I’ve read, written, and thought about the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic for nigh on 35 years now. And Monday evening, I had a thought which I’d never thought, written, or read before.

If you were to physically apprehend a modern English-speaking human and ask her “Why did the Titanic hit the iceberg?” her most likely response would be that the ship was moving too fast. It’s a matter of record that the brand-new White Star liner received nine ice warnings in the three days leading up to her tragic 1912 accident (seven on the day of the collision). At least two of these warnings never reached her commanding officer, but Captain E. J. Smith knew well what lay in his path. In fact he altered his ship’s course just six hours prior to the collision, presumably to avoid the ice he knew was there.

We also know (from the testimony of Second Officer Charles Lightoller) that Smith did not reduce speed. At 9:20 p.m. – well after dark – on the night of 14 April (just two hours and twenty minutes before the collision), Smith conferred with Lightoller, then officer of the watch, about precautions in light of the danger lurking ahead. The ship’s lookouts (able, well-trained seamen) were specifically warned to watch for ice. The two men discussed the weather – clear skies and flat calm sea, thus perfect visibility – and then Smith retired to his cabin, leaving instructions to “let me know if it becomes at all doubtful.”

With hindsight this seems incredulous. However, in this case hindsight is not 20/20; the reason why is precisely the thought I had Monday evening.

To a generation raised so intimately familiar with the automobile, racing at nearly top speed into ice-infested waters seems reckless beyond belief. But the Titanic was not a car. Her speed at the time of collision was a little above 20 “knots,” or nautical miles per hour (1 nautical mile = 6076 feet). A sprinting man can go faster than that. If you’re looking to optimize human reaction time, 20 knots is pretty dang slow.

Okay, then. Why DID the ship hit the iceberg? To answer this question we will need, as I did Monday evening, to look at the available evidence and do a little sixth-grade math.

One possible explanation is that the lookouts didn’t do a very good job of spotting the berg. That theory is easily dispensed with:

The man in charge of the Titanic at 11:40 p.m., the time of impact, was First Officer William Murdoch, an experienced mariner with a reputation for quick thinking (in 1903 he had heroically seized the helm of the Arabic and averted a collision with another ship by mere inches). Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, who was near but not on the bridge at the time, later testified that, almost simultaneously with the warning bell from the crow’s nest, Murdoch ran from the starboard bridge wing onto the main bridge, ordered the helm put “hard-a-starboard” (thereby turning the Titanic to port), and rang the telegraph to the engine room.

In other words, Murdoch saw the iceberg at approximately the same time as Lookouts Fleet and Lee. No way all three of them were sleeping on the job and then happened to snap out of it all together. These men saw the iceberg as soon as it could be seen. Furthermore, Murdoch acted quickly once he had the information.

This leads us to a big question: how much time elapsed between the sighting of the iceberg and the collision? No one will ever know, but a good estimate is forthcoming.

Quartermaster Robert Hichens, manning the ship’s wheel at this critical moment, later testified that the ship’s prow swung “two points” to port (22.5 degrees) before she hit the ice. On this testimony alone, inquiring minds later ran the Titanic‘s sister ship Olympic up to 20-odd knots, put her helm hard over, and counted off the seconds until she turned two points to the left. Time elapsed: 37 seconds.

But Hichens was not a particularly reliable fellow. He also testified that the last helm order he received was the initial “hard-a-starboard,” whereas Murdoch himself (according to Boxhall) informed Captain Smith that “I tried to hard-a-port around it, but she was too close.” Murdoch must have given this order; otherwise, the stern of the Titanic would have run smack into the berg. Moreover, at the conclusion of the maneuver the iceberg was seen by many on board off the ship’s starboard quarter, which is only possible if she ended up somewhat close to her original heading.

