# Why didn't the Titanic's personnel evacuate to the iceberg? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 18, 2012, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137 "2012-04-18T08:06:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![gunnergoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e95f7d/32.png) [@gunnergoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gunnergoz)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/61 "2012-04-20T14:13:26Z")
The era (and White Star Lines) did not encourage employee thinking “out of the box.” Given that the Captain and crew did not at the time even have the imagination and initiative to try to create makeshift floats for the passengers and crew that could not bet accommodated by the lifeboats, I really question if something as even more radical as using the iceberg as a lifeboat would have ever crossed their collective minds. The case of the Titanic is one of the better examples of Murphy’s Law in action: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/62 "2012-04-20T14:25:10Z")
> [@gunnergoz](#): > > The era (and White Star Lines) did not encourage employee thinking “out of the box.” > > Given that the Captain and crew did not at the time even have the imagination and initiative to try to create makeshift floats for the passengers and crew that could not bet accommodated by the lifeboats, I really question if something as even more radical as using the iceberg as a lifeboat would have ever crossed their collective minds. The captain of the Titanic did not act in a quick and decisive manner after the collision with the iceberg. It had to be suggested to him by his second officer to start loading the lifeboats. He wasn’t going to think of something unprecedented like using the iceberg as a lifeboat, or quickly figure out what would need to be done if someone else had suggested it and he had agreed. It’s easy for us now, on terra firma, to think of things the crew should have done on the Titanic. If most of us were actually on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, we probably wouldn’t do as well at thinking up solutions. People tend to panic in situations like that, and panic does not generally improve people’s thought processes. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/63 "2012-04-20T15:58:18Z")
At sea, in the dark, with a damaged ocean liner taking on water. Now add to that image the stark and bleak reality of what darkness at sea is really like. You cannot see. Turning around to find an iceberg in the dark isn’t an option, because it is dark and you can’t see it until you are on top of it, even if you were lucky enough to cross its path by chance. The irony here is thick. Every conclusion people are jumping to after this issues (too dark) is moot. When you see absolute darkness at sea, you won’t ask the OP’s question. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/64 "2012-04-20T16:37:42Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > The captain of the Titanic did not act in a quick and decisive manner after the collision with the iceberg. It had to be suggested to him by his second officer to start loading the lifeboats. He wasn’t going to think of something unprecedented like using the iceberg as a lifeboat, or quickly figure out what would need to be done if someone else had suggested it and he had agreed. > > It’s easy for us now, on terra firma, to think of things the crew should have done on the Titanic. If most of us were actually on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, we probably wouldn’t do as well at thinking up solutions. People tend to panic in situations like that, and panic does not generally improve people’s thought processes. It’s not only the panic the passengers had - it was that belief that technology could not go wrong. There was no planning for “worst case” or thinking outside the box, because “was nicht sein darf, das nicht sein kann” (What is not allowed to happen, can not happen). And that lesson wasn’t learned as thoroughly as necessary no matter how often the Titanic disaster is invoked for this kind of thinking - and usually after a big piece of technology fails in a spectacular way “nobody” could have foreseen. When it started, everybody was sure how safe it was, technology top of the line, the latest and bestest in safety. Any critics are just backwards technophobes. Until the skyscraper collapses, the nuclear plant blows up, the plane crashes … And then a few platitudes about learning our lesson are made (maybe) or how it was a one-in-a-million chance of a chain of mistakes (it’s always a chain because we eliminate catastrophic single mistakes, but can’t eliminate small mistakes. And because everybody knows things are double-and triple safe, nobody takes the small stuff seriously anymore, until it forms a chain …) And five years later, the next technological marvel comes along, and the next disaster waits to cross from “impossible to imagine, will never happen in a million years” into the realm of “holy shit how could that happen?” ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/65 "2012-04-20T19:10:00Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > It’s not only the panic the passengers had - it was that belief that technology could not go wrong. There was no planning for “worst case” or thinking outside the box, because “was nicht sein darf, das nicht sein kann” (What is not allowed to happen, can not happen). They thought the Titanic was so safe, they didn’t even need to really plan for getting everybody into the lifeboats. They did one cursory lifeboat drill while the ship was docked. They canceled a lifeboat drill that was scheduled for the morning before the ship sank. They were not doing any kind of serious disaster planning. They would definitely not have been thinking of stuff like using an iceberg as a lifeboat before they hit the iceberg, since they weren’t even thinking much about a normal evacuation. If anyone had brought up anything like that before they hit the iceberg, they would have thought that person was crazy to be worrying about the Titanic hitting an iceberg and sinking. They would have called it the 1912 equivalent of tin-foil-hattery (whatever that was). And it would be hard to come up with and implement a plan like that in only two hours. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/66 "2012-04-20T20:30:09Z")
