I watched a show on the Titanic last night (narrated by Bill Paxson). Very good in that they cut away with a lot of CG diagrams and used actors to tell the stories of a number of individuals on the ship. I was thinking how the Titanic skidded over a part of the iceberg which was underwater, which perforated the ship in multiple places so that it sank in under 3 hours. I was wondering – would they have been better off crashing into the iceberg headon? No idea what would have happened, and it might have led to an even faster sinking, but then again it might have “beached” the ship so the people could at least have had some place to walk without going into the water.
Isn't an iceberg slippery? And how would they get all the people on there safely?I think the ship was going too fast to crash head on (that's probably why they couldn't turn in time) and the collision would have injured or killed many passengers
Isn't an iceberg slippery? And how would they get all the people on there safely?I think the ship was going too fast to crash head on (that's probably why they couldn't turn in time) and the collision would have injured or killed many passengers
I think you're right that it would have killed many people on impact. However, if it did run aground, would it have kept the ship from sinking? In the end, they only had something like 7 lifeboats for a ship that needed something like 19 of them. So the majority of the people died anyway in the cold water. Obviously, there was no way of knowing that when the decision had to be made to turn around the iceberg.