A balmy sunup was warming into a sunny afternoon just as the RMSTitanic ’s maiden ocean trip began . The 882 - foot ( 269 - time ) watercraft stretch the distance of two - and - a - half football game field of battle churned out from its port wine at Southampton , England , tie up for New York City . After tying up in France and Ireland , the steam - powered Titanic was stretch with cargo , ember and a manifest that had grown to 2,240 rider and crew member .
Just before midnight on April 14 , 1912 , the Titanic excise a massiveicebergin the Atlantic Ocean and sink about 400 miles ( 644 kilometers ) south of Newfoundland , Canada . More than 1,500 men , women and child die . Among the debris of the ship littering the ocean trading floor was a single piece of equipment that could very well have keep their life story : binoculars [ informant : History ] .
In the years that followed one of history ’s most abiding disasters , one enquiry would dog the Titanic . Could the use of binoculars have forbid the Titanic disaster ? If a crew member in the vaporing ’s nest would have used them , he could ’ve spotted the iceberg in time to change course of instruction , saving the life of everyone on board .
There were binoculars aboard the Titanic , but unfortunately , no one knew it . The binoculars were hoard in a locker in the crow ’s nest – where they were most needed – but the Florida key to the footlocker was n’t on board . That ’s because a sailor identify David Blair , who was reassign to another ship at the last min , forgot to provide the headstone behind when he left . The tonality was in Blair ’s pocket .
Lookout Fred Fleet , who survived the Titanic disaster , would later on insist that if binoculars had been useable , the iceberg lettuce would have been spot in enough time for the ship to take evasive action . The use of binoculars would have given " enough time to get out of the fashion , " Fleet reportedly said [ seed : Salkeld ] . Others contend the binoculars would n’t have helped because it was too dark as the ship go up the iceberg . Although the night sky was clear , there was n’t amoonto light the way . And there was no jazz , create a glassy ocean that failed to give off telling ripples around float icebergs [ rootage : Lipman ] .
In 2007 , the crow ’s nest locker keystone and a mailing-card Blair wrote expressing his disappointment at not being on the Titanic ’s initiatory ocean trip sold for $ 145,000 to a collector in China [ sources : Belfast Telegraph , Salkeld ] .
