The Lost Key That Led to History’s Most Infamous Maritime Disaster
At around 11:40PM on the night of April 14th, 1912, four days into the Titanic’s voyage, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg in the ship’s path, and alerted the bridge. The officer in charge ordered the engines stopped and the ship steered around the obstacle. Unfortunately, given the distance to the iceberg when the alarm was sounded, the Titanic’s speed at the time, and the ship’s mass, disaster was inevitable. Basic physics made it impossible for the mammoth ship to maneuver away in time to avoid a collision.
The Titanic had often been heralded as “unsinkable”. When it struck the iceberg, however, it sank. It was one of history’s worst maritime disasters. Of the 2224 passengers and crew aboard the ship, over 1500 lost their lives in one of modern history’s worst peacetime maritime disasters. In the subsequent investigation, lookout Frederick Fleet testified that if he had binoculars, he would have spotted the iceberg sooner. The ship would thus have had more reaction time to steer away from danger.