UNAIDED BY SEA GLASSES.
But the men in the crow’s nest had to depend entirely upon the vision of the naked eye. They had no glass to aid them. Fleet had occupied a similar post of responsibility four years on the Oceanic without mishap. His testimony before the committee was that he never before had been without the aid of a glass. He had a pair of binoculars when the ship made her trial trip from Belfast, but they had been mislaid, and when the Titanic steamed out from Southampton he asked Mr. Lightoller for another pair and was told that there was no glass for him. Fleet’s warning was too late to prevent the impact. His testimony was that with a glass he would have reported the berg in time to have prevented the ship striking it.
When Quartermaster Hitchens came on watch at 10 o’clock the weather had grown so cold that he, experienced seaman that he was, immediately thought of icebergs, though it was no part of his duty to look out for them. The thermometer showed thirty-one degrees, and the first orders he received were to notify the ship’s carpenter to look to his fresh-water supply because of the freezing weather, and to turn on the steam-heating apparatus in the officers’ quarters.
Still no extra lookout was placed and the men in the crow’s nest were straining their tired eyes ahead without the help of a lens.
Captain Arthur Rostrom, of the Carpathia, testified that when he was rushing his ship to the aid of the stricken Titanic, taking unusual chances because he knew lives were at stake, he placed a double watch on duty.
Each of the surviving officers, when he was questioned as to the Titanic’s speed at a time when the proximity of dangerous ice was definitely reported and clearly indicated by the drop in temperature, said that it was “not customary” to slacken speed at such times, provided the weather was clear. The custom is, they said, “to go ahead and depend upon the lookouts in the crow’s nest and the watch on the bridge to ‘pick up’ the ice in time to avoid hitting it.”
Mr. Lowe, the fifth officer, who was crossing the Atlantic for the first time in his life, most of his fourteen years’ experience at sea having been in the southern and eastern oceans, yawned wearily in the face of the examiner as he admitted that he had never heard that icebergs were common off the Banks of Newfoundland and that the fact would not have interested him if he had. He did not know that the Titanic was following what is known as “the southern track,” and when he was asked, ventured the guess that she was on the northerly one.