Mila,
I read through part 1. Really nice work. Lots of data to digest. Hope to get to part 2 soon.
A few comments and questions from part 1:
1. As far as the direction of the wind that sprang up Monday mording:
According to Major Peauchen it came out of the north.
Maj. PEUCHEN. No, I would not say the immediate vicinity, because there was a breeze started up at daybreak, and the wreckage would naturally float away from where she went down, somewhat. It might be that it had floated away, probably a mile or half a mile; probably not more than that, considering that the wind only sprang up at daybreak.
Senator FLETCHER. Have you any idea which way that drift would tend, on account of the breeze or other conditions there?
Maj. PEUCHEN. Which way the wind was blowing, you mean?
Senator FLETCHER. Yes.
Maj. PEUCHEN. The wind was blowing, I imagine, from the north at that time.
In Beesley's book, he wrote: "And with the dawn came a faint breeze from the west, the first breath of wind we had felt since the Titanic stopped her engines. Anticipating a few hours,--as the day drew on to 8 A.M., the time the last boats came up,--this breeze increased to a fresh wind which whipped up the sea, so that the last boat laden with people had an anxious time in the choppy waves before they reached the Carpathia. An officer remarked that one of the boats could not have stayed afloat another hour: the wind had held off just long enough."
No direction mentioned as to when it was a fresh wind.
In your article you wrote: "Paola (1992) noted this wind too: One survivor tells of a breeze that came up out of the southeast around dawn to add to the morning’s chill." What eyewitness said that?
Some hard data. On April 15, the Almerian was at 41° 48'N, 50° 24'W at 12:00 GMT. Wind was out of the East true at force 3 on Beaufort scale. Barometer 30"40 at 42°F on attached thermometer. Outside dry bulb thermometer was 33°F. That's only about 21 nautical miles westward of the wreck site.
2. If the center of the high pressure area was west of the wreck site at the time of collision, how could there have been a flat calm for most of late Sunday night until dawn Monday morning?
3. The correct conversion of Titanic time to GMT is to add about 3 hours (actually 2h 58m to be precise) to Titanic ATS. See Time and Again: Titanic's Final Hours.
A chilling northerly wind had sprung up and increased (Figs. 2 and 3), enabling the nearby army of massive icebergs to quickly overwhelm the disaster area. The entire dramatic scene of graphic meteorological oceanographic sequence around the Titanic adds poignancy to Jessop’s (1 998) descriptions of the pleasant evening’s “perfect serenity for miles” and the following early-morning’s contrasting icy, keen, knife-like blast and lashing seas tossing the lifeboat helplessly about with “water and ice everywhere”.
Finally got to read part 2 Mila. Very comprehensive. Well done.
Regarding the haze that Fleet saw, I often wondered why, if there was a haze on the horizon seen ahead about 10 minutes before the collision, nobody reported seeing any haze after the collision when the ship was stopped. As far as Lee, I think his description of haze all around was entirely made up, just like his claim that Fleet told him something along the lines of, 'if we can get through that we will be lucky.' Fleet vehemently denied saying anything of the sort.
Regarding the story of Fleet telling people in the boat that he warned the bridge three times, it was all part of a rumor that spread rampant on Carpathia from a misunderstanding of what Fleet told Maj. Peuchen about what happened at the time of the iceberg sighting. Somehow, Fleet's striking of the bell three times to warn the bridge of an objected sighted ahead was interpreted as three separate warnings to the bridge, all of which were ignored.
Capt. Lord's sighting of a whitening on the horizon was at a distance of about 1 mile before reaching near the edge of the ice field and taking evasive action. Fleet's haze on the horuizon would have been 12 miles ahead, or thereabouts. Where dod all that light come from for something like that to be seen that far off when the iceberg it self wasn't spotted until it was about 1/2 mile off, or less.?
I fully agree with your conclusion that a mirage did not camouflage the iceberg for the exact same reasons you listed, and had expressed that opinion to Maltin before his book came out.
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