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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;TypeCoin971793, post: 2648839, member: 78244&quot;]Not entirely true. Captain Smith took almost every precaution he could to prevent any possible collision. This included:</p><p><br /></p><p>- Taking a more-southerly route to avoid icebergs. The Spring was unusually warm in 1912, so there were more icebergs drifting South into the shipping lanes than usual.</p><p>- Turning off all lights in front of the bridge to reduce glare.</p><p>- Smith stayed on the bridge longer than usual as he knew that the ship was in the most perilous part of the voyage.</p><p>- Smith told First Officer Murdoch to pay very close attention after Smith retired for the night. He explicitly told him to watch for haze (a sign of icebergs) and that at the slightest doubt of safety, he needed to slow the ship down.</p><p><br /></p><p>However he did not slow down. It was a common and well-established practice to slow down, and sometimes speed up, in a dangerous part of a ship&#039;s voyage. The thinking was that the faster you go through the danger, the quicker you&#039;ll get out of it, and the better you&#039;ll be.</p><p><br /></p><p>Things against the crew of the Titanic that they could not prepare for:</p><p><br /></p><p>- The iceberg was a &quot;blue&quot; iceberg, or one that got topheavy and flipped over, exposing the waterlogged lower portion. They are darker and not as reflective, making them very hard to see.</p><p>- The sea was an absolute flat calm, meaning that there would be no waves splashing against the base of the iceberg.</p><p><br /></p><p>Things that the crew could have prepared for that made the above factors worse:</p><p>- No moon. The moon was not set to rise for another few hours, meaning that there was little lit to reflect off of an iceberg. There was a spotlight on board, but it was not utilized.</p><p>- The cold. Image being outside for a four-hour stretch, the air being below freezing, and a wind of almost 30mph constantly blowing in your face. That is what the lookouts were subjected to, and those conditions would have made it very hard to see, and they could have been hiding in the crow&#039;s nest and popping up every so often to check things out. They were not equipped with goggles (that was not standard equipment). Binoculars would not have helped at all in this case. They would not have been able to see anything other than two black circles.</p><p><br /></p><p>After Captain Smith retired for the night at around 11:00 PM, Murdoch noticed a slight haze, the exact sign Smith has warned against, but he had chosen to ignore it and press on. </p><p><br /></p><p>In conclusion, Smith was not at fault and he did not think he was invincible. The presence of a long-range wireless radio on board and the notion that there would always be a ship within helping distance (there was, but she had turned off her radio 10 minutes before the collision) in case something happened. He also knew that the ship was not unsinkable, but neither he nor the designers could forsee an accident that would open up co many compartments to the sea. Also, there had not been a single metal-hulled ship with watertight compartments that had collided with an iceberg and sank. All of these notions <i>common to all seafarers</i> probably led to Smith being a little more careless than he should have been[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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