Iceberg as life raft

Jerry, A couple of points to consider.

1) Very minimal chance of locating, let alone offloading people onto the berg they hit. It was gone, disappeared astern after impact. No radar or GPS to assist, backtracking using compass bearings was they only option and would have wasted far to much time with little chance of success.

2) I doubt that an experienced captain would have wasted time on some untested,hairbrained idea of offloading passengers onto ice, providing they find some. Smith knew he had very little time to save as many lives as possible and the one option he had available to achieve this was getting people in the boats and getting as many of those boats safely away in the time permitted.

3) To state that Smith was "not truly in command" after the accident is pretty harsh. He had to maintain order while evacuating his ship, and probably at the same time putting some consideration into how history would remember what was unfolding. I think he did alright.
 
If in fact Smith did consider the iceberg as a transfer location then are then any obvious courses of action that he would have taken? To me a next move would be to simply move forward on the same circular course upon which you started prior to the ship coasting to a stop. Completing this tight circle carried a high likelihood of bringing you back to a point near the original collision point. I don’t know what the figures are on turning radius but I would imagine that within a few minutes you could complete the circle. You could also determine the ship’s condition under way and permit your lookouts to spot anything in the area of interest (Californian?). I suppose this does carry the risk of a second collision, but if such action is taken at the point where Mr. Andrews has informed Smith that the ship is doomed it seems no more risky than steaming toward the sea lane.
To label the idea “untested and harebrained” is unfair. I still state that transfer to the iceberg is a logical and naturally implied solution to the lifeboat transfer scenario. Such scenario is what supported the BOT logic in letting the Titanic go to sea with lifeboats for only half its passengers. When the chips were down how could Smith simply not think of or out of hand reject a logical train of thought that he accepted when he put to sea in either Olympic or Titanic. Is an Iceberg an inconceivable transfer risk but a rocky, wind whipped shore a reasonable risk?
What are your options, you have a ship with lifeboat capacity scaled for a transfer to shore or another ship. When you left port you knew that the lifeboats were intended as a method of moving the passengers from the ship to the nearest safety. The iceberg when last seen was still afloat and is the nearest safety.
If the Captain consciously rejected this idea, I am very curious what he viewed as the more viable alternative for himself and the other 1500 souls that couldn’t get to the lifeboats. Why put lifeboats in the water for only half the passengers immediately if you can come up with a way to give everyone a hope by finding the iceberg? My guess is that the Captain simply decided that his best hope was to wait for Carpathia and pray that Titanic would stay afloat long enough for a practical transfer option to arrive. He chose the safe conservative approach that avoids “harebrained” ideas but dooms 1500 souls
Any other thoughts on obvious actions that would be taken if one were considering a transfer to the object you just hit? Maybe there exists some way to establish that Smith eliminated this option for good reason. Maybe his only option was to launch the transfer boats loaded with half the passengers and let the other half drown. If not, and if Smith simply rejected the Iceberg transfer out of hand as a "non-starter" then I stick to my original premise that failure to pursue this obvious option was negligence on the Captains part.

I recognize that my arguments that the iceberg transfer option is logically obvious is counter factual since I have yet to see any 1912 discussion of it quoted by anyone on this board or in any historical materials.
 
quote:

To me a next move would be to simply move forward on the same circular course upon which you started prior to the ship coasting to a stop. Completing this tight circle carried a high likelihood of bringing you back to a point near the original collision point. I don’t know what the figures are on turning radius but I would imagine that within a few minutes you could complete the circle.
Click to expand...
You may want to look into some of the discussion on this point - these ships did not have tight turning circles. Manouverability was not their strong point. Going hunting for the iceberg that had just damaged them was clearly not going to be an object, and restarting the engines (as may, indeed, have happened) and moving the vessel could increase damage already done. Rather than work on an untested theory that the iceberg might have had some point upon which to embark passengers, and risking loss of time and further damage to his vessel in hunting for the berg, Smith had to work to get away what boats he could in the time available.
quote:

I still state that transfer to the iceberg is a logical and naturally implied solution to the lifeboat transfer scenario. Such scenario is what supported the BOT logic in letting the Titanic go to sea with lifeboats for only half its passengers. When the chips were down how could Smith simply not think of or out of hand reject a logical train of thought that he accepted when he put to sea in either Olympic or Titanic. Is an Iceberg an inconceivable transfer risk but a rocky, wind whipped shore a reasonable risk?
Click to expand...
I don't think it's a logical solution at all to the transfer problem, for the reasons already discussed in this thread. And there are many instances in shipwrecks where landfall at the closest possible point to a wreck has proved impossible due to prevailing conditions - the General Grant wreck springs to mind as one of the more notorious.

