Pack Ice
In 2003, Captain L. M. Collins, a former member of the Ice Pilotage Service, published The Sinking of the Titanic: The Mystery Solved proposing, based upon his own experience of ice navigation and witness statements given at the two post-disaster enquiries, that what the Titanic hit was not an iceberg but low-lying pack ice. He based his conclusion upon three main pieces of evidence.
- At 11:30 pm on the night of the sinking, the two lookouts spotted what they believed to be haze on the horizon, extending approximately 20° on either side of the ship's bow, despite there being no other reports of haze at any time. Collins believes that what they saw was not haze but a strip of pack ice, 3–4 mi (4.8–6.4 km) ahead of the ship.
- The ice was variously reported as 60 ft (18 m) high by the lookouts, 100 ft (30 m) high by Quartermaster Rowe on the poop deck, and only very low in the water by Fourth Officer Boxhall, on the starboard side near the darkened bridge. Collins believes that this was due to 'an optical phenomenon that is well known to ice navigators' where the flat sea and extreme cold distort the appearance of objects near the waterline, making them appear to be the height of the ship's lights, about 60 ft (18 m) above the surface near the bow, and 100 ft (30 m) high alongside the superstructure.
- A ship such as the Titanic turned by pivoting about a point approximately a third of the ship's length from the bow, with the result that with her rudder hard over, she could not have avoided crushing her entire starboard side into an iceberg were such a collision to occur, with the result that 'the hull and possibly the superstructure on the starboard side would have been rent. In all probability, the ship would have flooded, capsized, and sunk within minutes.'
Read more about this topic: RMS Titanic Alternative Theories
Famous quotes containing the words pack and/or ice:
“A man was to live in that egg-shell day and night, a mile from the shore.... Think of making your bed thus in the crest of a breaker! To have the waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eying you always, night and day, and from time to time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)