Actually, the captains at the time would do that to get out of icefield, it was a normal practice it seems and binoculars wouldn't have helped that much. Not every boilers were on on titanic too.
Correct. My understanding, which comes largely from the testimony of the other ship commanders during
Titanic's hearings, is that ships of the time would not slow down in the
reported vicinity of ice when the weather was fair and visibility good. The reason that was given is that in the vast majority of cases, absent some weather phenomena that reduced visibility, ice can be seen at a minimum of 5 miles away from a ship even at night; thus the idea was that any ship in the reported vicinity of ice would have plenty of time to alter course, and then slow down, once ice had been spotted.
Of course, the night
Titanic struck ice the conditions were such that ice could not be spotted at such a distance despite the fair weather conditions. This is largely because of the new moon, and more importantly the absolute flat calm of the North Atlantic on that evening. That flat calm sea aided by the absolute lack of wind, all of which again I take just from the testimony given was a
extremely rare phenomena, prevented
Titanic's officers and lookouts from being able to identify ice by the breaking of waves against the ice.
As for binoculars, these were of limited use. I am not a mariner, but even I understand the role of binoculars. They are used to identify the
detail in a thing a person has already spotted with the naked eye. Therefore, either one of the officers on watch or the lookouts would have to have seen the ice with their naked eyes first before employing the binoculars; and, for whatever reason, the testimony of
Titanic's lookouts is one bit of testimony I actually trust implicitly--Fleet reported the ice the
moment he realized that he was indeed looking at ice directly in
Titanic's path.
Edit.
The single ended boilers in boiler room number one were not lit. The testimony of Ismay leads one to believe that they were to have been lit on Monday, which is the day of the run that
Titanic had planned to try to make her fullest possible speed; that said, I have always wondered about this because my impression has always been that the single ended boilers were only used while the ship was in port, and did not even have a system for expelling the coal ash that was present in
Titanic's other boilers.
Double Edit
The fact that Ismay knew this at all, or had any conversations with Smith or Bell about the operation of the ship puts serious doubt in my mind about the veracity of White Star Line's legal defense regarding
Titanic. Of course, that's just based on Ismay's testimony, but I think it is fair to assume Ismay was far more involved in the navigation of
Titanic, and quite possibly what happened to her after the collision with ice, than he, White Star Line, or the IMM would ever have admitted to.
