Who said iceberg right ahead

Murdoch , chief officer on the bridge, immediately ordered the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, to turn the wheel "Hard astarboard. At p. Follow the link to view what may be the actual berg. Note the paint markings and striations. Hitchens later testified turning the wheel hard right did nothing to avoid striking the looming iceberg:.

I heard the telegraph ring, sir. The skipper came rushing out of his room - Capt. To use binoculars, to view an object up-close, you have to determine a point of reference first.

As previously mentioned, the weather conditions were freezing. Such cold and hazy conditions will make an iceberg look dark, as there will not be present any light to illuminate such an object. Lookouts Fleet and Lee were trying to differentiate a dark object against a backdrop of black surroundings. To use binoculars would have been useless as they would not be able to determine any point of reference.

Wilde was promoted to First Officer, with Murdoch. As lookout binoculars were not generally supplied by shipping lines, it was most probably not realised, White Star had supplied them for Titanic. At that moment, First Class passenger George Brayton was on the Promenade deck and heard the warning come from the ships lookout.

Captain Smith was on the bridge when the first cry from the lookout came that there was an iceberg ahead. It may have been 30 feet high when I saw it. It was possibly yards away and dead ahead. Captain Smith shouted some orders… A number of us promenaders rushed to the bow of the ship. When we saw he could not fail to hit it, we rushed to the stern.

Then came a crash, and the passengers were panic-stricken. The ship will turn to the Starboard. I heard the telegraph ring, sir. As is with larger ships, the bigger the ship, the greater the force needed to turn the rudder. A ships tiller is attached to the Rudder post or Rudder stock and provides the torque for the helmsman to turn the rudder with the ships wheel. In larger ships, the tiller turns in the opposite direction the ship is intended to turn.

It is not known if First Officer William Murdoch actually ordered the tiller turned to Starboard as was interpreted or if his intention was for the ship to turn to starboard in an attempt to avoid the iceberg. The ships reciprocating engines driving the side propellers took at least three revolutions, before they could be stopped, then reversed. The entire prop flow would have been needed on the rudder for full turning effectiveness.

What did it look like? It was something that was above the forecastle? That was the only white about it. Until she passed by, then you could see she was white; one side of it seemed to be black, and the other side seemed to be white. Throughout the day on 14 April , Titanic was traveling through an Arctic High, presenting the highest pressure anywhere in the Northern hemisphere at that time. At the time of her sinking, Titanic was at about the centre of the high pressure area.

The water temperature was freezing, creating an extremely cold air temperature around Titanic , extending upwards to the level of the warmer air current. The air between the water surface and the warmer air was condensed around the ship. April of saw an unusually large amount of Ice and Ice bergs in the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Usually there are about icebergs at that time of the year, but April saw in excess of icebergs, carried from the West coast of Greenland, extending south to the southern most track for Trans-Atlantic shipping, carried by the Labrador Current.

The Labrador Current brings the bergs and the colder water south, under the warmer Gulf Stream current. At the time, in the early years of weather forecasting, Trans-Atlantic shipping took water temperatures every four hours and recorded each temperature reading. These temperatures were recorded for the US and UK weather services.

On April 14th, earlier in the day Titanic would founder, the Paula , was most likely the last ship to cross the same area Titanic would later sink, recorded water temperatures to be changing from Refraction, is a distortion of visible light.

Similar to the mirage effect you will see in a desert or on a road surface on a hot day. A mirage is caused by the light distorting upwards and creating a reflected image of the blue sky onto the hot surface, giving the impression of water on the hot surface.

Refraction described here is the distortion of light, downwards, creating a mirage of the water surface onto the warmer air above the water surface, thus creating a false horizon. Put another way, this type of refraction causes the horizon to appear to be considerably higher than it actually is.

This illusion is known by mariners as, Fata Morgana. The visible horizon could be many metres above the actual horizon, making the visible horizon at night-time look hazy and at the same time, similar to a mirage or even a rainbow.

