Titanic Cause And Effect

Imagine you are on the Titanic the night it sank. The Titanic was the largest ship of its time. It faltered on her maiden voyage from Queenstown to New York City, when it fatally collided with an iceberg right off the coast of New Foundland, on her starboard side late on April 14, 1912. The public was informed that, “She was touted as the safest ship ever built, so safe that she carried only 20 lifeboats- enough to provide accommodations for only half of her passengers” ("The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912”). The single most important cause of the sinking of the massive machine was the excessively speeding. Significantly, the Titanic was exceeding the speed limit for a ship her size and weight. The “British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry” came to a conclusion that the Titanic was speeding. The actual report quoted, “What was the speed of the Titanic shortly before and at the moment of the casualty?” “About 22 knots” (“British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry”). For a ship of that size it would take a great distance to stop in an emergency, especially if the sight of the crew was not great. By the time the Titanic’s crew saw the iceberg they could not stop or turn fast enough to avoid the iceberg. If the Titanic was not speeding the crew could have seen the iceberg in time to avoid it.
Mr. Martin explains how Titanic was speeding and how the experienced the crew was not prepared for the cold mirage to effect the line of sight of the officers by saying, “the speeding Titanic would have slowed down if the crew and officers would had understood how the cold night was bending light in a confusing way” (Broad 88-90).If the crew had sailed more often and experienced condition quite similar to that night the crew would have slowed down. The officers and crew did not know about the cold mirages so the decision to continue full steam ahead was given without know the deadly consequence