It must be pointed out that Titanic did not send just ONE distress position.
The ship sent TWO positions.
Any discussion of the "wrongness" of Titanic's distress "position" in the singular is simply historic tomfoolery. To understand what was happening on the ship's bridge it is necessary to determine why the two positions were sent and their relationships to each other as well as the rest of the navigational data.
Based on simple time-speed-distance dead reckoning the first position given by Captain Smith to the Marconi operators was the ship's predicted midnight location.
(Remember, "midnight" does not mean April 14th, but rather the meridian on which ships date/time April 15th would begin.)
Why would Captain Smith choose the ship's predicted midnight position? You'll have to ask him. However, lacking his answer the logical assumption (with all the dangers of an assumption) is that the midnight coordinates were "to hand." And, on the clock he checked it was about midnight.
Smith obviously realized one truth which escapes many armchair navigators. In a distress situation it is best to get ships heading in your general direction as early as possible. Dead-nuts accuracy is far less important than having potential rescue vessels within visual contact. No rescuer steams blindly to a set of coordinates when he can see the sinking ship.
So, Smith did the most seamanlike thing he could do at the moment -- send a reasonably close position to get potential rescue ships heading toward Titanic.
What about the second set of CQD coordinates? Once again, simple time-speed-distance yields the obvious. Boxhall did not gin up a new set of coordinates because he was a nice guy. He would only have done so on orders from Captain Smith. If Smith told him that the initial CQD position was for "midnight;" and to "back up" the position to 11:30, what would Boxhall have done?
(Note: here is where the "mistake" took place. The Captain and Boxhall did not fully communicate what was needed. Boxhall had just returned from two visits into the damaged bow, so was not situationally aware. Smith should have been more specific, even "talking down" to Boxhall to make sure everything was understood. However, that may have been impossible because steam had just begun roaring out of funnel #1 and speech was at best difficult.)
The answer is easy. He would have gone 20 minutes on the ship's reciprocal course to develop a dead reckoning position for 11:40. Unfortunately, however, that would not have been 11:40 p.m. based on noon, April 14th. Rather it would have been 11:40 p.m. based on the next day's predicted noon, April 15th.
And, if you measure, the Smith's original CQD coordinates are within 1912 navigation precision exactly 20 minutes of steaming at 22 knots (the speed Boxhall said he used) away from Boxhall's more famous coordinates.
One more thing -- the course between Smith and Bohall is 075/255 with 155 representing the direction toward North America. Why would Boxhall have used a 075/255 line to move his "corrected" position 20 minutes from Smith's initial CQD?
Again, we have to make assumptions based on the usual and customary practice of navigation. Two positions at which a ship claimed to be located are diagnostic of a line of position. In this case, a line of position that would also represent the ship's course -- or, at least the course Boxhall believed it was steering: 255.
We know the ship should have been steering within reason a course of 266. Subtracting 255 from 266 yields 11 degres, which is as close as could be steered to one compas point difference. (Titanic's compass could only be read accurately to 1/2 a degree. A compass "point" is 1/32nd of 360 degrees or 11 1/4 deg.) So, it would appear that Boxhall believed that Titanic had turned left (requiring starboard helm in 1912 parlance) one compass point from its 266 course.
If Boxhall's navigation shows a course change to the left, when would it have been made?
When Boxhall's 075 reciprocal line is extended back in time, and if the ship's 266 course line is extended forward from "The Corner," something curious happens. The two lines cross at 11 hours 30 minutes past noon, April 14th.
When two lines of position that also happen to be course lines cross, it is a pretty safe bet that crossing indicates a course change. So, it is quite reasonable to impute that at 11:30 p.m. April 14th time Titanic changed course and began to steam south of its intended track.
Why would Captain Smith have changed course at 11:30 p.m. April 14th? (No other human being on the planet had the authority to change Titanic's course, so we know Smith ordered it.)
The answer has to be that Smith believed the safety of his ship demanded a change from the 266 course. And, in mid-ocean, what would have prompted that change of course?
Ice.
So, from the two (not one) CQD positions we are able to deduce that the story of Titanic steaming blindly into the night and crashing headlong into an iceberg is little more than balderdash.
Hard navigational evidence in the form of lat/lon coordinates sent from Titanic indicate Captain Smith not only knew about the ice that night, but took action at 11:30 p.m. April 14th 1912 to avoid it.
-- David G. Brown
