Titanic - Part V Calm Seas, Full Speed Ahead

Tonight at 11:40 pm marks the 93rd anniversary of Titanic's collision with the iceberg. Titanic had made very good speed during the daytime hours and the seas were very calm and flat. Since early evening, Titanic was starting to receive, via Marconi, ice warnings from the other ships that were plying the North Atlantic in her immediate vicinity. The ship's lookouts, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, were stationed high up in the crow's nest. The night was bitterly cold and these lookouts were anxious to finish their duty at midnight. Because of a mix-up leaving Southampton, the crow's nest was not equipped with binoculars. Whether this fact had any bearing on Titanic's collision with the iceberg is up to pure speculation. Since the seas were so calm, there was no wake on the ocean and this made finding icebergs and growlers very difficult to visualize against the backdrop of the cold, black night. By the time that Mr. Fleet had given Officer Murdoch the notice that there was an "iceberg-right ahead", it was already too late to avoid the collision. Despite Murdoch's best efforts to steer Titanic away from the iceberg, the massive ship glanced off the side of the iceberg along the starboard railing. As Titanic continued to forge ahead through the iceberg and related ice field, there was a subtle noise marking the impact of the collision. Pieces of the iceberg splintered across Titanic's open decks, much to the delight of the passengers. Several first-class passengers went out to see what the commotion was all about and; having observed ice on the decking, placed these pieces in their drinks. Meanwhile other passengers started playing and throwing the ice at each other. No passenger could of imagined the ramifications of this amount of damage done to Titanic and how it would forever change the course of their lives.