Yeah, but when she hit the bottom, that was after a two and a half mile free fall, straight to the ocean floor. Hiting the berg directly would have crippled her but from the ships desing, in theroy she would of stayed afloat. Or atleast stayed up long enough for help to arrive. But Think of it from Murdochs point of view, bring the newst largest most luxurious ship in the world into new york harbour, and hes trashed it.........Doubt it would go down well......

Yeah, Bell said it pretty well. Murdoch did the right thing, it just turned out to be wrong. Imagine yourself driving a car, say 50 miles per hour, and an animal jumps in front of you, whats your reaction? In most cases, its to slam on the brakes and turn away from the object. This is pretty much what Murdoch tried to do. Reversing the engines was like Titanic slamming the brakes, since just putting them into "Stop" would be like letting off the accelerator in a car. His instinct told him this was the best thing to do, because I doubt he had time to say "well what if I steer Titanic head-on to the berg....maybe...". He just did what he knew was best.

A few posts ago I mentioned that a vessel struck an iceberg and didn't sink in the years after the Titanic disaster. It actually occured the year before Titanic sank. The ship, called the "Columbia" rammed headlong into an iceberg and had its bow crumpled pretty badly. But the bulkheads held and she didn't sink. Just another point to add to the "possibility" that Titanic could have survived until help arrived, or not sunk at all if she had rammed the iceberg head on.