Titanic Iceberg Report

Cutting from newspaper noting that the British Steamer Titanic collided with an iceberg. This cutting along with the others in the book were used to assist with sea ice forecasting.

On the night of 14 - 15 April 1912 the RMS Titanic, the largest ship afloat at the time, struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of more than 1500 lives. It was her maiden voyage. Sea conditions were very calm with little water movement making it difficult to see objects in the water and Titanic was believed to be unsinkable. At the time of the disaster Titanic was travelling at about 22 knots. The lookouts had no binoculars and only saw the iceberg when Titanic was about 500 yards away. Given the speed at which she was travelling this huge ship had no more than 30 seconds to avoid the ice. The tragic outcome was inevitable.

Prior to the sinking of the RMS Titanic there was widespread awareness among the maritime community of the dangers that ice bergs posed. Vessels warned each other about bergs and the Titanic received warnings from six different ships that there were icebergs in the exact area that she was due to pass through. These would have been received by the wireless operator and passed to the bridge. Warnings were also sent by wireless to ports and were published in a variety of different ways. The Met Office, with an interest in understanding more about sea ice forecasting, collected these reports to produce charts and also published them in the Shipping Gazette.

Among the cuttings in the met office book is the report received noting a collision between the Titanic and an Iceberg. As it notes that the Titanic went down it must have been transmitted by another vessel. It simply gives the position and reads 'The British steamer Titanic collided with an iceberg, and went down soon after'. The loss of the Titanic sent shockwaves around the world and remains the single largest loss of life at sea. This simple text was received before the full story had been realised and is in some ways quite chilling.

Following the Titanic disaster the Met Office began to systematically recover all ice related data from its collection of thousands of ship logs. This was used to create a full understanding of sea ice trends throughtout the year, how far south bergs may drift and other relevant information. This mean that the Met Office could provide warnings for predicted sea ice limits and drifting bergs, similar processes would have been carried out in the United States. One outcome of the major investigation into the disaster was the production of the first Safetly of Life at Sea (SOLAS) regulations. These laid out a number of rules covering everything from having sufficient lifeboats for all passengers to enforcing a speed limit in an area where icebergs had been warned. Later on the United States began an Ice Patrol service which was able to add further key data to assist with accuarate warnings. Had the Titanic been travelling slower, and had her captain heeded the ice warnings and imposed a speed limit there would most likely have been sufficient time to stop the vessel before it struck the iceberg. Sadly a combination of factors including lack of binuculars for the lookouts, calm and still conditions making it harder to see the iceberg, and the speed of the vessel all contributed to the disaster.