In regard to the anchors, from [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_windlass) > [@](#): > > The anchor is shackled to the anchor cable (US anchor chain), the cable passes up through the hawse pipe, through the pawl, over the windlass gypsy (US wildcat) down through the “spurling pipe” to the chain/cable locker under the forecastle (or poop if at the stern (US fantail)) - the anchor bitts are on a bulkhead in the cable locker and the bitter end of the cable is connected to the bitts using the bitter pin, which should be able to be released from outside the locker to “slip” the anchor. This would occur if the windlass brake has slipped in a storm for example and you have reached “the bitter end”. In layman’s terms, even a ship like Titanic could pay out the entirety of the anchor chain and with relative ease disconnect it / them from the ship, if it was desired to discard them. Of course, I do not know the exact location of the chain lockers, nor the accessibility of the ‘bitter pins’ when the ship was bow down from flooding. Such an action may have been possible only for a short time at the beginning of the emergency. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/67 "2012-04-20T20:36:57Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > If most of us were actually on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, we probably wouldn’t do as well at thinking up solutions. **Help, I’m on the Titanic (need answer fast)** ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/68 "2012-04-20T23:57:25Z")
> [@Laggard](#): > > To me a bigger question is why did they try to avoid it once they saw it. A recent television show had a marine engineer who says that had they simply cut engines they would have collided with the berg head-on and then limped home with a partially crumpled bow. > > The worst thing that could have happened is what happened. A glancing blow along the side of the ship. As an earlier poster noted, thinking outside the box was not the done thing in 1912. (Even Picasso was still a Cubist then. :)) Good seamanship would have demanded taking evasive action at sight of a hazard - whatever the result. Had Capt. Smith rammed the iceberg head-on, he would probably have ruined his reputation and severely damaged his employer’s - however many lives and however much of his ship he might have saved. He probably would have had to a) have not believed fully in the soundness of his ship, and b) explain his action in a way that revealed he did not. ---
**Author:** ![ronenfe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@ronenfe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ronenfe)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/69 "2015-09-06T01:17:24Z")
After visiting the titanic museum today. I had a little different question. Since the area had many icebergs in it, just go with lifeboats to the nearest floating iceberg, unload the people, and go to the ship and take more. Besides I dont understand how the safty regulations allowed any ship to sail blindly into an area with icebergs. Yoi must stop and wait for the morning. And why is the titanic a so special ship if the olimpian was the same ship and built before it. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/70 "2015-09-06T01:30:37Z")
> [@ronenfe](#): > > After visiting the titanic museum today. I had a little different question. Since the area had many icebergs in it, just go with lifeboats to the nearest floating iceberg, unload the people, and go to the ship and take more. Icebergs weren’t so thick that others would have been visible, especially in the middle of the night. If they had been, the ship wouldn’t have been going so fast. And as has already been described in this thread, landing people on an iceberg presents great difficulties. > [@](#): > > Besides I dont understand how the safty regulations allowed any ship to sail blindly into an area with icebergs. Yoi must stop and wait for the morning. That was not the practice at the time. Icebergs weren’t considered to offer a great hazard, and would be detected by lookouts in time anyway. > [@](#): > > And why is the titanic a so special ship if the olimpian was the same ship and built before it. The _Olympic_ was less famous because it _didn’t_ sink. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/71 "2015-09-06T01:31:19Z")
PS. Please note that this thread was started in 2012. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/72 "2015-09-07T02:01:49Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > … try to creep back towards it in reverse… 😕 Ships can do this? ---
**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/73 "2015-09-07T02:14:12Z")
why didn’t they just patch the hole ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/74 "2015-09-07T02:49:57Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Cutting away an anchor is an age-old emergency procedure at sea. I don’t know how it would have been accomplished on the Titanic, but it’s not an absurd suggestion. Big ships typically have a lot of tools for heavy jobs of the sort; perhaps they had cutting torches of some kind. But weren’t the compartments where the anchor chains were already flooded by then? ---
**Author:** ![phaemon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/977dab/32.png) [@phaemon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phaemon)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/75 "2015-09-07T04:21:29Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > 😕 Ships can do this? [reverse] Yes, it’s how you slow down. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/76 "2015-09-07T04:52:52Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > The _Olympic_ was less famous because it _didn’t_ sink. The poor \*Britannic \* always gets shafted in these discussions. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/77 "2015-09-07T04:59:49Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > The poor \*Britannic \* always gets shafted in these discussions. _Brittanic_, as the largest ship lost during WWI, is probably better known than the _Olympic_ today. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/78 "2015-09-07T05:03:43Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > _Brittanic_, as the largest ship lost during WWI, is probably better known than the _Olympic_ today. Remind me, she sunk faster then the _Titanic_ did ok a mine will do that) yet had like 50 deaths out of 1000? That was due to warmer waters? Land being nearer? RN being more efficient than the IMM? ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/79 "2015-09-07T05:05:00Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > Aren’t icebergs slippery? Maybe, but it’s better than their first choice: the Island of Banana Peels. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137/80 "2015-09-07T05:15:22Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Remind me, she sunk faster then the _Titanic_ did ok a mine will do that) yet had like 50 deaths out of 1000? That was due to warmer waters? Land being nearer? RN being more efficient than the IMM? From [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic) > [@](#): > > Compared to the Titanic, the rescue of the Britannic was facilitated by three factors: the temperature was higher (21 °C (70 °F)[16] compared to −2 °C (28 °F)[17] for the Titanic), more lifeboats were available (35 were launched and stayed afloat[18] compared to Titanic’s 20[19]) and help was closer (arrived less than 2 hours after first distress call[18] compared to 3½ hours for the Titanic[20]). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-titanics-personnel-evacuate-to-the-iceberg/619137.md?page=5)