At 11:40 p.m., Fredrick Fleet, the lookout in the crow’s nest of the supposedly unsinkable RMS Titanic rang the bridge with an urgent warning. The ship was headed directly toward a moderately sized iceberg. The watch on the bridge ordered the engines stopped and ordered a hard turn to port.
But it was not quick enough. The iceberg tore a series of gashes in the starboard hull of the ship. Twenty lifeboats were launched, but over 1500 passengers and crews were in the icy water when the ship began to sink at 2:20 a.m.
Only 705 of the 2200 passengers and crew aboard the liner were saved, making it the world’s greatest maritime disaster.
If FIrst Officer William Murdock had simply decided to ram the iceberg, everything would have been ok. The ship would not have sunk from a blunted bow.
(Thanks to Alec Jones for the corrections to this landlubber’s original post!)