No matter how far you travel towards the optical illusion, or haze, you will never actually reach it. Fata Morgana can give the illusion that an object on the horizon is up-side down, with a stretched zone above the horizon. It can also make an object look as if it is floating in the air above the water, as the light distorts the object.

It can also make a large vessel, such as Titanic , look smaller on the horizon as the visible horizon obscures the lower portion of the ship, in doing so, hiding the actual length of the ship. The crew onboard Californian may not have been dishonest when they said that the ship on the horizon did not look big enough to be Titanic.

For most of those swimming in the frigid water, there was little hope. But soon, the shouting faded away as the cold silenced the voices. In doing so, it had to ignore caution and run an obstacle course of ice- bergs in the dark. It took the reported that all the passengers had been saved.

Others, lacking facts, made up stories. As the Carpathia entered New York harbor, crowds gathered, and people eager- ly sought out loved ones. This left people on shore desperate for news. Hypothermia causes the activity of the organs to slow down, and eventually they stop working. Survivors in the lifeboats see signal rockets from the rescue ship, Carpathia.

Lifeboat No. Three days later, the Carpathia arrives in New York with Titanic survivors. Despite the terrible cries for help, just one lifeboat—No. Those in the other boats were afraid of being pulled down by the suc- tion of the TITANIC sinking which, as it turned out, was not very strong. They were also afraid of being over- turned by des- perate people trying to scram- ble on board. The lifeboat that went back found only four people alive in the water—and one of them soon died.

At Plymouth, they were taken to the train station left before going to testify at the British inquiry into the disaster. New drugs elimi- nated diseases, and new inventions like the automobile made life easier. The march of technology did not stop after April 15, , but it did pause to learn a few lessons.

The Titanic has remained a source of curiosity ever since. It has retrieved more than six thousand objects from the wreck.

The company vowed not to sell objects with his- torical impor- tance. Underwater cam- eras were lowered to explore the wreck. In , Ballard returned to the site, this time with a submers- ible, Alvin, which for the first time enabled humans to visit the wreck.

However, newer research suggests that the steel was not like- ly to crack in cold temperatures. More likely, the steel bent or gave with the approval of the British and French govern- ments, it has sold lumps of coal from the ship to raise money. Some people pro- test the salvaging, way due to the incredible force of the flooding water.

Survi- vor J. The American press criticized him for boarding a lifeboat when so many others died. Californian was accused of being the mystery ship that left the Titanic to its fate. Later investiga- tions found that this probably was not true: a third ship may have moved between them. The first movie came out just one month after the ship sank and starred survivor Dorothy Gibson. Most people today know about the disaster through the hit movie Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Almost immediately, all ships had to carry enough lifeboats for all passengers, and lifeboat drills became mandato- ry. Every large ship also had to keep its wireless working at all times.

Shipping lanes were shifted farther south to avoid icebergs, and an iceberg patrol was set up to chart and follow icebergs and issue warnings. Total views 1, On Slideshare 0. From embeds 0. Number of embeds Downloads 7. Shares 0. Comments 0. Likes 0. You just clipped your first slide! For this we also can go to IIP data. The table below shows the distribution of icebergs in the IIP operations area for the season.

For what we are interested in, we see that there are about as many Medium bergs as there are Small bergs, and there are about as many Large plus Very Large bergs as there are Medium bergs. In other words, the average number of icebergs that were 14 feet or higher in the region where the Titanic sank is taken to be 75 over square miles, or 0. This of course does not count any of the smaller stuff and pack ice that was also seen in that region, just the icebergs that are more than 14 feet in height.

And it also assumes a uniform distribution of those bergs over the square miles. There is evidence to suggest that there was a greater concentration of Large icebergs to the southeast and fewer to the west that was mixed in with the pack ice.

