If the Titanic had never turned and had instead slammed head-on into the icebe… · @aqua1450 · TwKit

@aqua1450

If the Titanic had never turned and had instead slammed head-on into the iceberg, there’s a good chance it would have stayed afloat. This isn’t some wild theory from the internet. A shipyard designer said it himself during the British inquiry in 1912. Yet no captain in his right mind would have made that choice. Why did the Titanic sink? The ship was designed to stay afloat even if its four forward compartments were completely flooded. But the actual collision was a glancing blow. The iceberg scraped along the starboard side, damaging six compartments in succession. That exceeded the ship’s safety limits. From that moment on, sinking was only a matter of time. What if it had hit the iceberg head-on? Edward Wilding, a designer at Harland & Wolff, the shipyard that built Titanic, testified that a direct collision would have crushed the bow, much like the crumple zone of a modern car. Only the first three compartments would likely have flooded, keeping the damage within the ship’s designed limits. Titanic might well have stayed afloat long enough for rescue to arrive. But there was a terrible price. The section that would have been crushed housed sleeping quarters for boiler-room crew members and some third-class passengers. The collision happened at 11:40 p.m. Most of them were already in bed. A head-on collision would have meant sacrificing the people in the bow to give the other 2,000-plus people aboard a chance to survive. So why didn’t anyone make that choice? From the moment the lookout shouted, “Iceberg, right ahead!” to the collision, there were roughly 37 seconds. First Officer William Murdoch’s instinct was to turn. Almost any sailor would have done the same. No seamanship manual tells you to steer straight into an iceberg when you still have a chance to avoid it. In hindsight, hitting the iceberg head-on might have saved the ship. But Murdoch didn’t have hindsight. He had 37 seconds. And what looked like a chance to escape. If you were Murdoch, would you have turned or gone straight ahead? #Titanic #MaritimeHistory #History #DecisionMaking #WhatIfHistory

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