RMS Titanic simulation

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

That's exactly what they did!

Murdoch ordered the rudder to hard starboard and engines to full astern in an attempt to 'port around' the iceberg by swinging the ship to the left but the speed was too high and the distance too short for the ship to avoid the iceberg.

That's what I was going to say, but then decided against it. Ships actually turn tighter the faster they go. If they had turned and kept to full speed they might have missed it altogether. Slowing down was the wrong thing to do.

There's another school of thought that says that if the Titanic had hit the iceberg head on that it might not have caused as much damage as the glancing blow to the starboard side of the ship did.

I subscribe to that school. A head-on collision would have crushed the bow, but would not have exposed several sections to flooding at the same time.