When Krekorian arose from his bed to close the portholes (according to his report to the Hamilton, Ontario, Spectator, dated April 25, 1912), he saw distant dark shapes moving against the starry horizon. “I noticed many icebergs in the water of a comparatively large size,” he said. “I thought little about them, however, despite the fact that they were the first I had ever seen, as they were hardly perceptible from the distance they were from the boat.”
Several decks higher, the icebergs would not likely have been perceptible on the horizon at all. From where Krekorian stood, about twenty feet above the surface of the Atlantic, an iceberg standing seventy feet tall, half a mile away, would be barely discernible as a dark nub protruding above the horizon, moving against the backdrop of stars. Viewed from an angle almost sixty feet above Krekorian, on the Titanic’s bridge, an observer would be looking down upon that same iceberg—an invisible black shape lower than the horizon, silhouetted against black seas. Thirty feet above the bridge, in the crow’s nest, where the Titanic’s two lookouts stood, a berg reaching even as tall as the bridge could remain undetectable until the ship was almost upon it.
How many icebergs the Titanic passed during the forty minutes between Krekorian’s sighting and the moment of impact was a question answerable only with astonishment that the steamer had penetrated so deeply into the ice field without colliding with something much sooner.
Krekorian’s mention of the two open portholes raised another question. A single F-deck porthole, if propped completely open until the sea reached it, would have increased the twelve square feet of initial iceberg damage by nearly 10 percent. Krekorian stated that he closed his two portholes, but how many other portholes of various widths on multiple decks were open because of excessive and otherwise uncontrollable heat from the boiler rooms, and how many of these remained open through the 11:40 p.m. crash and were then forgotten? The number could only be guessed at. One might just as well have asked how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
At the critical moment, six decks above Krekorian’s position, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall was walking toward the bridge, along the starboard side of the boat deck. He had just passed beneath the leading edge of the first smokestack and was abreast of Captain Edward J. Smith’s quarters when he heard the three-bell warning from the crow’s nest signaling that danger had been sighted directly ahead. At the same moment, he heard First Officer William Murdoch inside the bridge, shouting, “Hard astarboard!”
On the bridge, quartermaster Robert Hitchens received the order and began immediately to respond. Murdoch had come running indoors from the starboard wing bridge—apparently even before Boxhall heard the three bells from the crow’s nest, for Boxhall did not see Murdoch outside, even though the open-air wing bridge on which Murdoch had been standing was directly in Boxhall’s path, barely ten paces ahead.
Three stories lower than the crow’s nest lookouts, Murdoch had been positioned nearer the sea’s surface, and even though he was not at the optimum viewing point of Neshan Krekorian, he was at a lower, better angle than the lookouts for detecting the telltale shadow climbing above the horizon and eclipsing the stars.
From Boxhall’s perspective, it was all over by the time he heard Murdoch’s order to Hitchens. Simultaneously with that order, the engine telegraph was ringing an order for evasive action, from the bridge to the engineers’ platform in the reciprocating engine room. Even as the impact occurred, Boxhall did not slow his stride toward the bridge. He felt the first jolts of the crash a startlingly short time after he heard the three bells from the crow’s nest.
From the moment the three-bell alarm was sounded, Boxhall had scarcely more than twenty feet to walk before reaching the bridge—and yet, during that brief interval of ten steps, Murdoch’s orders for turning the wheel could be heard, and the clash of ice and steel had already begun.
Boxhall would live to testify before the examiners (during the first of two official investigations into the loss of the Titanic, the American inquiry during the spring of 1912, followed quickly by the British inquiry). Boxhall stated that when he reached the bridge, he saw Murdoch still in the act of pulling the lever to close the watertight doors below. Fortunately—and contrary to self-perpetuating textbook dogma about the stop order disabling the rudder and all but guaranteeing that the Titanic could not be steered out of harm’s way—the ship had enough forward momentum, even with all three propellers stopped, to carry it through Murdoch’s avoidance maneuvers.
The point was moot; there was probably not enough time for the propeller blades to diminish the efficiency of the rudder by coming to a stop and switching a normally propulsive flow of water to chaotic turbulence and drag effects. According to Hitchens, Murdoch rushed in from the starboard wing bridge and gave the order, “Hard astarboard!” Sixth Officer James Moody repeated the order and Hitchens turned the wheel—“but during [this] time,” Hitchens told an American examiner, “she [the ship] was crushing the ice—for we could hear the grinding noise along the ship’s bottom.”
Lookout Frederick Fleet told the same examiner that he rang the crow’s nest bell and immediately called the bridge by telephone. The conversation was very brief.
“What did you see?” a voice on the other end asked.
“Iceberg right ahead!” said Fleet.
“Thank you,” came the reply, and the officer hung up the receiver.
The interval between Fleet’s ringing the bell and hanging up the phone could have occupied only five to eight seconds. Within this time frame—in which the countdown to impact probably began with Murdoch sighting the iceberg at least three seconds ahead of the crow’s nest lookouts—Fleet thought the ship had started turning to port, and he watched the iceberg strike ahead of him, along the starboard bow. All of this occurred while he was still on the phone.
Fleet would later reiterate for Second Officer Charles Lightoller that “practically at the same time” he struck the bell, he noticed the ship’s head moving under the helm. If Fleet’s impression was correct, the Titanic began turning away from the danger even before Hitchens could turn the rudder, which suggests that the bow was striking the iceberg just as the crow’s nest lookouts sighted it. Fleet believed that the first blow to the ship came from a submerged portion of the iceberg, because the Titanic not only turned toward the port side but also seemed to be lifted slightly in that direction by the ice.
At the moment Fleet rang the bell, quartermaster Alfred Olliver was standing between the second and third smokestacks, making adjustments to the compass tower’s lights. Olliver immediately put down his tools and ran forward along the deck. He arrived on the bridge seconds after seeing the iceberg grinding along the starboard side, its pointed tip rising toward the boat deck. It seemed to him that the Titanic had begun to heave away from the ice while Murdoch shouted orders to the helm, but Olliver would testify later that he could not discern whether the engines and the rudder really changed the Titanic’s direction or whether “it was hitting the iceberg that stopped the way of the ship.”