Sinking our illusions about the Titanic
We are still fascinated by the Titanic disaster, 100 years on. Why? Unlike other disasters, such as the recent sinking of the Costa Concordia, the sinking of the Titanic was not simply the result of avoidable human error. It was a freak accident caused by very unusual conditions.
For this reason, the Titanic is an ultimate tragedy of fate — as though the gods, seeing man’s desire to achieve something great, held up their hands and said: Stop. Striving to build an unsinkable ship is a symbol of man’s struggle to achieve mastery over the universe — a quest that was ultimately dealt a deathblow by fate, in this case taking the shape of a giant iceberg lurking in the darkness.
The Titanic was not simply going too fast: On a clear, calm, dark, starlit night, an iceberg almost 100 feet high would normally have been seen at least 2 miles off, giving the ship plenty of time in which to avoid it. And the Titanic’s turning circle at 11 and 22 knots was similar, due to the increased power of her turning ability at higher speeds. Her rudder was also very efficient, making her identical twin sister one of the best-handling ships her wartime captain would ever command.
Nor would binoculars in her crow’s-nest have helped, because the best way to spot ice at night is with the naked eye.
Similarly, the Titanic’s hull construction was of the highest possible strength and quality. Indeed, her watertight subdivision would have complied with today’s regulations for ocean liners.
Finally, contrary to legend, Capt. Edward John Smith — the English naval reserve officer who commanded the ship — was not drunk or cavalier. He never drank at sea and was on and off the bridge all that night, while First Officer William Mcmaster Murdoch on the bridge and other crewmen in the Titanic’s crow’s-nest kept a sharp lookout.
Were they negligent? No, and they were expecting to see ice.
Still, like all the best tragedies, the gods had conspired against man’s best design. The alignment of the moon had caused a freak high tide that had unleashed an armada of icebergs formerly grounded along the Labrador coast, sending them southward in the Labrador Current to melt in the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream.
And we now know, thanks to research I have conducted, that this huge volume of freezing water — pushing south into the warm Gulf Stream and cooling the warm air from below — produced an optical illusion: a steep thermal inversion and resulting mirage. This effectively raised the horizon and hid the outline of the fatal iceberg beneath it.
Indeed, the distortive conditions of the atmosphere also caused a ship called the Californian, only about 10 miles northwest of the Titanic’s wreck site, to fail to recognize the giant liner in distress. Passengers on the Titanic thought the rescue ship that never came was only 5 miles away, but what they were seeing was in reality a looming mirage of the more distant Californian.
Certainly there was human error that night, but in the face of impossible conditions. To hear the story of the Titanic, the greatest achievement of man at that time, which was sunk on its maiden voyage with the loss of 1,500 lives, is, therefore, like having a front-row seat at the ultimate Greek tragedy.
To the more secular society of today, to those of us well acquainted with the awe-inspiring power of modern technology, the story remains just as powerful. As surprised, horrified men, women and children struggled for life in the cold, flat, ink-black waters of the North Atlantic that night and stared up through the perfect canopy of stars, they looked toward the outer edge of our universe, asking the ultimate question: Why?
Ultimately, the story of the Titanic offers catharsis for the whole human race.
Maltin is author of “Titanic, First Accounts,” “101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic . . . but Didn’t” and the new book “A Very Deceiving Night.”