Exactly correct..

It’s just hingsigt I am afraid as was said ,Murdoch had 37seconds to decide how to avoid sinking the titanic, he made the wrong decision on the spur of the moment, and the rest is history.

Yes, the fact is that there was little to no friction on the ship's rudder to guide the direction still moving forward. As with riding a motorcycle (or cars w/rear wheel drive) and making a turn, keeping traction is done by steadily maintaining speed or even adding power to the rear wheel(s). ..with motorcycles this is practiced to keep the bike upright and to avoid skidding out from underneath. Power is traction, traction is friction.

Had the Titanic run straight-away into the iceberg instead of turning, she would have sustained damage to only the front hull and possibly the first one or two water-tight compartments, and she would not have floundered.

To Murdoch's mind it made perfect logical sense to reverse the engines. Mind you he only had 37 seconds between time of spotting the iceberg and time of impact. If you put yourself in his position "hard-a-starboard and reverse engines to make the ship slow up as well as turn at the same time" isn't something you would even question as being a wrong move. To his mind, full speed ahead towards the iceberg while only trying to turn the ship seems wrong... because your still at full steam towards it. Little did he know using this move instead of his could have saved 1,500 lives. He didn't expect the ship to start pulling backwards as soon as he gave the command to the engine room, he expected it to slow the ship. Just stopping the engines would have allowed Titanic to continue along at a fast speed for a great while. Murdoch thought putting the engines into reverse would slow the ship enough so that the turning process would take effect. Thus follows the command of reversing the engines and putting the ship hard-a-starboard (slowing the ship gives more time to turn). If you think about it you can understand why he did it, and in the heat of the moment it just seemed like the right thing to do.

-Mark

mmm very interesting, i fully agree with the point of not reversing but going full steam ahead. I don't know if at that point murdoch panicked and reversing the engines seemed like a good thing to do at the time. I thought he should have conversed with captain smith over the action.

Interesting questions on the possibility of Titanic hitting the iceberg with her stern instead of the bow. Depending on how she hit the berg with her stern there's the possibility that not as much damage would have occured. Being that you have on each side two propeller shafts and in the middle another propeller and a rudder that some exclaimed to be the size of a giant elm tree, there's a chance that if she did strike the berg from the stern that their "might" not have been as much damage caused to the area below the water line. If this senerio would of occured she would most likely have damage yes, but no where near as severe as a strike on the bow. She'd be still in a very bad situation with her propeller's damaged or engine area flooding but she may have floated longer of possibly just had minor flooding.

The events by 1st Officer Murdoch on the bridge are what made Titanic's fate sealed. He did correct by ordering Quartermaster Hitchens to turn the ship "hard-a-starboard" but by reversing the engines he caused a burbling effect in the water, causing there to be no clean or smooth water going by Titanic's rudder. (compare this to stiring a bucket of water with a big spoon...keep stiring really fast until you get a whirlpool effect...then stop and begin to turn in the opposite direction...the water gets choppy and doesn't know where to go). This gives you a idea of what happened when he ordered the propellers to reverse after going at about 21 knots. If he had just said full speed ahead and hard-a-starboard...its very likely they would have missed the iceberg. They only sideswiped it in the first place... just a little more and they would have likely cleared the berg and any of it that remained under the waterline.

what, but wouldn't the water just flow into the other compartments one after the other?

if the titanic hit the berg head on, only 1 or 2 compartments would have flooded and she would have stayed afloat.

Well If the ship went down by the stern then the break may have hapened beteween the 1st and 2nd funel and the bow section would be in as bad condition as the stern is now. Basically just the opposite side to what did happen.

the bacteria and fungi down there might have eroded the stern a bit