However, lacking any specific data on the directions to these large icebergs we will assume a uniform distribution of all types of bergs for our purposes. Now for the seeing distances. From the Bicentennial issue of Bowditch: [7].

The distance at which an iceberg can be seen visually depends upon meteorological visibility, height of the iceberg, source and condition of lighting, and the observer. On a clear day with excellent visibility, a large iceberg might be sighted at a distance of 20 miles. With a low-lying haze around the horizon, this distance will be reduced. In light fog or drizzle this distance is further reduced, down to near zero in heavy fog. In a dense fog an iceberg may not be perceptible until it is close aboard where it will appear in the form of a luminous, white object if the Sun is shining; or as a dark, somber mass with a narrow streak of blackness at the waterline if the Sun is not shining.

If the layer of fog is not too thick, an iceberg may be sighted from aloft sooner than from a point lower on the vessel, but this does not justify omitting a bow lookout. The diffusion of light in a fog will produce a blink, or area of whiteness, above and at the sides of an iceberg which will appear to increase the apparent size of its mass. On dark, clear nights icebergs may be seen at a distance of from 1 to 3 miles, appearing either as white or black objects with occasional light spots where waves break against it.

The Moon may either help or hinder, depending upon its phase and position relative to ship and iceberg. A full Moon in the direction of the iceberg interferes with its detection, while Moonlight from behind the observer may produce a blink which renders the iceberg visible for a greater distance, as much as 3 or more miles. A clouded sky at night, through which the Moonlight is intermittent, also renders ice detection difficult. A night sky with heavy passing clouds may also dim or obscure any object which has been sighted, and fleecy cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds often may give the appearance of blink from icebergs.

It should be noted that in the above description concerning dark, clear nights they do not specify a completely moonless night. It is also noted that they refer to the breaking of waves around the base of the bergs showing up as occasional light spots. The night of the 14 th of April had a perfectly calm sea and no moon.

The only light coming off of the icebergs would be reflected starlight. There would be no breaking waves on the base of the berg to help spot them earlier. In data on iceberg visibility distances was collected by Lt. His results are given in the table below. Bergs are visible at great distances in clear weather in day-time, and even in moonlight they stand out clearly at several miles distance, for they refract light.

On a dark clear night a berg can be seen from half a mile away. And speaking about the risk that Capt. Rostron took in driving the Carpathia at forced speed in darkness into the ice region, Bisset said:. He knew — as every shipmaster of experience gained in the North Atlantic, and to the south of Cape Horn, knew — that icebergs are visible by starlight half mile ahead in clear weather.

It should be noted that Capt. That would be double the distance that Bisset quoted. So we see that we have different estimates of iceberg visibility for clear, dark, moonless nights. Even the data from Zeusler is not specific enough for what we want. So for the purpose of this study I had to make a few assumptions. The first is that the size of an iceberg will affect the range that it will be seen. Obviously the larger the berg, the greater the distance it should be seen at.

This was the only data point we have that directly ties a distance to the height of a berg. The next assumption is that an iceberg that is twice the size of another can be seen at twice the distance. Specifically, an object that is twice the size in average height and average width will have four times the cross sectional area, and will therefore reflect four times as much starlight. With four times as much reflected starlight, such an object could be seen at twice the distance because the intensity of light from an object drops off as the square of the distance from the object.

Thus, the distance to an object at night will be proportional to its size. Even if seen through binoculars, an object twice as far but twice as large as another object will take up the same angular field of view as well as being equally as bright. Based on the table of iceberg sizes from the IIP, we can get the approximate average heights and average lengths for small, medium, and large icebergs.

We can then get the ratio of relative cross sectional areas as well as the ratio of relative average sizes for these three categories of icebergs.

Since the distance that an iceberg can be seen would be proportional to its relative size, we have the following average sighting ranges that we will use in our model for each of the three iceberg size categories:. Notice that the sighting distance derived for medium sized bergs, about 0.