The story of the Titanic seems to have been studied inside and out, and we know for a
fact that the great ship was destroyed by an iceberg.
But what if I told you there was another culprit altogether?
Only one person knew about this but kept it a secret for decades.
And today, at last, we just might find out the truth behind the sinking of the unsinkable
liner…
There are lots of facts we know to be true about the Titanic.
It was indeed the largest ocean liner of its time, and it sure was believed to be unsinkable
for a good reason.
It’s also a fact that the ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, which damaged
its hull too much for it to stay afloat.
What exactly led to this tragic event, however, is still up for debate.
Most of the survivors were passengers who couldn’t know all the details.
What they knew was what they saw, and that wasn’t much.
A massive boom and the following commotion were the only things many of the survivors
could remember.
Crew members wouldn’t talk a lot, though.
After an investigation of the event, it was all believed to be a terrible accident.
More details popped up after long decades: it turned out that the cabinet holding the
binoculars was locked, and the key accidentally stayed on shore, so the lookout wasn’t able
to notice the iceberg in time.
But the real reason why the Titanic eventually hit it could be entirely different.
It all started with the statement made by Lady Louise Patten, granddaughter of one of
the surviving crew members of the Titanic, Second Officer Charles Lightoller.
In 2010, she boldly said that one of the most prominent tragedies of the 20th century happened
because of a steering error, and that her grandfather had been the only one who knew
the truth.
Later, she would publish a fictional book called Good as Gold, which doesn’t have
to do with the Titanic directly but addresses the issue from an unusual angle.
The thing is, Lady Patten went public with her statement because she knew the truth wouldn’t
harm anyone today: most Titanic survivors had long since passed away, and White Star
Line, the company that owned the liner, had become nonexistent in 1934, having merged
with Cunard, another British shipping company.
But right after the shipwreck, such information could have destroyed the lives of hundreds
of people working for White Star Line.
So what was this dark secret that had been kept in one family for almost a century?
The story goes as follows.
On the night of the crash, First Officer William Murdoch was on watch.
Somehow, he managed to notice the iceberg before the lookouts.
It was about 2 miles away, but the ship had reached its cruising speed, so Murdoch knew
they’d crash right into the floating block of ice in just a couple of minutes if the
course was not changed.
He immediately issued an order to “hard a starboard”, which in nautical terms means
“turn hard right.”
For some reason, though, Robert Hitchins, who was at the wheel, steered the liner in
the opposite direction, making it go head-on at the iceberg.
Then the lookouts finally noticed the threat too and sounded the warning.
The ship was still turning left, making the collision almost inevitable.
It was performing this maneuver for a full minute, and it turned out to be fateful.
When the steersman finally corrected his mistake and started turning right, the Titanic only
had another minute to get out of harm’s way.
But, as we all know, it was not enough.
The ship smashed into the iceberg at full speed, leaving a nasty gash in its right side,
which ultimately led to its sinking.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
If the Titanic had just stopped and stayed in place, it could’ve remained afloat long
enough for the help to come and all passengers and crew to be rescued.
RMS Carpathia was just four hours away, and it picked up the distress signal almost immediately.
But according to Lady Patten, Bruce Ismay, chairman of White Star Line, who was also
on board the Titanic, ordered the crew to sail on at full speed.
He was afraid that he’d lose an incredibly valuable asset, and his order was issued in
a desperate hope that the ship would somehow make it.
However, it worked the other way around.
When the Titanic pushed on, it scooped water in abundance, and the stress put on the damaged
hull became simply too much.
The ship began falling apart.
And the rest is history.
Second Officer Charles Lightoller learned about the steering error and the following
order to press on when the four senior officers gathered in William Murdoch’s cabin.
He didn’t approve of the decision to sail on, but there was nothing he could do.
So he dedicated himself to rescuing people on board the sinking ship and saved dozens
or even hundreds of lives, while almost going down with the liner himself.
He became the only senior officer to survive the tragedy, though.
Later, already on shore, Ismay talked with Lightoller again.
An investigation and inquiry was inevitable, so Ismay put the former Second Officer before
a difficult choice.
He could either tell the inquirers the whole story, clearing his conscience, or he could
cover up the steering mistake and Ismay’s decision to sail on, lying to the whole world
but saving hundreds of people their jobs.
You see, if the truth had been uncovered, it would’ve meant annulment of White Star
Line’s insurance, making the company bankrupt and all its employees jobless.
It was a hard moral decision indeed, but Lightoller agreed to tell a cover-up legend.
The only person he ever told the real story was his wife Sylvia, grandmother of Lady Louise
Patten.
And that was how she came to know the darkest secret of the Titanic’s crash.
I know what you’ve been thinking for a while now.
“How could the steersman misinterpret such a simple command and turn left instead of
right?”
Well, it all boils down to the fact that the beginning of the 20th century was the time
of transition from sail ships to steam-powered ones.
To turn a steam boat, you needed to turn its rudder in the direction you wanted it to go,
much like turning the wheel of a car.
With sail ships, though, it was more complicated than that, and the command to “hard a starboard”
would mean turning the wheel in the opposite direction.
Hitchins, the steersman, was an experienced sailor, but in the moment of panic he probably
forgot that the Titanic was a steamship, and turned hard left unintentionally.
Anyway, this is the story that Lady Louise Patten told in her book, and it was a shocking
revelation for many.
But like I said, it was already perfectly safe then to make it public: nobody of those
who could’ve been negatively affected by the uncovered truth was alive.
At the same time, however, nobody was alive to support Lady Patten’s version of the
events.
This doesn’t worry her too much, though.
She said that anyone who knows anything about the history of the Titanic would realize that
such a ship could not have been sunk so simply and yet so completely by an iceberg.
It must’ve been something much more serious.
And the story about a steering blunder with the following reckless orders by Bruce Ismay
sounds perfectly plausible.
She is also not in the least ashamed of what her grandfather had done after the tragedy.
And no wonder: Lightoller was caught between two difficult moral choices, and he chose
what he believed to be a small evil for the greater good.
Thanks to his testimony, White Star Line did not go bankrupt, and its employees didn’t
lose their jobs.
Later he became a real hero, and his family had all the rights to be proud of him.
Lightoller’s wife, Sylvia, stayed loyal to her husband and had never told the truth
about what happened to the Titanic to anyone but her daughter and then granddaughter.
It was something of a family secret going down from generation to generation.
And now it’s finally revealed to the whole world.
There’s no way to prove or debunk this story today, but the Titanic is covered with layers
upon layers of mystery.
So who knows, maybe there are other details we don’t yet know about this legendary ship?
And what about you?
Do you believe Lady Louise Patten’s version of the events or do you, perhaps, have other
theories of what might’ve happened to the Titanic?
Share your thoughts down in the comments!
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