Anyone who has studied this event at any length will know it was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Trying to assign ultimate responsibility to Captain Smith is tenuous at best.
> 1. Why were the iceberg warnings ignored?
Its not the Captain's fault if information never reaches him. Trying to say Smith ran a sloppy ship or that was a "systemic failure of communications" is merely displaying ignorance.
> 2. Why was the iceberg not seen until too late?
The important phrase here is "The Titanic was going too fast for the crew to react because Captain Smith allowed his ship to exceed a safe speed for navigation conditions." And I'll grant this is fair. This was one of the situation where 4-5 unlikely things happened all at once. However, I will note that not all of this was on the Captain. Some of this is on the White Star Line and the macaroni operator. Without relevant info, Smith was justified in his expectation to not have to worry about iceburgs at that time of year.
> 3. Why was the Titanic traveling too fast for navigation conditions?
This is just a reiteration of point 2. Therefore I refer you to what I said there.
> 4. Why did the rivets fail?
"Captain Smith knew how dangerous an iceberg collision could be yet he still risked his ship being operated in unsafe conditions." I'm sure he also knew what would happen if a boiler exploded, yet he still allowed them to be fired on his ship. This article is just grasping at straws at this point. Captain Smith is in no way responsible of the construction of the ship and all accounts say he was not fully briefed on issues until _after_ the collision. And there was no reason to expect him to be! He was the Captain, not the architect. He had a reasonable expectation of quality of construction, just like when you buy a phone you expect it to function as advertised without having to be an expert on electrical and hardware engineering to make sure.
> 5. Why were there insufficient lifesaving equipment and procedures in place?
Again, this is the fault of the White Star Line. Blaming the captain for "allowing" the ship to be taken out of port shows a gross misunderstanding of the relationship between Captain and Company. A pilot expects the mechanics to make a plane airworth, and is not at fault for mechanical failure in flight. The captain is responsible for operation of the ship, not the construction or engineering or basic preparations of the ship. Are we going to blame him for lack of preparation if the bar ran out of martini olives?
This article is trying to bank on "TITANIC MYSTERY FINALLY SOLVED" and shows a fundamental lack of understanding. Which is quite shocking, to be honest, since they got a lot of the facts correct. The only thing I can guess is that they went into this article with an agenda and twisted interpretations until they got what they wanted.
As I said above, the Titanic was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Unfortunately, it was a necessary death to give us the marine safety regulations we have today. If any number of things had been just slightly different on the Titanic, it would be a footnote in history and we would be talking about a different ship that would have inexplicably had everything go wrong.
> 1. Why were the iceberg warnings ignored?
Its not the Captain's fault if information never reaches him. Trying to say Smith ran a sloppy ship or that was a "systemic failure of communications" is merely displaying ignorance.
> 2. Why was the iceberg not seen until too late?
The important phrase here is "The Titanic was going too fast for the crew to react because Captain Smith allowed his ship to exceed a safe speed for navigation conditions." And I'll grant this is fair. This was one of the situation where 4-5 unlikely things happened all at once. However, I will note that not all of this was on the Captain. Some of this is on the White Star Line and the macaroni operator. Without relevant info, Smith was justified in his expectation to not have to worry about iceburgs at that time of year.
> 3. Why was the Titanic traveling too fast for navigation conditions?
This is just a reiteration of point 2. Therefore I refer you to what I said there.
> 4. Why did the rivets fail?
"Captain Smith knew how dangerous an iceberg collision could be yet he still risked his ship being operated in unsafe conditions." I'm sure he also knew what would happen if a boiler exploded, yet he still allowed them to be fired on his ship. This article is just grasping at straws at this point. Captain Smith is in no way responsible of the construction of the ship and all accounts say he was not fully briefed on issues until _after_ the collision. And there was no reason to expect him to be! He was the Captain, not the architect. He had a reasonable expectation of quality of construction, just like when you buy a phone you expect it to function as advertised without having to be an expert on electrical and hardware engineering to make sure.
> 5. Why were there insufficient lifesaving equipment and procedures in place?
Again, this is the fault of the White Star Line. Blaming the captain for "allowing" the ship to be taken out of port shows a gross misunderstanding of the relationship between Captain and Company. A pilot expects the mechanics to make a plane airworth, and is not at fault for mechanical failure in flight. The captain is responsible for operation of the ship, not the construction or engineering or basic preparations of the ship. Are we going to blame him for lack of preparation if the bar ran out of martini olives?
This article is trying to bank on "TITANIC MYSTERY FINALLY SOLVED" and shows a fundamental lack of understanding. Which is quite shocking, to be honest, since they got a lot of the facts correct. The only thing I can guess is that they went into this article with an agenda and twisted interpretations until they got what they wanted.
As I said above, the Titanic was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Unfortunately, it was a necessary death to give us the marine safety regulations we have today. If any number of things had been just slightly different on the Titanic, it would be a footnote in history and we would be talking about a different ship that would have inexplicably had everything go wrong.