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and Titanic was travelling at around twenty knots, close
to her maximum speed. This might seem insane to us now,
but passenger liners had a very strict schedule to keep,
and ships of her size and construction weren't considered
to be vulnerable to icebergs (the 1997 movie implied Titanic
was trying to break a speed record at the behest of J.
Bruce Ismay, but that is fictional).
5. The wireless (i.e. radio) operators could have passed on
the ice warnings with more urgency. one incident in particular
became notorious. The nearest ship to the Titanic
before she sank was SS Californian; her captain had decided
the ice was so bad that he would stop and try to
resume the journey at first light. Californian's wireless
operator signalled to Titanic about this. Unfortunately,
that message came right at the time that Senior Wireless
operator Jack Phillips was attempting to get through
a backlog of passenger messages he hadn't been able to
send off earlier (because the set had been broken earlier
and Titanic hadn't been in range of the nearest wireless
station, Cape Race, newfoundland). Californian's signal
broke in over the top of Phillip's broadcast (these were
wireless spark-gap transmitters that used morse code; signals
couldn't be tuned out) and was very loud in his headphones
because the ships were so close. Phillips angrily
replied, "Shut up! Shut up! I'm working Cape Race!" Although
this was not the only warning Titanic received, it
happened less than ten minutes before the collision, so it
might possibly have made a difference if Phillips had been
paying more attention and had relayed it promptly to the
bridge. A warning before that, from SS Mesaba, had not
gone up to the bridge because Phillips was busy processing
the passenger messages.
6. Finally, once the iceberg had been spotted, the officer on
watch, First officer William Murdoch, could have reacted
differently in trying to avoid a collision. Some have
suggested that Titanic should have not attempted a course
change and simply steamed over the top of the iceberg; I
highly doubt this would have helped. But one thing that
might have helped is if he hadn't ordered "Full Astern (i.e.