Titanic Fanatic?

[Sniper297]

Any Titanic fans out there? "A NiIGHT TO REMEMBER" was on TV today, and it triggered a couple of questions that have been nagging me for several years. I've seen 3 different Titanic movies, plus a few dramatized documentaries - and in ALL of them, the lookout hollers "ICEBERG RIGHT AHEAD!" and the officer of the watch yells to the helmsman "Hard 'a Starboard!"

All accounts, plus the actual discovery of the wreck, agree that the Titanic sideswiped the iceberg on the starboard side, the damage is on the starboard side, and all accounts agree she was turning to port when the starboard bow sideswiped the iceberg. Did the helmsman turn the wrong way, or does everyone who wrote the scripts not know the difference between port and starboard? Or is there some way a ship going 20 knots can put the helm to starboard and swing to port without losing way and going backwards?

Second thing that's been bothering me, ever since the wreck was discovered (back in the '80s?), I saw images of the anchors hanging from the bow, and the chains on the deck. The ship was sinking by the bow and many more passengers would have survived if it had stayed afloat until the Carpathian arrived, so the obvious first step would be to shed some weight from the bow. Did no one think of jettisoning the anchors and chains? That's quite a few tons gone from just where you need additional buoyancy. I've never seen that discussed, so I have no idea whether nobody thought of it, or the idea was dismissed as not making enough of a difference, or possibly there wasn't enough time. I find that last unlikely, all you gotta do is let them go, and even if the bitter ends were secured somehow the chains would have torn loose.