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He did not increase the watch.

He did not slow the ship.

Captain Smith merely pocketed the wireless warnings, then turned the helm over to his first officer and retired to attend a dinner being given in his honor.

Any one of these precautions could have saved the Titanic, perhaps not from the collision itself but almost certainly from the catastrophe that followed. Additional men on watch might have spotted the iceberg sooner, giving the massive ship time to stop or turn. Likewise, had the Titanic been traveling at a slower speed, she would have had the time to steer around the massive mountain of ice. As it was — and as was learned more than seventy years later, when the wreck of the Titanic was finally located 12,000 feet below the surface and the damage could at long last be examined — the ship might have even survived the collision had the well-intended first officer not ordered the ship turned “hard astarboard.” The bow began to swing to port at the last second, her starboard side scraping hard against the massive iceberg, popping bolts that held the steel plates of the hull together. The damage stretched along three hundred feet of hull, across six of the watertight compartments, twenty feet below the waterline, allowing water to flood into the ship.

It’s now believed that had the Titanic struck the iceberg head-on she would have sustained damage to the first two or three watertight compartments, but she most certainly would have remained afloat. In all likelihood, she would even have been able to make it to port in Newfoundland under her own steam.

But the Millionaire’s Captain, the senior man of the White Star fleet, did not take into account the momentum of a 46,328-ton object moving at twenty-one or twenty-two knots through the water. He did not seem to give any thought to what was required to bring such a behemoth to a full stop under emergency conditions. It took more than forty seconds for the Titanic to even begin to respond and start its starboard turn away from the ice.

In the end, hearings into the cause of the disaster were held in both the United States and Great Britain. The two inquiries came to essentially the same conclusions and offered much the same recommendations. They called for lifeboat space enough for every person on all foreign and domestic ships entering their ports, mandatory lifeboat drills, improved ship designs, and the twenty-four-hour operation of radiotelegraph equipment.

The White Star Line took its share of the blame for this tragic loss of life. In summary, Senator William Alden Smith said the Titanic’s builders were “so confident…no life-saving or signal devices were reviewed…no drill or station practice or helpful discipline disturbed the tranquility of that voyage, and when the crisis came a state of absolute unpreparedness stupefied both passengers and crew, and in their despair the ship went down….”

Nor did Captain Smith escape condemnation, gently though it was worded in the U.S. Senate Inquiry’s final report: “Captain Smith knew the sea and his clear eye and steady hand had often guided his ship through dangerous paths. For 40 years storms sought in vain to vex him or menace his craft…. Each new advancing type of ship built by his company was handed over to him as a reward for faithful services and as an evidence of confidence in his skill. Strong of limb, intent of purpose, pure in character, dauntless as a sailor should be, he walked the deck of his majestic structure as master of her keel.

“Titanic though she was,” Senator Smith continued, “[Smith’s] indifference to danger was one of the direct and contributing causes of this unnecessary tragedy…overconfidence seems to have dulled the faculties usually so alert. With the atmosphere literally charged with warning signals and wireless messages registering their last appeal, the stokers in the engine room fed their fires with fresh fuel, registering in that dangerous place her fastest speed.”

And for want of another set of eyes on watch for obstacles in