Another strike against Hichens is that, when put in command of lifeboat 6 an hour later, he proved himself perversely unsuited to the responsibility, offending virtually everyone with both the content and form of his speech. I am therefore inclined to take his testimony with a grain of salt and treat the 37-second figure as an upper bound on the elapsed time. (Boxhall did, however, hear Sixth Officer James Moody confirm from the wheelhouse that Hichens correctly executed the hard-a-starboard order, so we can’t blame the poor quartermaster for the collision.) What about a lower bound?

Boxhall was not quite on the bridge when Lookout Fleet rang the warning bell, but he was within (or just outside) the officers’ quarters complex. He walked briskly toward the bridge and reached it in time to see Captain Smith emerge from his quarters and ask what had happened — and there’s our big clue.

According to both Boxhall and Hichens, Captain Smith arrived on the bridge mere seconds after the collision. Quartermaster Alfred Olliver, who was also walking toward the bridge at the time, arrived a few seconds later to find Smith was already there and talking to Murdoch. Smith’s quarters were only a few yards from the bridge. The captain was obviously not asleep; he had left orders to be fetched if there were any trouble. Likely he was resting, fully dressed, ready if needed.

Based on where Boxhall said he was at the moment the lookout bell rang, a brisk walk the distance to the bridge would have taken only about ten seconds, perhaps as few as eight. This corresponds nicely to Smith’s arrival; why would it take him 37 seconds to get out of bed, open his cabin door, and walk a few yards? So our lower bound on time between sighting and impact is 8 seconds.

Let’s be generous and estimate that the actual elapsed time was 15 seconds (it was almost certainly less). Since we know the ship’s speed, we can now calculate how far away the iceberg was when Fleet and Murdoch saw it.

For ease of calculation, let’s put the Titanic‘s speed at 20 knots; it was likely a bit more, but 20 knots works out to 6000 feet every 3 minutes, or 2000 feet per minute. In a fourth of a minute, therefore, the ship would be able to travel 500 feet, less than the length of two football fields.

The Titanic was 882 feet long. The three men anxiously scanning for danger saw a rather sizable obstacle as soon as possible — but it was less than a ship’s length away. I doubt that a canoe would be able to avoid an obstacle half its own length away, much less a 46,000-ton steamer.

There was no time to do anything.

We know that many chunks of ice broke off the berg as it brushed by and landed on the forward Well Deck, meaning the top of the berg was at least 35 feet above the ocean’s surface. It’s also clear that the ice formation was not as high as the Boat Deck – Boxhall didn’t see it slide by – so it was not so much as 65 feet high. Let’s say 50 feet. How do three men miss seeing a 50-foot high obstacle (which we can reasonably assume was around 200 feet wide, as someone snapped a picture of a red-paint-smeared iceberg in the vicinity the next day) until it’s only 500 feet away?

Icebergs sometimes flip over. The exposed top melts faster than the underwater portion, affecting buoyancy until whoosh — big ungainly somersault. The only thing I can figure is that the iceberg Fleet, Lee, and Murdoch saw seemed to appear out of nowhere, because it had just flipped over. This would make it dark blue, not white, as well, which matches Fleet’s description.

That is some serious bad luck. Add in the fact that, since Murdoch’s adept helm and engine orders had no time to take effect, the angle at which the ship collided with the ice was exactly the angle to allow a glancing blow (the only sort of collision damage, indeed, which COULD sink the Titanic, and which no other ship has experienced before or since), and we have truly awful luck. But the worst luck of all is that the very first sign of ice was not a small chunk in the water, or a towering mountain visible miles away, but a medium-sized deathdealer directly in the ship’s path which wasn’t even “there” a minute ago.

The point: Captain Smith made a good call. If fog or haze had set in, slowing down would have been appropriate. If the huge 78-mile long field of sea ice and bergs which the Titanic was sailing into had announced itself in any other fashion, giving the men on board time to react, coming to a slow crawl or dead stop would have been prudent. But in the absence of any visual contact with the ice field, slowing down would have helped none at all. For even if Smith had ordered half speed – 10 knots – and the encounter had played out the same way, the berg would have still shown up half a ship’s length away — and besides, the slower a ruddered ship is moving forward, the harder it is to turn.