Strange History: Why the Lookouts on the Titanic Had No Binoculars
Could a single key have saved the Titanic?
Could a single key have saved the Titanic?
Since the “unsinkable” ship plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic on April 15, 1912 there has been endless speculation about what caused the disaster. Experts have written about the unsafe speed the Titanic was sailing at, the massive field of ice the ship encountered and the lack of lifeboats on board, among other things. Recent theories even posit that an caused the ship to go down.
One fact is often overlooked, however: the key to crow’s nest locker was nowhere to be found on the journey. As a result, the lookouts on the most lavish ship in the world lacked binoculars. On April 14, a moonless night with a glassy sea, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were forced to do their job without this fundamental item.
Where was the key?
A last-minute shuffle
David “Davy” Blair was demoted from second officer on the Titanic on April 9, 2012, just days before the fateful voyage. Though Blair sailed on the ship’s trial runs, his superiors decided to bring on senior officer Henry Wilde of the R.M.S. Olympic for her maiden voyage. As a result, the Titanic officers were shuffled around at the last minute and Blair left the ship. did not survive.
Blair was bitterly disappointed and in his rush to depart he did not return the key to the crow’s nest locker that held binoculars for the lookouts.
He did manage to send off a postcard to his sister-in-law in Broughty Ferry, Scotland:
“Am afraid I shall have to step out to make room for chief officer of the Olympic. This is a magnificent ship. I feel very disappointed I am not to make her first voyage”.
Though Blair’s apparent oversight was a small one, it had lasting consequences. On April 14 the sea was calm and the sky dark, which made it difficult for Fleet and Lee to spot the iceberg until it was too late.
Congressional testimony at the Waldorf-Astoria
Fleet testified before a Senate subcommittee in New York that when he spotted the iceberg he immediately rang the crow’s nest bell three times to warn the crew something was ahead. He then picked up the telephone in the crow’s nest and informed the bridge of what he had seen. After his call, the ship changed course.
When asked if binoculars would have made a difference,
“We could have seen it a bit sooner.
In front of a packed room, pressed the point. “How much sooner?” he asked. Fleet admitted the binoculars could well have saved the ship:
“Well, enough to get out of the way.”
Were there murmurs, gasps? Jacob Astor, who built the Astoria part of the hotel, had gone down with the ship. His relatives were in the audience. His wife Madeleine, who was 18 years old and five months pregnant with her first child, was not present but mourned in private.
Herhad been one of the few to row back to the place the ship went down to rescue men in the water. In all, the women pulled six survivors into their boat, though one man was already dead and another died shortly afterward.
According to many accounts, Madeleine displayed “the greatest courage and fortitude.” Upon her return she disappeared from public view until late May, when she held a luncheon for the rescuing ship’s captain and surgeon.
Madeleine may not have been present that day but other relatives, other survivors, were. No doubt they had the same question: how could the ship that had everything — everything imaginable — have lacked such a fundamental item? How could it have been sailing full speed into an ice field with lookouts who couldn’t see properly?
Still as glass
Yet the Titanic apparently hadn’t lacked that fundamental item. Instead, the iron key to the crow’s nest locker had gone missing and the lookouts could not open it. They were told to do without their glasses. There had been no waves breaking against the berg to warn them. No moon and thus no reflections to help Fred and Reggie spot the force that would destroy more 1,522 lives.
Fleet described the strange calm when questioned at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, where the Congressional hearings were held in April and May. He testified that though he’d been at sea since he was a boy he had never served as lookout without binoculars, which were commonly referred to as “glasses.”
Charles Lightoller, the ship’s second officer, added to Fleet’s description of the unusual conditions:
In the first place, there was no moon; then there was no wind, not the slightest breath of air. And most particular of all in my estimation is the fact, a most extraordinary circumstance, that there was not any swell. Had there been the slightest degree of swell I have no doubt that berg would have been seen in plenty of time to clear it.
Could the binoculars have made a difference on such a strange night?
Sublime beauty
The morning after the disaster the ice field they had sailed into sparkled in the rosy early light. The icebergs shone in iridescent shades of pink, blue and green. Their sublime beauty awed and terrified survivors, who tried to keep warm in scattered lifeboats as they tried to understand magnitude of what had happened.
Whereas survivor described the cries of drowning passengers the previous night as unbearable, all was silent come dawn. Survivor Marshall Drew also remembered the sound but did his best to act as if he were fine:
It isn’t likely I shall ever forget the screams of those people as they perished in the water said to be 28 degrees. The reader will have to understand that at this point in my life I was being brought up as a typical British kid. You were not allowed to cry. You were a ‘little man’. So! as a cool kid I lay down in the bottom of the lifeboat and went to sleep. When I awoke it was broad daylight as we approached the ‘Carpathia’. Looking around over the gunwale it seemed to me like the Arctic. Icebergs of huge size ringed the horizon for 360 degrees.’
Others tried to capture the massive ice field on film. The took a photo that shows an iceberg in the location where the Titanic went down. According to some accounts, he saw a line of red paint running along the bottom that suggested it had been the berg that struck the ship. (“assert that there was no long gash, but rather that the iceberg deformed the steel plates that formed the hull, popped rivets, and opened relatively small gaps between the plates.”)
