When was the iceberg spotted?

[Richard C Elliott]

I do not know how difficult it would have been to provide a bell once the Titanic set sail, but considering that they could provide a telephone link to the stemhead, I would have thought that a bell - not exactly an expensive bit of equipment - in that position could have been SOP, especially as it was occasionally used for an additional lookout.

I may have misunderstood you. I thought you were proposing providing a bell on the forecastle in the specific context of this voyage. (There was, in fact, a bell at the base of the foremast but I couldn't imagine relocating it somewhere in the stem at short notice.)

You are actually proposing equipping liners in advance with the facilities for stationing a lookout in the stem on occasions when it might have some value in supplementing the normal arrangement. The SOP, however, would still place heavy reliance on the lookouts and would still be founded on a false belief in how far away they could sight danger in adverse conditions. Would that really be a helpful thing to do?

Let us suppose the Titanic had been so equipped, the stemhead lookout spotted the iceberg a little sooner than the crows nest lookouts and Murdoch was able to pull off an avoiding manoeuvre. Lives would have been saved on this occasion but the flawed SOP would remain in place waiting to claim future victims. The incident would probably have got very little publicity which might be a good thing because if it had it would have emphasised the critical role of the lookouts and indirectly created more reliance on the 'new, improved' lookout arrangements.

An accident like this was going to happen sooner or later as long as the fundamentally flawed SOP remained in place, and the SOP wasn't going to change until it did.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

You are actually proposing equipping liners in advance with the facilities for stationing a lookout in the stem on occasions when it might have some value in supplementing the normal arrangement.

Yes, but they provided a telephone on the stemhead, which required cable running, maintenance etc, even though it was also used only to supplement the normal arrangement when required. Installing a simple bell would have been far simpler.

The SOP, however, would still place heavy reliance on the lookouts and would still be founded on a false belief in how far away they could sight danger in adverse conditions.

Whose SOP? Once a ship was out at sea, the Captain could alter or upgrade the SOP if he had justifiable reasons. Some Captains of the day like Moore or even Stanley Lord for that matter, might have decided to post a stemhead lookout while others, like Captain Smith, chose not to. Some might feel that Smith did have justifiable reasons to do a few things under those conditions and a stemhead lookout was one of them.

 

[Richard C Elliott]

Yes, but they provided a telephone on the stemhead, .... even though it was also used only to supplement the normal arrangement when required. Installing a simple bell would have been far simpler.

The telephone wasn't for lookout purposes. It was there for communication with the bridge regarding anchoring and mooring orders although, given the limitations of the telephones, many captains still preferred a megaphone! The bell at the foremast base was originally for the same purpose, in conjunction with the bell on the front of the bridge.

I agree that installing another bell while in port wouldn't have been difficult. That isn't my objection. I am criticising the idea because it simply reinforces a misinformed and misguided reliance on lookouts as the primary means of avoiding ice encounters.

Whose SOP?

The SOP of the majority of the maritime profession. Captains could indeed choose to depart from it though I suspect that even those who did (e.g. by altering course) still shared an incorrect belief in the visual ability of lookouts. Making it easier for them to deploy stemhead lookouts might actually have reduced the incentive to take more effective ice avoidance measures.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

The positioning of a lookout on the stem head was SOP during periods of fog and other such impairment to visibility. But it was also the practice of a few other commanders if they expected that they may encounter ice at night. Stanley Lord was one of them.
According to what he wrote in his 1959 affidavit, Lord doubled the lookout at 8pm, keeping one man up in the nest and having another at the stem head. (On these smaller ships they only carried one man in the nest.) Lord also said he took charge of the bridge himself at 8:05 keeping 3/O Groves (the oncoming OOW) on the bridge along with him. At 10:15pm it was Lord who spotted a whitening along the horizon, and by 10:21 he concluded that it must be ice, and ordered hard-aport and his engine reversed. As these orders were given, the lookout men reported ice ahead. Similar to Rostron's story about spotting ice from the bridge before any of the lookouts did. Rostron was not too keen on a lookout's ability to spot dangers before the officers did on the bridge. And as I wrote elsewhere, Capt. Turner considered that lookout men were just BOT ornaments.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

The positioning of a lookout on the stem head was SOP during periods of fog and other such impairment to visibility. But it was also the practice of a few other commanders if they expected that they may encounter ice at night. Stanley Lord was one of them.

Thanks for that Sam. IMO, a stemhead lookout on a clear night such as the one that the Titanic was passing through would have been a positive move.

But regarding fog - whether at night or during the day - would a stemhead lookout really have been an advantage? I thought fog usually was densest just above the water surface and so cause more obstruction to someone looking straight from the low angle of the stemhead. Can it be that the downward visual angle that the lookouts in the crow's nest had would have enabled them to see the top of an object earlier in some instances if fog was present?

The SOP of the majority of the maritime profession. Captains could indeed choose to depart from it though I suspect that even those who did (e.g. by altering course) still shared an incorrect belief in the visual ability of lookouts.

