Steve-- You should know better than to believe everything you read in the newspaper. Although reporter Tim Cornwell did a good job of presenting both sides, he combined a couple of my statements into a misleading one. This was done under the tyranny of space in newspaper columns.
I said something to the effect that although I doubted they would normally lock up the lookout's binoculars during a voyage, the box could easily have been broken and there was a joiner on board to fix it. My point being that if the binoculars were locked away, it would have been simple enough to get them without doing permanent damage to the ship.
As to the value of 1912-era binoculars, none of us here can say. We have all had experience with modern, coated optics which work much better at night. British optics of the time did not. "Night glasses" had larger objective lenses than those typically used in daylight, but the amount of light reaching the eye was still less than using modern optics.
The problem with binoculars is two-fold. First is angle of view. You are restricted to only a few degrees of arc, with the rest of the horizon completely out of view. This means that if you do not by chance happen upon an unsuspected danger, you probably won't see it at all.
The second is that binoculars focus light into the center of the eye where color reception lies. However, the best way to see something in the dark is to use the surrounding area of the retina which contains the more light-sensitive black & white receptors. This is why lookouts are trained to look slightly above the horizon with their unaided eyes to first acquire knowledge of dangers. Binoculars are used to make positive identification of what has been spotted with the unaided eye.
The quotes by the lookouts about binoculars have to be taken with a large dose of salt. Fleet and Lee were in a vulnerable situation. It would have been possible for the whole affair to have been laid on their shoulders--even criminal convictions. They needed to raise every possible "fire wall" against this sort of attack on their performance. And, sailors are a tight lot when one of their number is in danger from authority. No, I don't believe anyone lied under oath. Rather, I believe their answers pertained more to the identification aspect of "seeing" than to the perception of dangers.
Knowledge of night vision was (and is) well-known by officers, including "old sea captains." Steve and everyone here should know that the officer of the watch, and the captain, are jointly responsible for keeping lookout using "all means available." In 1912, this meant their own eyes, ears, nose, and maybe even feet. Today, if you have radar, 2-way radio, even GPS, you must use these means as well. I don't know any officers who don't keep their lookout techniques sharp--and that's doubly true of shipmasters.
The job of the lookout is simply to call attention to potential dangers and to give their relative bearing. On Titanic, the obvious standard procedure was for lookouts to only locate and report potential dangers. This was why they were told in routine situations to use strokes on the bell rather than call on the telephone. It was impossible for them to signal the difference between an iceberg and a staysail schooner with only bell strokes. That being the case, there was little need for binoculars.
My for-what-its-worth opinion is that the lookouts did not have binoculars because the officers did not think binoculars were important in the crow's nest.
It has been suggested that the lookouts had binoculars on the trip to Southampton because the need might have arisen for them to do some identification of objects. Possibly true. We can't be sure, however, because nobody asked about this during the inquiries.
One thing Steve said that is very true concerns the place in history of the key. Even if it is the key to the box in which Blair locked the binoculars, it is still impossible to say this key "caused" the accident. We can never know. It is impossible to go back in time and put binoculars in the nest to see what changes.
-- David G. Brown
