History Spotlight, 4/14

At 11:40 PM on the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic and, in under three hours, sinks about 700 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. 1,517 people went down with her. At the time, it was the deadliest maritime disaster in history. Long held up as an example of man's hubris before an uncaring Nature or a wrathful God (or both), the sinking of the Titanic is really just a case of minor and major screwups by individuals combining to create a disaster.

The Titanic featured, for the time, a novel design in its watertight doors. The Titanic's hull had been divided into sixteen compartments that could be isolated from each other in the event of damage to the hull. It was designed to have as many as four of the compartments completely flooded and yet still remain afloat. Unfortunately, on the night of April 14th, five of the compartments flooded which revealed another design flaw. When the water reached certain height in the ship, it overtopped the watertight door be began to flood the adjacent compartment. Think of filling an ice cube tray. As that compartment flooded, the ship sank lower and the next compartment began to flood.

The lifeboats were another issue, as in, there weren't nearly enough of the. British shipbuilding rules hadn't been updated in many years (since 1894) and were never intended to encompass a ship the size of the Titanic. They stated that any ship must have 16 lifeboats - no mention of the capacity of the lifeboats, just 16 of them. So, that's what the White Star Line installed. 16 lifeboats and four collapsible boats with a capacity for only 52% of the population of the ship. Obviously, they were banking of the watertight doors.

On the afternoon of April 14th, iceberg warnings were issued over the radio and Captain John Smith shifted the Titanic's course to the south. The ship received a warning from the SS Amerika of large icebergs in its path, but the message never made it to the bridge but was sent to the US Navy Hydrographic Office. Other warnings were received but the radio room operators of the time were employees of the Marconi Company and were paid to get massages to and from the passengers and not to get messages to the bridge. There were lookouts in the crow's nest, but there were no binoculars, no moon, no wind and the dirk side of the iceberg was facing the ship.

At about 11:39 on April 14, lookouts spotted an iceberg directly in front of the ship about 450 yards ahead. They quickly wired down to the bridge and First Officer William Murdoch ordered "Hard a'starboard" and ordered either full stop or hard astern (reports vary). For a ship that size, it was completely impossible to stop or maneuver within 450 yards but they came close. Rather than hit the iceberg straight it hit a glancing blow and bragged the berg all down the starboard side. And the rest is history portrayed with varying amounts of accuracy in song and film.