Smith was attempting to save the largest number of lives in the uncertain time he had before the ship finally foundered. He had inadequate equipment - and, arguably, an inadequately trained crew - to save the full complement of souls on board. Whatever happened, people were going to die. He did endeavour to signal the 'mystery ship' and even instructed at least one boat to row for it and disembark passengers before returning.

The brutal fact is that once the collision had occured, Smith did not have too many options available to him. He had too many people on board (even if there had been sufficient lifeboats, it is doubtful if everyone could have embarked safely), no public annoucement system, and a limited time in which to act.

I think it would have been negligant for him to go hunting in the dark for an iceberg and try to land people on board it rather than turn his attention to getting those boats in the water as soon as possible once it was determined that the vessel would founder.

As for arguments that the BOT was not responsible for the inadequate supply of lifeboats due to suggestions that they were intended merely to ferry passengers to a nearby ship or shore, I have to disagree. The potential for a large-scale disastrous sinking had been recognised for some time - Lightoller noted it after the event, and it was recognised in several sources published pre-1912. Frank Bullen, an experienced mariner and maritime commentator, thought it next to miraculous that one hadn't already occured by 1900. Given the size of vessels and the pressure to keep to time tables, he felt it was astonishing. Even laypeople such as Stead had already written fictional stories highlighting the problems of inadequate lifesaving equipment on large ships. Charles Hayes is reported to have brought up the inevitability of disaster in a conversation on board the Titanic. Collisions and groundings weren't the only possibilities for disaster either - even outside weather conditions, there was also the threat of fire that, in spite of advancements in firefighting equipment, could also necessitate evacuation of a ship at sea. The shipping industry was anticipating changes to the lifeboat regulations to keep pace with the exponential increases in vessel size in the first decade of the 20th century - thre was some belief that these would be passed before construction of the Olympic class vessels.

I'm not suggesting that adequate provision of lifeboats would have meant everyone on board could be saved, but that does not excuse inadequate provision.​
 
Most of Jerry's arguements have been addressed in some fashion, but I admit to some surprise that nobody caught this one in the initial posting;
​
quote:
​
Captain Smith, not the BOT should be held responsible for the lifeboat "issue".​
Click to expand...

To which I have to ask; "Why?"​
​
Captain Smith had no say whatever in the number of boats the ship was provided with. This decision was made at the corperate level by White Star and Harland & Wolff simply gave the customer what they wanted.​
​
>>I still state that transfer to the iceberg is a logical and naturally implied solution to the lifeboat transfer scenario.<<​
​
Sorry, it isn't. Even if such an option was considered the fact remains that lifeboat transfers are extremely time consuming and time was the one commodity the Titanic needed but which she didn't have. Remember that in the time they had, they got 18 out of 20 away with the last two floating off as the ship plunged.​
​
>>Such scenario is what supported the BOT logic in letting the Titanic go to sea with lifeboats for only half its passengers.<<​
​
Really? Got any primary source documents at hand to back that one up?​
​
>>Why put lifeboats in the water for only half the passengers immediately if you can come up with a way to give everyone a hope by finding the iceberg?<<​
​
And if you can't find the iceberg in the first place, what then? You've just wasted a lot of time and doomed far more then 1500 people to an icey and watery grave. Searching for something out at sea in the dead of the night with nothing more then the Mark I Eyeball is not one of the easiest things to do. I know. I've done that.​
​
Another point to consider is that moving a ship with a busted nose isn't one of the brightest moves in the world from the standpoint of damage control. Even if one doesn't aggravate the damage, one is still forcing more water in through the holes by way of the pressure from hydrodynamic flow. While there is evidence that the ship was moved post collision, testimony offered by Fireman Dillon tend to indicate that it wasn't for very long. From his testimony;​
​
quote:
​
3715. Did you feel the shock when the ship struck? - Slightly.​
​
3716. And shortly before that had the telegraph rung? - Yes.​
​
3717. Can you say at all how long before she struck that was? - Two seconds.​
​
3718. What was the order given by the telegraph? - I could not tell you.​
​
3719. You just heard it ring. Then a few seconds after that you felt a slight shock? - Yes.​
​
3720. Was anything done to the engines? Did they stop or did they go on? - They stopped.​
​
3721. Was that immediately after you felt the shock or some little time after? - About a minute and a half.​
​
3722. Did they continue stopped or did they go on again after that? - They went slow astern.​
​
3723. How long were they stopped for before they began to go slow astern? - About half a minute.​
​
3724. For how long did they go slow astern? - About two minutes.​
​
3725. Two or three did you say? - Two minutes.​
​
3726. And then did they stop again? - Yes.​
​
3727. And did they go on again after that? - They went ahead again.​
​
3728. For how long? - For about two minutes.​
​
3729. Then did they stop the boat after that? - Yes.​
Click to expand...

