The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons by Lawrence Beesley

had discussed among
themselves the proximity of ice and Mr. Lightoller had remarked that
they would be approaching the position where ice had been reported
during his watch. The lookouts were cautioned similarly, but no ice
was sighted until a few minutes before the collision, when the lookout
man saw the iceberg and rang the bell three times, the usual signal
from the crow's nest when anything is seen dead-ahead.
    By telephone he reported to the bridge the presence of an iceberg, but
Mr. Murdock had already ordered Quartermaster Hichens at the wheel to
starboard the helm, and the vessel began to swing away from the berg.
But it was far too late at the speed she was going to hope to steer
the huge Titanic, over a sixth of a mile long, out of reach of danger.
Even if the iceberg had been visible half a mile away it is doubtful
whether some portion of her tremendous length would not have been
touched, and it is in the highest degree unlikely that the lookout
could have seen the berg half a mile away in the conditions that
existed that night, even with glasses. The very smoothness of the
water made the presence of ice a more difficult matter to detect. In
ordinary conditions the dash of the waves against the foot of an
iceberg surrounds it with a circle of white foam visible for some
distance, long before the iceberg itself; but here was an oily sea
sweeping smoothly round the deadly monster and causing no indication
of its presence.
    There is little doubt, moreover, that the crow's nest is not a good
place from which to detect icebergs. It is proverbial that they adopt
to a large extent the colour of their surroundings; and seen from
above at a high angle, with the black, foam-free sea behind, the
iceberg must have been almost invisible until the Titanic was close
upon it. I was much struck by a remark of Sir Ernest Shackleton on his
method of detecting icebergs—to place a lookout man as low down near
the water-line as he could get him. Remembering how we had watched the
Titanic with all her lights out, standing upright like "an enormous
black finger," as one observer stated, and had only seen her thus
because she loomed black against the sky behind her, I saw at once how
much better the sky was than the black sea to show up an iceberg's
bulk. And so in a few moments the Titanic had run obliquely on the
berg, and with a shock that was astonishingly slight—so slight that
many passengers never noticed it—the submerged portion of the berg
had cut her open on the starboard side in the most vulnerable portion
of her anatomy—the bilge. The most
authentic accounts say that the wound began at about the location of
the foremast and extended far back to the stern, the brunt of the blow
being taken by the forward plates, which were either punctured through
both bottoms directly by the blow, or through one skin only, and as
this was torn away it ripped out some of the inner plates. The fact
that she went down by the head shows that probably only the forward
plates were doubly punctured, the stern ones being cut open through
the outer skin only. After the collision, Murdock had at once reversed
the engines and brought the ship to a standstill, but the iceberg had
floated away astern. The shock, though little felt by the enormous
mass of the ship, was sufficient to dislodge a large quantity of ice
from the berg: the forecastle deck was found to be covered with pieces
of ice.
    Feeling the shock, Captain Smith rushed out of his cabin to the
bridge, and in reply to his anxious enquiry was told by Murdock that
ice had been struck and the emergency doors instantly closed. The
officers roused by the collision went on deck: some to the bridge;
others, while hearing nothing of the extent of the damage, saw no
necessity for doing so. Captain Smith at once sent the carpenter below
to sound the ship, and Fourth Officer Boxhall to the steerage to
report damage. The latter found there a very dangerous condition of
things and reported to Captain