Hi Henning,
Nice article, I enjoyed reading it, but being the devil's advocate, I'm still not convinced.
George Rheims at the Limitation and Liability hearing was interrogated to death about how and where he saw the iceberg. In short, he was in one of the forward A deck bathrooms, felt the impact, saw it through the window at the fore end of the main starboard corridor and watched it glide by the other window that was at the end of the passage for cabins A5 to A11.
Willaim Sloper was standing in the forward A deck grand staircase foyer waiting for Dorothy Gibson to come back up again so they could go for a walk around the deck. They felt the shock just as Dorothy was approaching Sloper and both ran out on deck and saw the ice glide by A deck.
Edith Rosenbaum was entering her cabin just as the shock began. Looking out of her window from her cabin A11, she saw the ice go by.
These are 3 accounts, which prove the ice was as high as A deck and no matter how you slice it was not as low in the water as C deck (or lower).
I think Dave Brown's grounding theory would make your rebounding ice theory impossible. He may even be right that Titanic's 50,000 odd tons resting on the ice would also have provided sufficient weight to tip the berg a little. Ice above the water was soft and it really did not require any damage to Titanic's hull at all for ice to fall off. In fact, Titanic's side must have come in contact with the ice.
After the collision, passengers in cabins D33 and E24 noticed ice on their portholes. Harper did not describe anything being shot at his porthole (i.e. ice bouncing off and leaving bits on the porthole) he simply noticed it after looking outside.
Also it is likely that the corners, of C, B and A deck "shaved" off the soft ice which then fell on the deck. The well deck where the majority of the ice fell was strictly out of bounds for
first class passengers, nor was it an easy journey for them. There was no way for them to get there. There were the two forward B deck doors, but they were generally not used by passengers. Steward Crawford did use them to go out on this deck and did notice small quantities of ice there, but then went inside.
Elmer Z. Taylor after the collision during his inspection walked forward on A deck, found some ice and brought it back to C deck to show his wife and to Lambert Williams.
Clinch Smith also had a piece of ice that he exhibited to Col. Gracie, he must have found it forward on A deck just like Taylor did.
In fact most of the passengers would have had their ice either from their portholes or from finding it on A deck.
All I'm trying to point out is that the berg was at least as tall as A deck (perhaps even several feet above the boat deck) and was possibly scraped off when it was tilted slightly toward the ship. During this process the soft loose bits either slid off or were scraped off by the sides/corners of the upper decks.
Regards,
Daniel.