![]() ![]() Now, here’s a psychological factor: even if against all odds, you managed to park the ship next to the iceberg, and had all the proper equipment to board the iceberg ready, you would have a mighty hard time persuading passengers to actually disembark from the ship and climb onto the iceberg.īelieve it or not, but the crew of the RMS Titanic initially had a hard time cajoling the passengers on the deck to actually get into the lifeboats! It is said that millionaire John Jacob Astor, who was the richest passenger on the ship, declared: “We are safer here than in that little boat.” Sources also claim that some passengers refused flatly to embark. The reasons we discussed above pertained exclusively to the technicalities of the transfer of passengers onto the iceberg. ![]() ![]() There was no radar on the ship, which is another reason why they couldn’t even think of going back. Returning to the iceberg wasn’t really a viable option, if an option at all, as the night was rather dark, meaning that starlight and the artificial lighting of the ship were the only two sources of illumination – far too inadequate to locate an iceberg (remember, spotters couldn’t locate it in the first place before the ship got too close and ended up hitting it) out in an open sea. Piece of cake, right?Īs mentioned earlier, the Titanic had covered a substantial distance after hitting the iceberg. You would think that the captain of the Titanic could have just reversed the ship, reached the iceberg and started transferring passengers onto it. Could the Titanic take a U-turn and reach the iceberg? In other words, when the Titanic sank, the iceberg that caused the collision was left far behind in the darkness, out of reach for the crew and passengers to even consider climbing it. (The image is an artist’s representation and not to scale). The ship continued to travel after hitting the iceberg, and therefore, was far away from the iceberg when the former actually sunk. What caught his attention was the smear of red paint along the base of the berg, indication that it had collided with a ship sometime in the previous twelve hours. The steward hadn’t yet heard about the Titanic. This iceberg was photographed by the chief steward of the liner Prinz Adalbert on the morning of April 15, 1912, just a few miles south of where the “Titanic” went down. The iceberg suspected of having sunk the RMS Titanic. After all, the ship had sustained a glancing blow and sank completely around 2.5 hours after it struck the iceberg, which means that there was a reasonable amount of time for some of the passengers (those that remained on the ship after a few hundred were ferried away in lifeboats), if not all, to climb up the iceberg and wait there for help.īut that obviously didn’t happen in reality. I think quite a few people might think that was indeed a plausible solution to the problem. Image Credit: Everett Historical/Shutterstock DID THE CAPTAIN OF THE TITANIC SURVIVE MOVIEOne particularly memorable time, I was watching it with a friend who made a very interesting observation after the movie ended: ‘Why couldn’t the passengers of the ship get off and climb the humongous iceberg (with which the ship collided) and wait there until help arrived?’ I must have watched Titanic – a Hollywood movie released in 1997 that depicted a fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic – countless times. Even if it was, climbing it would be next to impossible for hundreds of passengers. It wasn’t as though the iceberg was next to the ship when it was sinking. There are a few reasons: first, the ship continued for some distance (a mile or so) after hitting the iceberg. The iceberg was left behind after the collision, it would have been too risky to get too close to the iceberg, ice is slippery, and people simply wouldn’t go onto the iceberg. People simply won’t go onto the iceberg.Getting too close to the iceberg would have been too risky.Could the Titanic take a U-turn and reach the iceberg?.The iceberg was left behind after the collision. ![]()
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