Here’s a crazy story that I missed entirely last fall.
From the BBC:
The key, with the tag “Crows Nest Telephone Titanic” opened the binoculars store, but was not on the ship when it sailed from Southampton.
It was in the pocket of an officer transferred off the vessel days before its maiden voyage. He forgot to hand it to his replacement as he left.
As a result lookouts had to rely on the naked eye.
Titanic sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on 15 April 1912 with the loss of 1,522 lives.
[…] One of the lookouts on the Titanic told an inquiry into the sinking that with the binoculars the Titanic might have been able to dodge the iceberg.
On the difference the binoculars might have made, lookout Fred Fleet said: “Well, enough to get out of the way.”
You’d think that in the middle of iceberg-infested waters, binoculars would be important enough that the crew would pick or bash a little cabinet lock to get to them. Or at least have more than one pair on board. Seems kind of like saying “well, we’ve got just 20 lifeboats for 2,228 people, but hey, we’re only crossing an ocean.” Wait, they did that too. What kind of fifth-rate operation was this, anyway?
Seems kind of ironic, too, that the family of the sailor whose forgetfulness contributed to one of naval history’s worst disasters would profit so enormously from his mistake.
1 response so far ↓
1 B // Apr 29, 2008 at 2:24 pm
The proud tradition of corporate culture lives on…
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