"Iceberg, right ahead!" came the call from the forward crows nest.
Murdoch immediately ordered the engines full astern, and a hard turn to port. He wished to "port around" the iceberg. He wanted to swing the ship around the ice, using the iceberg as the apex, and hopefully avoiding it.
He was wrong. 46,000 ton ships don't exactly turn on a dime, and the move may have worked had the ice been spotted long before.
One problem; by reversing engines the center propeller was shut down, as it's turbine wasn't reversible. This removed the propwash normally generated by the propeller from the equation. and greatly diminished it's effectiveness. Had the turn been started before the reversal, things might be very much different today. This is widely understood now one all triple screw boats and ships how to maximize the turning radious of large vessels. Makes you think that more sea trial time would have been important. It is now apparent that even on departure the brute strength of the Titanic was not fully understood as can be pointed out in reference to the near collision with the U.S. New York. That was totally human error on behalf of judgement of the officers in charge of navigating the Titanic past the docked ships in the habor slip. The Titanic pulled the U.S. New York from its tied down dock with the suction it created from the back tow wake that was a result of a excessive speed on departure.

And I have heard that if they had just let it hit head on lives would have been lost but the ship may have made to New York.

Icebergs being a movable and bouyant object in water would have reacted in many unpredictable fashions. However the more head-on approach would be fewer compartments breached. See this http://members.aol.com/lorbus/Titanicgif.html

I really disagree with the head on theory,and believe the best course of action taken was to steer her around the iceberg.
Think about it for a second. First,the iceberg was probably more than hundreds of feet underwater,than it was above the water.
Second,the steel used for Titanic's hull contained Manganese Sulfide,which were imperfections causing the steel to be brittle in cold temperatures. Thus the reason why the hull plates buckled and popped. She was doing at least 20-25 mph when she hit. That is a lot of force for a 47,000 ton ship.Even so,that's probably not enough force to move an iceberg.With this in mind,if she hit the berg head on,the damage would have been greater and she would have sunk within 20-30 minutes.This is considering the fact that the watertight compartments weren't even set up the way they were supposed to be. Like I have heard it said before,it wasn't one big thing that doomed her.It was a lot of little things that sealed her fate.

This reminds me of another ship that sunk although I can't remember which one. She hit something and literally toppled over within about half an hour. I think if the Titanic hit the iceberg head on then maybe she would have just 'toppled over' too and an even greater tragedy and loss of life would have happened.
Funny thing is, I don't remember the name of the other ship.

icebergs are really cold, if you must know

I think everyone had the same Idea johno

yeah but a crazy guy told me it was warm

The proper response to avoiding that iceberg should have been:

Hard to starboard, port shaft all back full, starboard shaft all ahead flank.

This would have made the port shaft pull backwards, the starboard shaft would have kept pushing, this would have decreased the turn radius of the ship.

Not saying this would have avoided the collision, but it would dramatically reduce the chance of it, or at least minimizing damage.

mm you have been doing your homework.

who was it that said full steam ahead???