​
>>I recognize that my arguments that the iceberg transfer option is logically obvious is counter factual since I have yet to see any 1912 discussion of it quoted by anyone on this board or in any historical materials.<<​
​
Have you checked the Inquiry Transcripts themselves? There were all kinds of scenerios discussed during these investigations. Might want to give it a shot.​
 
Just a few comments. The turning circle of the Titanic was about 4000 ft in diameter. But the Titanic did not continue in a circle after the collision. Why should they? They had collided with an iceberg and the first thing to do was to stop and assess damage. Nobody in their right mind would continue in a circle to come back to the object that caused the ship harm in the first place, even if they could find it again in the dark, which itself is questionable.

Secondly, the full extent and seriousness of the damage was not known until much later on. Even after the initial reports of flooding came in, the ship was not expected to founder. As a contingency, and to his credit, Capt. Smith ordered the boats to be uncovered about 20-25 minutes after the collision, worked out an initial position report and gave a heads up to the Marconi operators for the possible need to call for assistance, and agreed that passengers be woken up and to come on deck with lifebelts on while damage was still being assessed. It was only after a complete inspection was made of the vessel, which included Thomas Andrews from H&W, that the full extent of damage showed that the ship could not survive. It was about 45 minutes after the collision that the order was given to load the boats with women and children.
 
>>I recognize that my arguments that the iceberg transfer option is logically obvious is counter factual since I have yet to see any 1912 discussion of it quoted by anyone on this board or in any historical materials.<<

Here's a little item I found in the library's microfilm collection. Dave Billnitzer includes virtually the same article (supplied by George Behe) on his website. Check the subsection titled "Seals".

http://home.earthlink.net/~dnitzer/Frameset.html

Best wishes!

Roy


****************

THE SEATTLE DAILY TIMES, April 26, 1912, p. 2:

SHIP REPORTS PASSING MANY BODIES ON BERG

NEW YORK, Friday, April 26.--Officials of the North German Lloyd liner Princess Irene, which docked just before midnight, told today of a wireless message which they intercepted on Wednesday, in which a ship--the name not learned--reported that in passing fifty miles from the scene of the Titanic disaster she had sighted an iceberg on which were the bodies of more than a dozen men; all wore life belts and the bodies were huddled in groups at the base of the berg. It was the opinion of officers of the ship that the men had climbed on the mass of ice and had frozen to death as they were swept southward. No attempt was made to take off the bodies.


****************
 
To which I have to ask; "Why?"

>>Captain Smith had no say whatever in the number of boats the ship was provided with. This decision was made at the corperate level by White Star and Harland & Wolff simply gave the customer what they wanted.<<

No, but he did have a final say as to how, when, and if those lifeboats would be loaded. His was also the final words as to whom would and would not be put in them. Wasn't it his order to shoot for "women and children first"? That may have been the correct protocol and proper etiquette at that time, but, as I understand it, none of the loading and/or lowering could have been done without his orders to do so. In that sense, he did hold some responsibility over those lifeboats.
 
If the account addressed in this article is true, then it appears that several of those in the water had considered the icebergs as well. The only question I have is how they would have been able to see it in the pitch-blackness of night. All were dead when daybreak opened.
 
>>The only question I have is how they would have been able to see it in the pitch-blackness of night.<<

Not very well. Trust me. I know!!!! And in freezing water, I doubt these people did much in the way of swimming. If the article is true...(And be careful as a lot of accounts published then were little more then sensational bovine excrement)...then it's just as likely that clusters of bodies were washed up on some pack ice and bergs.
 
Thanks for posting that, Roy!

I'm familiar with this one, and would say it's right up there with the garbled account of Collapsible A that had reports of men starving to death in a raft and being found with cork in their mouths that they had tried to eat in desperation. An unnamed ship, a wireless report for which we do not have the wording, etc etc. This is second hand hearsay, from an anonymous source, reported in the media.

Any iceberg used as a refuge would have had to have been close to where the ship went down, and yet there is no report of one being sighted by those who survived that could have harboured swimmers. While other lifeboats rowed away from the 'epicentre', Lowe and the crew of 14 returned and rowed around the debris and bodies until daybreak...they didn't sight anyone on bergs.

The idea that the men could swim to a berg they located in the dark and then clamber aboard - given how cold the water was, how quickly hypothermia sets in and how slippery ice would be - defies credibility. Groves is reported many years after the fact to have seen figures - 'seals' - moving on nearby icebergs...this was only mentioned decades after the events (as an aside, I must remember to look up the exact wording of that letter when I get around to viewing the Lord papers in Greenwich), and I regard it with extreme skeptisism. I'm doubtful even that there were seals in that environment - I'm not at all sure that you'd find them in any large numbers that far from their usual hauling out points (one reason why the Samson story rung hollow). Perhaps someone more versed in pinniped behaviour would care to comment.
 
