The Loss of the Titanic - Lawrence Beesley [33]
It is no exaggeration to say that men who went through all the experiences of the collision and the rescue and the subsequent scenes on the quay at New York with hardly a tremor, were quite overcome by this knowledge and turned away, unable to speak; I for one, did so, and I know others who told me they were similarly affected.
I think we all came to modify our opinions on this matter, however, when we learnt more of the general conditions attending trans-Atlantic steamship services. The discussion as to who was responsible for these warnings being disregarded had perhaps better be postponed to a later chapter. One of these warnings was handed to Mr. Ismay by Captain Smith at 5 P.M. and returned at the latter's request at 7 P.M., that it might be posted for the information of officers; as a result of the messages they were instructed to keep a special lookout for ice. This, Second Officer Lightoller did until he was relieved at 10 P.M. by First Officer Murdock, to whom he handed on the instructions. During Mr. Lightoller's watch, about 9 P.M., the captain had joined him on the bridge and discussed "the time we should be getting up towards the vicinity of the ice, and how we should recognize it if we should see it, and refreshing our minds on the indications that ice gives when it is in the vicinity." Apparently, too, the officers 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