Iceberg as life raft

[Steven Christian]

Scroll down to item No.2 in the first link. Cheers.

The 5 Least Courageous Things Ever Done in a Crisis

You can only truly appreciate the hero who says 'Women and children first!' when you see how many people in the same situation say 'Outta my way!'

www.cracked.com

Hannah (1849 shipwreck) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Francis Boscoe]

There are people who climb icebergs for fun (because of course there are) and I just perused a few articles about it. Given that there were many icebergs in the area, it seems plausible there would have been one in the area that was relatively stable and flat on top that could have been reached from an upper deck. But it's hard to imagine anyone coming up with this idea in real time. Climbing one requires ice axes and crampons and experience, none of which were present.

 

[Steven Christian]

Almost anything is possible given enough time and resources. But they had no way to get to any berg in the time they had. Plus who would get ouf a relativly safe lifeboat to crawl on some ice. The only way I could something like that working even remotly is if they were surrounded by an ice flow that they could be lowered onto without getting wet. But no harm in speculating about it because in rare cases it has been done before.

 

[IcySofter]

I thought I had read that the Titanic traveled quite some distance before it stopped. That would make this idea hugely impossible unless they had stopped right next to a very flat iceberg they could have been lowered onto.

 

[MiDKnighT]

Let's play Monday morning quarterback and assume that Captain Smith KNEW the ship was doomed right away and KNEW that no rescue was coming. Obviously neither of these are true but if they were could he have tried to stay near the iceberg and ferry passengers to the iceberg with lifeboats? Could more people have been saved? Granted disembarking onto an iceberg would have been difficult but let's say there was a spot where they could unload passengers. How many more could have been saved?

In a perfect case scenario the ship stays near the iceberg and they load up passengers and blankets to bring to the iceberg.

Crazy idea or plausible?

 

[Tom DeGraff1911]

So....since the iceberg was near Titanic, why did the crew not load each boat with survivors, take them quickly to the floating iceberg, have passengers stay on iceberg, go back and get more passengers, repeat???

 

[Michael H. Standart]

So....since the iceberg was near Titanic, why did the crew not load each boat with survivors, take them quickly to the floating iceberg, have passengers stay on iceberg, go back and get more passengers, repeat???

As your post has been moved to this thread by one of the moderators, I would encourage you to go back and read the responses to the same question which was posed in 2004. My first response was as follows:

Icebergs are notoriously unstable due to melt off and can turn turtle on you at any second with no warning.
Icebergs also break up without warning. Either of these would be very bad news for anybody trapped on same.
Actually finding an iceberg in the dead of the night where visibility is extremely poor under the best of conditions. IOW, good luck finding one that would be suitable
In order to transfer people from the ship to an icefloe would involve using the boats to ferry people from the ship to the icefloe. This would be an extremely time and labour intensive exercise. Chances of getting everybody off; Zero!
The time lost in searching for an icefloe to put people off on an icefloe would result in a delay in evacuating the ship which would have cost more lives
As Adam pointed out, no sane skipper would risk approaching an iceberg because of what could and would be waiting submerged to do further damage to the hull. This is the last thing you want when uncontrollable flooding is a problem.
The icefield was a very extensive one so this would make searching out the "right" iceberg a formidable problem for any rescue vessels coming to the scene.
The iceberg observed by witesses on the Titanic was a rather mountainous and craggy mass. One that would have been difficult in the extreme if not impossible for even the most able bodied to climb on.
With seas picking up in the morning, there is the risk that any boats used to get anyone off would be dashed and broken up against the ice.
With nothing to secure the boats to the berg, they would have been lost fairly early on, leaving anyone on the ice stranded.

You'll see from reviewing the whole of this thread that the idea is a non-starter.

 

[Mike Spooner]

As your post has been moved to this thread by one of the moderators, I would encourage you to go back and read the responses to the same question which was posed in 2004. My first response was as follows:

Icebergs are notoriously unstable due to melt off and can turn turtle on you at any second with no warning.
Icebergs also break up without warning. Either of these would be very bad news for anybody trapped on same.
Actually finding an iceberg in the dead of the night where visibility is extremely poor under the best of conditions. IOW, good luck finding one that would be suitable
In order to transfer people from the ship to an icefloe would involve using the boats to ferry people from the ship to the icefloe. This would be an extremely time and labour intensive exercise. Chances of getting everybody off; Zero!
The time lost in searching for an icefloe to put people off on an icefloe would result in a delay in evacuating the ship which would have cost more lives
As Adam pointed out, no sane skipper would risk approaching an iceberg because of what could and would be waiting submerged to do further damage to the hull. This is the last thing you want when uncontrollable flooding is a problem.
The icefield was a very extensive one so this would make searching out the "right" iceberg a formidable problem for any rescue vessels coming to the scene.
The iceberg observed by witesses on the Titanic was a rather mountainous and craggy mass. One that would have been difficult in the extreme if not impossible for even the most able bodied to climb on.
With seas picking up in the morning, there is the risk that any boats used to get anyone off would be dashed and broken up against the ice.
With nothing to secure the boats to the berg, they would have been lost fairly early on, leaving anyone on the ice stranded.

You'll see from reviewing the whole of this thread that the idea is a non-starter.

You been an experience seaman make very valuable practical points as a non starter indeed. Just add one more point the freezing cold temperature -2-3 degrees which humans are not built for. (Not if are an Eskimo bread may be). So if you were even luckily enough to scramble up on the slippery incline iceberg and to hold your balance, which the older generation might have great difficulties in doing so. Then what you do on a freezing cold slab waiting to be rescued. You can only stand and not seat or lie down as hypothermia will soon start to set in. In time your feet will became frozen having keep them moving and keep your balance to! Hypothermia is a killer.