Steering error sank the Titanic, claims author

New York: The granddaughter of a senior member of the Titanic's crew has revealed in a new book what she describes as a family secret kept for decades: That a simple steering error caused the ship to strike an iceberg and sink during its maiden voyage in 1912.

Louise Patten, a novelist whose new book, Good as Gold, mixes fact and fiction, told The Telegraph that her grandfather, Charles Lightoller, the senior surviving officer from the shipwreck that killed 1,517 people, told his wife that the man steering the ship when the iceberg was spotted had simply turned the ship the wrong way.

"Instead of steering Titanic safely round to the left of the iceberg, once it had been spotted dead ahead, the steersman, Robert Hitchins, had panicked and turned it the wrong way," Ms. Patten said.

She added that her grandfather, who went on to become a war hero, "was lying" when he told investigators looking into the cause of the wreck that he had no idea what had happened. Ms. Patten said that the ship's captain and first officer told Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, about the steering error after the crash but he had concealed the truth to protect the reputation of his employer.

Ms. Patten also said that the steering error was caused by confusion about the difference between orders given for the steering of steamships and sailing ships. She explained to Peter Stanford of The Telegraph:

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Titanic was launched at a time when the world was moving from sailing ships to steam ships. My grandfather, like the other senior officers on Titanic, had started out on sailing ships. And on sailing ships, they steered by what is known as 'tiller orders' which means that if you want to go one way, you push the tiller the other way.

It sounds counterintuitive now, but that is what tiller orders were. Whereas with 'rudder orders,' which is what steam ships used, it is like driving a car. You steer the way you want to go. It gets more confusing because, even though Titanic was a steam ship, at that time on the North Atlantic they were still using tiller orders. Therefore Murdoch gave the command in tiller orders, but Hitchins, in a panic, reverted to the rudder orders he had been trained in. They only had four minutes to change course and by the time Murdoch spotted Hitchins's mistake and then tried to rectify it, it was too late.

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According to Ms. Patten she was told of the error by her grandmother, Sylvia, but sworn to secrecy for fear of damaging her grandfather's reputation. She added:

Nearly 40 years later, with Granny and my mother long dead, I was plotting my second novel and it struck me that I was the last person alive to know what really happened on the night Titanic sank.