Sinking of the "Titanic"

by Jay Henry Mowbray

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.

MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAVED BY SEARCHLIGHT.

Questions framed by Senator Smith several times have suggested that the use of a searchlight might have saved the Titanic. War ships of all nations make the searchlight a part of their regular equipment, as is well known. The Titanic’s surviving officers agreed that it has not been commonly used by vessels of the merchant marine. Some of them conceded that in the conditions surrounding the Titanic its use on a clear night might have revealed the iceberg in time to have saved the ship. Major Peuchen, of Toronto, said emphatically that it would have done so.

Mr. Lightoller, however, pointed out that, while the searchlight is often a useful device for those who stand behind it, its rays invariably blind those upon whom they are trained. Should the use of searchlights become general upon merchant vessels, he thought, it would be a matter for careful consideration, experiment and regulation.

The Senatorial inquiry has indicated that the single lifeboat drill upon the Titanic had been a rather perfunctory performance; there had been neither a boat drill nor a fire drill from the time the great ship left Southampton until she struck the iceberg. While she lay in harbor before starting on her maiden voyage, and with her port side against the company pier, two of her lifeboats had been lowered away from her starboard side, manned by a junior or a warrant officer and a crew of four men each, who rowed them around a few minutes and then returned to the ship.

There had also been an inspection in the home port to see whether the lifeboats contained all the gear specified by the Board of Trade regulations and Officer Boxhall testified that they did. Yet, when the emergency came, many of the boats were found to contain no lights, while others lacked extra oars, biscuits and other specified requisites.

UTILITY OF WATER-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS DOUBTED.

The Titanic’s loss has completely exploded the fallacy that watertight compartments, of which the big ship had fifteen in her main divisions, can save a vessel from foundering after having sustained a raking blow, tearing and ripping out her plates from thirty feet aft of the bow almost to midships.