Why did the Titanic sink? Evidence hints at hidden iceberg theory

Freshly examined archival material suggests a freak weather event may have occurred on the night of the disaster, meaning hazards lurking in the ocean were harder to spot.

Freshly examined evidence is now bolstering a theory that suggests the Titanic was the victim of a freak weather event. Image: The Times

The sky above the Titanic on the night it sank into the icy waters of the north Atlantic was one of the most beautiful the survivors had seen. According to one passenger fortunate enough to secure a place on a lifeboat, the “keen atmosphere, free from any haze” made the stars “twinkle and glitter with a staccato flash that made the sky seem nothing but a setting made for them in which to display their wonder”.

The crew, meanwhile, saw something altogether different. From their vantage point 90ft above the sea, the horizon was obscured by a haze that prevented them spotting an iceberg in their path until it was too late.

The iceberg was already difficult to see due to a flat, calm sea on the night the Titanic sank. Image: BNPS/The Times

Freshly examined evidence of this discrepancy found in The Times’s archive is now bolstering a theory that suggests the Titanic was the victim of a freak weather event, which both caused the collision with the iceberg and hampered rescue efforts.

Tim Maltin, a historian and broadcaster, believes that the crew of the Titanic and nearby shipping vessels witnessed a “thermal inversion”, a meteorological event in which a band of cold air forces its way beneath warmer air.

He argues that on April 14, 1912, cold air driven by the Labrador Current pushed beneath warm air carried by the Gulf Stream.

The effect is a mirage. Light bends over the horizon, allowing observers to see greater distances. Above the true horizon they see a refracted image of the sea beyond. This can trick them into thinking that objects on the true horizon are nearer than they are.

Observers at a higher altitude, such as the crow’s nest of a ship, may see the gap between the true horizon and the refracted one as a haze.

Maltin, author of Titanic: A Very Deceiving Night, found reports of light refraction mentioned in the logs of several ships in the area at the time and descriptions of “a haze” from the Titanic’s crew.

One of the most striking accounts was printed in The Times of Friday June 20, 1913, in a report about Thomas Ryan, who sued the Titanic’s owners for causing the death of his son.

The Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912. Picture: Exclusivepix Media/The Times

The law report noted the recollection of Reginald Lee, who was on lookout duty alongside Frederick Fleet when the Titanic struck the iceberg. “He thought the haze was extending all round the horizon within a certain locality,” the report states. “When they were in the [life]boats they could see a further distance.”

Maltin said the report in The Times was a clear description of thermal inversion. Lookouts, who described the iceberg as looking dark, missed the hazard because it was poorly defined against the haze behind it.

“The reason why the berg appeared to be dark was because they were seeing it against a lighter haze,” Maltin said. The false horizon created by temperature conditions not only hindered the Titanic’s crew from spotting the iceberg but sowed confusion among those who might have come to the rescue.

Although the Titanic was doomed from the moment it hit the iceberg, the catastrophic loss of life might have been averted if the SS Californian, sailing nearby, had come to its aid.

Maltin said the crew of the SS Californian saw the Titanic with a false horizon behind it and concluded they were looking not at a big ship in the distance but a small ship closer by.

Reginald Lee, left, was in the crow’s nest and was accompanied by Frederick Fleet, right. Both men survived the disaster. Picture: Wikipedia/Getty Images

Had they correctly identified the Titanic, they might have woken their wireless operator to exchange messages with it and discover that it was in distress. Instead, they assumed that the unidentified vessel carried no such equipment and it would be better to make contact with their powerful Morse lamp. They tried this repeatedly but received no response.

Maltin argues the two ships were unable to read one another’s Morse signals because the atmospheric distortions “effectively scrambled Titanic and Californian’s Morse lamp signals to each other”.

Similar confusion surrounded the Titanic’s distress rockets, to which the SS Californian failed to respond until daybreak. Although visible to the SS Californian, the rockets appeared low in the sky and were not clearly distress signals.

Dr Andrew Young, an atmospheric refraction expert at San Diego State University, agreed that there was “a strong superior-mirage display in the ice field where Titanic sank”, corroborated by archival weather records and numerous ships’ logs.

The wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985. Picture: Atlantic Productions/The Times

“The mirage and related refraction phenomena, such as looming, contributed to the confusion at the time of the accident,” Young said.

“In particular, [Maltin] has established that the crews of the Titanic and SS Californian saw each other’s signals but were unable to interpret them because of atmospheric effects acting in the unexpectedly large distance between the two ships.”

The Titanic, which struck the iceberg at 11.40pm, slipped beneath the waves at about 2.20am on April 15, 1912. Of the 2240 passengers and crew who set sail on the Titanic, more than 1500 died in the disaster.

The Times