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Message: [QUOTE="Samuel Halpern, post: 30334, member: 137378"] Yuri: I'm not sure where you are getting that information from on the ice field limits being 20 miles north and 5 miles south. From the wreckage area it was said to extend northward and southward as far as the eye could see. A very good picture of what this field looked like from the Carpathia was published in several places. One of them, if you have access to it, is in THS Commutator No. 142 in the Chapin story. You can also see in this photo some loose ice floating in the near field of the photo, well before the edge of the pack ice seen in the far field of view. The field was estimated to be 5-6 miles wide in the area of the wreckage. Where the Californian cut across, between 6:00 and 6:30, it was about 3 miles wide. We also know from Lord that it extended well to the north of where they had been as far as the eye could see. On the western side it ran approximately from NNW true to SSE true. This comes from two witness accounts, Capt. Moore and from Capt. Lord. (I can give you exact references to where in the inquiries you can find this if you need it.) Capt. Rostron had mentioned that on the eastern side the ice field appeared to run more from NW to SE. So it is not too hard to picture why the width of the field was somewhat less several miles north of the wreckage. But it was pack ice, not loose ice. At 3:25 AM, when Moore cut his engines he was running into loosed ice scattered about. As far as to where the Californian cut across at 6 AM it certainly was not 20 miles to the north. You must keep in mind that the ice, the lifeboats and wreckage, ships moving or stopped, were all drifting with the local current in the area for several hours. Nothing was really at a stop. As Capt. Moore was coming back up toward the north he mentioned that he noticed the Californian going from east to west across the field ice. This puts the time between 6 AM and 6:30 AM. At the same time he saw this, he mentions that the Californian appeared to be about the same distance northward from the Carpathia as he was to the westward of the Carpathia. Since Moore mentioned that the field was 5-6 miles wide where he was, and that the Carpathia was on the other side of this field, some people have wrongly taken this as proof that the Californian was 6 miles north of the Carpathia. The Carpathia was a good 4-5 miles from the edge of the field for most of the morning according to Rostron. This means that the closest approach of the MT to the Carpathia would have been between 9 to 11 miles if these estimates were about right. It is interesting that Sir james Bisset wrote in his book that he had seen smoke from a steamer about 10 miles away on the fringe of the field as it became light and noticed that she was under way after 6 AM. Based on the reported movements of the Californian, we find her cutting across 3 miles of pack ice going about 6 knots till 6:30. Then she turned southward (actually SSE) to go along the western edge of the field as C/E Stewart testified to, and was coming down to where the MT was. The two ships came very close together somewhere about 7:10 AM if take the information in Durrant's PV as accurate. The MT had taken that longitude line about 15 muniutes before (which I got from an astronomical program). My estimate is the when the Californian came out of the pack ice at 6:30 it was a good 8 miles from where the MT stopped prior to taking that sun line. The Californian had to run up from 6 to 13 knots after coming out of the pack ice. It also had to go south of the MT for about another 4 miles before cutting across to get to the Carpathia in order to spend the minimum time cutting across the ice. This would be at reached at 7:30. Rostron said he saw the Californian coming across the field from the WSW true about 8 AM. This means the Californian was heading ENE true perpendicular to the western edge which makes perfect sense. When Bisset came to take over as OOW on the Carpathia (8 AM), he noticed the Californian a little more than a mile off. It was shortly after that that flag signals were exchanged between the two ships. [/QUOTE]

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