Contrary to what the photo implies, the iceberg was far from the only one in the vicinity. In fact, there were so many that assigned to count them gave up:
“…about two or three miles from the position of the “Titanic’s” wreckage we saw a huge ice-field extending as far as we could see, N.W. to S.E….I sent a Junior Officer to the top of the wheelhouse, and told him to count the icebergs 150 to 200 feet high; I sampled out one or two and told him to count the icebergs of about that size. He counted 25 large ones, 150 to 200 feet high, and stopped counting the smaller ones; there were dozens and dozens all over the place”
Though Fleet was not to blame I wonder if he blamed himself, regardless of the inquiry’s finding that the lack of binoculars was not the main cause of the tragedy. He suffered from severe depression later in life and committed suicide in .
Even with glasses, a collision may have been hard to avoid due to the Titanic’s location. Other liners altered their journeys and sailed further south. Upon receiving iceberg warnings on April 14, Captain Edward Smith altered but did not reduce its speed.
According to Grant , a professor at Sheffield University, 1912 was a particularly dangerous year in the North Atlantic, with icebergs traveling much further south than usual.
A selfless act
It is generally said that Blair’s act was not intentional. He was respected and had never done anything to warrant a demotion for his work.
In 1913, Blair jumped overboard to try to save a coal trimmer who leapt into the sea from the For his selfless act, the Royal Humane Society awarded him a medal for his bravery. The following year, however, he was court martialed for a navigation error when the R.M.S. Oceanic ran aground.
David Blair(Encyclopediatitanica.com)
One wonders why Blair himself never spoke about the key. Since 1912 the tragedy has been the subject of poems, novels, plays, nonfiction books, documentaries and movies. Surely someone would have asked him about it.
Moreover, the Waldorf-Astoria hearings delved into the disaster with a slew of witnesses. Why was the man who had the key to the crow’s nest locker not called to testify before the subcommittee — or, even more to the point — to testify before a second government inquiry in England?
which began on April 19, was extensive and lasted nearly three weeks. Eighty-two witnesses testified and transcripts of the proceedings covered more than 1,100 pages. The senate subcommittee was thorough, to the point that some in Britain felt the hearings were biased and evinced a lack of shipping knowledge on the part of the senators involved.
The final report covered a range of topics, including:
–the confusion of the crew
–the weight capacity of lifeboats
–the fact that lifeboats were not filed to capacity
–that no boat drills were held for the passengers
–that there were not enough lifeboats on board
–that ice warnings were not heeded
–that ice warnings were not properly posted
–that the Titanic may have been trying to set a record
–the role of Captain Smith
–the failure of nearby ships to respond to the distress signals
–the differing treatment of passengers in first, second and third classes
–the “mystery ship” many passengers reported seeing the night of the tragedy
In 1,100 pages of testimony with dozens of witnesses, why did no one think to question the man who took the key off the ship?
For all their criticisms, the British government also failed to call Blair as a witness. Some versions of Blair’s story state that he left the crow’s nest binoculars behind in his cabin on the Titanic. Still others argue he took them with him when he left the ship because they belonged to him. Most state that he took the crow’s nest key with him when he left the ship, probably by mistake.
Wouldn’t this point be something worth checking into during costly investigations on two continents?
25,000 questions
The investigation of the British Board of Trade lasted even longer, a full 36 days. Again, while more than 100 witnesses were called, no one thought to ask Blair to explain why he had the key that could have allowed the lookouts to spot the iceberg in time “to get out of the way.”
In all, the Board asked more than 25,000 questions and the inquiry cost approximately £20,000 (£1,676,602 today). Famous witnesses included White Star Line Chairman J. Bruce Ismay, Arctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, American financier J.P. Morgan, and Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph. It was the longest and most detailed court of inquiry in British history up to that time. The final report concluded that excessive speed was to blame but noted the lookout being kept was inadequate given the navigational hazards Titanic faced.
Yet Blair was not asked to explain his actions upon leaving the ship.
Or perhaps he could not. Officer records show he was assigned to the Majestic and was at sea during both investigations. When the entered service in April 1912, the Majestic was designated as a reserve ship for the White Star Line. After the Titanic sank, the Majestic returned to her former role as a New York service liner. On May 29, 1912, the day after the Senate subcommittee presented its report to the Senate, Blair was photographed standing on deck next to chief Majestic officer Harry Dyke.
Whatever the reason, the last-minute transfer saved Blair’s life and he kept the key as a until his death.
If you want to investigate for yourself, you can read the full text of both inquiries .
‘A rosy-cheeked lass’
As for Blair’s personal life, not much is known. He left San Francisco to marry Madeleine Temple Mackness in 1905, when she was 40 years old. A short article published in the San Francisco Call mentioned his description of his wife-to-be as a “rosy-cheeked lass.”
Within a few weeks of the marriage, he sailed for New Zealand on the . After that, he was not on land much — like most sailors — but it was apparently enough for him to father their only child, Elizabeth Nancy Blair, who went by her middle name.
Blair sailed all over the world and left England as part of the St. George scientific expedition to the South Seas in 1923. He did not return to England and appears to have lived in Panama, in addition to commanding a yacht in the South Seas, until 1936. Madeleine died in 1950 and Blair married a woman 33 years younger that same year. After fathering a son, he died at 80 in 1955.
It was Nancy who donated the key to the International Sailors Society. In 2007, the key and the postcard to his sister-in-law were auctioned off for £90,000. The funds were used to set up scholarships in Blair’s name.
While many experts have concluded other factors caused the disaster, auctioneers weren’t so sure:
The conjecture is that this is the key that could have saved the Titanic had it not left the ship.”
