at the forced speed of sixteen knots. We were thirty-four miles from the Titanic's position. Or should he make a rendezvous by wireless with the Titanic's sister ship, Olympic, and transfer the survivors to her at sea with the lifeboats? This was nothing for us to worry about, as we were to the southward of it, but I informed the Captain, who remarked, "It seems to be a big field. Keep a sharp lookout. Carry on!" But swarms of reporters and photographers now came on board, and remained until after midnight, getting stories from the survivors and from our passengers and crew.
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