What did the iceberg really look like? This old question has been mulled over for years so here's a bit more 'mulling'.
For the answer to this question we have to rely on the man who saw it and described it as:"it struck me at the time that it resembled the Rock of Gibraltar looking at it from Europa Point. It looked very much the same shape as that, only much smaller."
This is the famous description given by AB Joseph Scarrott on Day 2 of the British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry. Here is exactly what Scarrott was describing:
This is a painting of one of my old ships the 'Cilicia'. If you scale down the high part of the 'Rock', and think of it as 70 feet high alongside Titanic, you are seeing it as Scarrot saw it.
Here is another example of the same view in nature, described as 'lion couchant':
www.flickr.com/photos/tatraskoda/3856399204/ - 141k.
Perhaps if Scarrott had been an Egyptologist he would have described the iceberg like this:
The problem everyone had and still has is the understanding of what Scarrott was describing. His questioners knew exactly what was being described when the Commissioner responded with:
'The Like a lion couchant?'
As soon as Scarrott uttered the word 'Gibraltar', every one who had been to the place recalled the classic side-on view. Those who had not looked up travel references which would also, in most cases, show the classic side-on view. Thus, when it was necessary to produce an illustration, we got this:
Not by the widest stretch of imagination could this be described as a 'lion couchant'.
JC