Considering pitche-black, that make me wonder how Fleet and Lee were even able to see the dreaded 'berg at all before it was literally swiping past them. If it hadn't been for the forward mastlight, they probably wouldn't have. What was the deal with moonlight? That's an issue that's been in debate for a long time.
 
No moon, no moonlight.

'Dark', but perhaps 'pitch black' is too extreme - it was too dark, for example, for Beesley to see and recognise a woman in the same boat that he knew until he heard her voice.

Fleet described it later as a looming black shape. Objects that went higher than the horizon line from the viewer's vantage point would have obscured stars behind them (it was such a clear night that observers could see stars vanishing on the horizon). There would have been some glances of starlight - this is how some bergs were spotted from the Carpathia, but not all were seen - they were surprised at daylight to find that they had stopped quite close to one.
 
G'day, Inger!

Great to talk with you again, my friend! What has it been -- two or three years? :)

>I'm doubtful even that there were seals in that environment - I'm not at all sure that you'd find them in any large numbers that far from their usual hauling out points (one reason why the Samson story rung hollow). Perhaps someone more versed in pinniped behaviour would care to comment.

Goodness, I'm no expert on seals, even though we have plenty of them in our waters. But one of the other victims of that 1912 ice season was the eastern Canadian sealing fleet. Here's a short clip from another article I stumbled on:

************

Awful Record of Tragedy.

Never in the history of Newfoundland has there been a winter so disastrous to steam and sail vessels. Since November, no less than twenty sailing craft, of from 100 to 300 tons burden, have gone to the bottom, seven of them car[r]ying their whole crews down as well as some sixty-three passengers. The crews of the remaining thirteen were rescued from the sinking hulls in the nick of time.

Two steamships also sunk [sic] with all hands. The first was the steamship Kampfiore, coal-laden from Sydney, which it is believed was crushed by ice in February blizzard off Cape Race and sank with her whole crew of eighteen men. The second was the Erna, a 3,000-ton liner purchased in England and remodeled for use in the seal fisheries. She is now forty-eight days out from Glasgow with fifty-one people and all hope for her survival is abandoned.

This season has been the severest in the annals of the seal fisheries. The sealing fleet this year comprised twenty-three steamships, from 500 to 3,000 tons, and all report ice conditions worse than ever before. As a result, the seal catch this season will be only about 170,000 against 330,000 last year.

***************
So, it would appear that the Grand Banks seal population wasn't being quite as "set upon" by humans as in some years past?

I'm not quite sure where that business about its having been a warm spring in the Arctic got started, but from mid-December 1911, into the spring of 1912, *all* of North America was in "crisis mode" from unbelievably severe cold weather. Of this, the newspapers gave ample documentation. For instance, Butte, Montana, was described in one paper as being "an oasis of warmth in a desert of frigidity", with a temperature of 33 degrees F. Unusual for Butte in the winter, but unusual for the rest of the country as well.

Best wishes, Inger!

Roy
 
Hallo Roy - my apologies! I dashed off a response to you on Saturday morning just as visitors were pulling into the drive way and thought I'd posted it...apparently not.

I'm very fond of seals (if only because they often attract Great White Sharks), but have no real idea - and have often meant to ask - whether one could expect to find them in any numbers around the area where the Titanic sank. I can't even recall the author who raised a skeptical eyebrow at the reports that the Samson was purportedly sealing anywhere near the site, given that it was the open sea (don't think it was Reade, but I haven't checked yet). Some pinnipeds - if my limited knowledge is correct - do tend to cover fairly large distances...I know there are reports of sea elephants, for example, seen a fair way off from their usual habitats. I could be absolutely wrong, but it does seem strange for seals to be in that particular location, unless they were moving with the ice.

Very interesting accounts and comments you make about the severity of the weather. James Moody remarked in his letters from the Oceanic during the winter of 1911-1912 that it had been a particularly harsh one on the North Atlantic mail boat run - in some crossings, everyone aboard was seasick (as opposed to just the steerage passengers whom, he wrote, were always seasick). Moody was quite accustomed to severe weather - he had rounded the Horn both in sail and steam quite a few times, and had experienced savage storms at sea - so for him to comment on it suggests that it may well have been a particularly rough winter.

All the best -

Inger
 
Inger,

Thinking about it, I sent you an email not to long ago. It was long. Did you receive it? I would like to continue our correspondence. Please let me know. If you haven't, I'll send it out again. I have trouble sometimes with my emails.

--Mark
 
Back
Top