a British warship, Smith boasted, ôThe Olympic is unsinkable, and Titanic will be the same when she is put in commission. Either of these vessels could be cut in halves and each half would remain afloat almost indefinitelyö (Captain 2001, 2).
This kind of over-arching confidence in the ability of the ship, led Smith into a false sense of security that may have been responsible for his driving the liner at 22.5 knots through an iceberg field. As Hart (1997) maintains:
There was no excuse for Captain Smith to steam into an ice field of which he had had repeated warnings at 22.5 knots. An ordinary ship might have turned in time to avoid the fatal collision, but the forward momentum and the turning ratio of this ship were entirely different. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, Smith, complacent in these dangerous waters, was not even on the bridge (49).
Ironically, Smith had had a couple of mishaps in the TitanicÆs trial runs before going on its transatlantic voyage. In Southampton on Apr 10, 1912, the ship nearly collided wit
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