A Titanic error?

Friday blog

As some of us cower in our soon to be unheated, unlit homes, shaking with terror at the thought that Angela Rayner or Mad Ed Miliband may be our next Prime Minister, I thought I’d take a break from the usual doom and gloom and set a little one-question quiz for readers.

Here’s a very short clip from the 1997 blockbuster film ‘Titanic’ starring Leonardo DiCrapio and Kate Winsome. Can you spot the huge mistake in the film clip?

Did you get it?

The ship was heading straight for an iceberg. If the officer on duty had actually shouted “hard to starboard“, then the ship would have struck the iceberg on the port side. But the Titanic suffered damage on its starboard (right) side. The iceberg scraped along the forward-right side below the waterline, opening six compartments to the sea. So the ship must have been trying to turn to the port side but not managed to turn sufficiently quickly.

There are various theories why the Titanic couldn’t turn:

• perhaps the rudder was undersized?
• perhaps the ship was going too fast as the captain was trying to ensure the Titanic reached New York in record time on its first voyage? So the ship was going too fast to turn in time. Some other ships had actually stopped for the night when they realised how many icebergs there were
• perhaps there was nobody with the required sailing experience in charge as the captain had gone to bed even though he knew there were reports from other ships of icebergs?
• perhaps the two sailors on watch didn’t have binoculars as the officer with the key to the binoculars storage had been moved to another ship?

It’s odd that the scriptwriters should make such a basic error which I’m sure you all spotted.