RMS Titanic Helmsman error claim debunked.

An author of a work of fiction that weaves events about the Titanic into her recently published novel has stated that a long concealed family secret was that the helmsman initially turned in the wrong direction and that Ismay, White Star representative, ordered the Captain to continue sailing after the collision.

Now it is true that in sailing ships the tiller would go in one direction so as to put the rudder over and turn the ship in the opposite direction. In steamships the wheel was turned in the direction of the desired turn. This family secret is nonsense.

First the iceberg had just turned and was so black that it was close aboard by the time the lookout spotted it and the direction of a turn was rather meaningless. Indeed, it was probably an error to attempt any turn at all since hitting it head on would generally be best. The real error was not the direction of the turn but the fact of the turn. The ship did begin to answer her helm but then soon stopped the turn. This was undoubtedly not because the helm had again been put hard over in the opposite direction but because the simultaneous order of Full Astern had been carried out. Once those mighty propellers were put into reverse, the cavitation would have created such turbulence over the rudder that it would no longer be generating any force. Think of a rudder as a vertical hydrofoil. As with any airplane wing, it stalls in turbulence and only generates a resulting moment when the flow is laminar. Its not the weight of the rudder that matters, its size and shape and maintaining a laminar flow that are important. Once the rudder was surrounded by bubbles, its effectiveness was lost.

Full Astern would have been good. Trying to turn aside might have been good. Ordering both evasive actions doomed the ship since the iceberg then scraped along the side of the vessel. The metalurgical flaws, the extremely cold water temperature helped turn the scrape into a mortal wound, but the wound might well have been sustainable if the order had been simply Full Astern with no attempt to turn the vessel or if the order had been an attempt to turn the vessel but no order to put the engines into reverse.

Of course the Captain's failure to take effective action after the collision was bad. He had climbed to the top of his profession without ever having had any incidents. Indeed all steamer traffic across the North Atlantic had only resulted in four deaths before the Titanic. Most lifeboats were used to ferry passengers to nearby vessels. It was never contemplated that all passengers would have to board lifeboats. Had the Titanic been a cargo ship, the number two would be added to the number of the crew, then twice the number of lifeboats would have to be provided that would carry that sum and then two additional boats would have been added. The British regulations for cargo ships embraced the concepts of damage to lifeboats and a need to place the entire crew into lifeboats. The regulations for passenger vessels only foresaw minimal lifeboats to ferry passengers to safety. Of course the regulations were written by a Ministry that suffered the same "revolving door" that our defense contractors and defense agencies have.

Every April the morse code signal is still sent: RMS Titanic. RIP.