Just to add to the scenario above, where the turn starts about 400 feet further back from where it did. If it is realized early enough that the ship would strike the berg near her quarter if no further action taken, the OOW could order the helm shifted hard over to port in an effort to swing her stern away from striking. Timing is critical, but if pulled off successfully, the berg might have been sidestepped completely.
Lots of ifs.
Thanks for that Sam. I know that this is not an easy question to answer
but given that Murdoch, probably the most competent officer on board was on the bridge, do you think that he could have timed the second helm (hard-a-port) order well enough that night to miss the berg going by your "if" scenario above at 10 knots?
I am thinking about your conjecture in another thread (to which I agree) that on the actual night, Murdoch quickly realized that an impact with the iceberg was inevitable and sought to minimize the damage. The one and only thing that I believe differently is that rather than assume that inevitability even before he gave the first hard-a-starboard order, I think that it was perhaps 6 or 7 seconds later when he realized that the berg was closing too fast and the ship was not turning enough.
Ironically, the reason I think that way is because my mind keeps going back to your serial diagrams in the article
Encounter in the Night. Even if your thinking about distances have slightly changed since you published that article, I think the "blossom effect" of the closing icerberg is demonstrated extremely well. Adding my own medical knowledge to that, human depth perception is relatively mediocre and reduces at night. In other words and
using arbitrary figures only, any man in Murdoh's position and with good vision might have not been able to make an accurate judgement of size-speed-distance when
that berg at 1800 feet from the bow but be able to do so with a fair degree of accuracy at 1300 feet. (The distances mentioned are just examples to explain what I am saying).
Correct me if I am wrong but the way I read your earlier posts and opinons expressed elsewhere on this subject compared with the one above in this thread, Murdoch had no chance whatever of avoiding an impact with the iceberg that night with the
Titanic going at 21.5 knots. But if the ship had been going at 10 knots instead, there was a chance of avoiding impact altogether provided Murdoch gave his helm orders at the right time, even allowing for a bit of luck to be involved.
