“I have always supposed,” said Major Peuchen, who is an experienced yachtsman, “that a life preserver in good condition would sustain a dead body as well as a live one.”
STEAMING AT 21 KNOTS.
It has been demonstrated by ample evidence that at the time the Titanic hit the iceberg she was steaming at the undiminished speed of twenty-one knots an hour into a zone littered with icebergs and floating ice fields, warning of which her officers had received hours before by wireless from several other ships, including the Amerika, of the Hamburg-American Line. When day broke on Monday, according to Mr. Lane, at least twenty icebergs surrounded the Carpathia, the largest of which was 150 feet high. They were within a six-mile radius.
In the chart room, tucked into the corner of a frame above the table where the navigating officers of the Titanic did their mathematical work, was a written memorandum of the latitude and longitude wherein two large icebergs had been reported directly in the track. Mr. Boxhall had worked out this position under Captain Smith’s instructions. Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, was familiar with it, and when his watch ended at 10 o’clock Sunday night and he surrendered the post on the bridge to the first officer, Mr. Murdock, the remark was made that they would probably “be getting up into the ice during Mr. Murdock’s watch.”
Despite all this the Titanic was rushing on, driving at railroad speed toward the port of New York and “a record for a maiden voyage.”
It was a cloudless and starlit night with no sea running. No extra lookout was posted in the “ship’s eyes,” the most advanced position on the vessel’s deck. Up in the crow’s nest Fleet and Lee, both experienced lookouts, were keeping a sharp watch forward. They had been duly warned of ice by the pair of lookouts whom they had relieved.
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.