I know. My "Whose SOP?" was a rhetorical question. I do not believe that all Captains of the day shared the belief that lookouts in the crow's nest would spot anything before others under all conditions. Men like Captain Moore and Captain Lord acknowledged their usefulness but at the same time realized that under certain conditions lookouts might have limitations and that was the reason that they took actions that they did on that Sunday night. Then of course, there was the view taken by the likes of Captain Turner (see below).

Capt. Turner considered that lookout men were just BOT ornaments.

Don't you think that Turner (and others with the same opinion) was a bit too generalized, Sam? As I have opined above, lookouts in the crow's nest did have limitations depending on conditions, especially at night. But during the day, they could have been very useful in spotting objects due to their lofty positions before others; even at nighttime, something like a well lit ship on a clear night might have been visible to the lookouts earlier. The actual significance of such sightings would be very variable, of course.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Don't you think that Turner (and others with the same opinion) was a bit too generalized, Sam?

It was Turner's stated view. Doesn't matter what I think. I do know what Rostron had to say:

"Well, of course, they [the lookouts] all had warning about keeping a look-out for growlers and icebergs, previous to going on the look-out, and on the look-out also. You must understand, unless you know what you are looking for, if you see some very dim indistinct shape of some kind, anyone could take that as nothing at all - merely some shadow upon the water, or something of that kind; but people with experience of ice know what to look for, and can at once distinguish that it is a separate object on the water, and it must be only one thing, and that is ice."

The question that preceded this had to do with why it was that all the icebergs seen were spotted from Carpathia by officers on the bridge rather than lookout men in nest or at the stem.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

It was Turner's stated view. The question that preceded this had to do with why it was that all the icebergs seen were spotted from Carpathia by officers on the bridge rather than lookout men in nest or at the stem.

And with very few exceptions, he was probably right during the night. But IMO it was too much of a blanket statement because traditional lookouts in the Crow's Nest would have been more than useful at daytime, not just for spotting icebergs, but other things as well. From reading various works related to the Lusitania, I got the impression that Morton on the starboard side of the bow (near the stemhead?) and Quinn on the starboard side of the Crow's Nest were the first to see the wake of the approaching torpedo from the U-20.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

I never said Turner was right, only what he said.

 

[Alexandre Fortier]

Thanks for explaining that Sam.

The way I look at Murdoch's response to the 3 bells from the crow's nest was that he did respond immediately. The first part of that response was to look and spot the dark object himself and perhaps use his binoculars to identify it as an iceberg - which he very likely did in 5 or 6 seconds. Then he had to briefly observe the changing perspective of the iceberg as the bow of the speeding ship closed on it so that he could decide about the helm order, which he gave at the end of 15 to 16 seconds from the bells. Like you have explained in your book and elsewhere, Murdoch had to do it that way; unlike the lookouts, whose responsibility ended as soon as they rang the bells and perhaps made that phone call, Murdoch had to assess the situation very quickly and make a decision on which a lot depended.

I'm having a hard time comprehending this explanation. I do not have Sam's book soo it's possibly the reason, but after reading the thread, i'm confunsed.

I understand two options.
1. If you assume that the 5-6 seconds is after the bell, the time is 6 + 16 + 37 (the turn) = 59 seconds
2. If the 5-6 seconds is before the bell, it's 16 + 37 = 53 seconds

Can someone make a resume of the timeline/actions put together to get the 43 seconds.

Thank you

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Can someone make a resume of the timeline/actions put together to get the 43 seconds.

Thank you

The easiest way would be to get the book itself. If it's difficult where you live, can you access an online copy. Look at the SPECIFIC EVENTS table on pp127-8 and Sam's reasoning becomes crystal clear.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I understand two options.
1. If you assume that the 5-6 seconds is after the bell, the time is 6 + 16 + 37 (the turn) = 59 seconds
2. If the 5-6 seconds is before the bell, it's 16 + 37 = 53 seconds

The problem there is that you are introducing the concept of "37 seconds", which was originally calculated to have been the time from Fleet's Bells to the start of the impact - the Titanic's first physical contact with the iceberg. @Samuel Halpern demonstrates to us in his book and that table that it was not.

• Murdoch either had seen something on the horizon himself with naked eyes moments before Fleet did or reacted immediately to the bells. We will never know which way for certain, but what can be said is that while Fleet's job only to see and warn, Murdoch, as the OOW, had to confirm and make decisions. That is where those 5 or 6 seconds came after the bells, which including Murdoch confirming the sighting with binoculars.
• Continuing the timeline after the bells, Murdoch then had to assess which way he was going to turn the ship either to escape impact or mitigate damage in an inevitable collision. For that, he had to observe how the continued forward movement of the bow related to the closing berg and that took about 9 to 10 further seconds, or about 15 seconds after the bells. That was when Murdoch gave the first helm order of hard-a-starboard.
• During those 10 seconds, Fleet also phoned the bridge, Moody answered, heard what Fleet had to say and repeated the sighting apparently for Murdoch's benefit. But that action was almost certainly redundant from Murdoch's point of view because he was already doing his assessment by then.
• Hichens carried out the order, the bow began to swing to port even as the Titanic closed on the iceberg. It was just a shade too late and the ship could not be turned enough to escape damage. Instead, it had a glancing impact, which started about 28 seconds after Murdoch's order or 43 seconds after the bells. (5+10+28).