When the Unsinkable Sank

Like many others, I have been fascinated by the buzz surrounding the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Some have commented that this maritime disaster was one of the most memorable events of the 20th century. Memorable, perhaps, because it symbolized a fin de siècle, the end of an era which had been characterized by an unbridled optimism that human history would know only smooth sailing ahead.

When the Titanic was launched from the Belfast ship yards, the world was just acclimating to electricity, the radio, and the automobile. The Wright brothers had demonstrated the possibility of fixed-wing flight just nine years before. And now here was one more mind-boggling innovation: a glorious ship that was speedy and unsinkable. What an appropriate name, Titanic (meaning great force or power), for a ship designed to triumph over nature. But as everyone who has seen the movie knows, the unsinkable sank one dark night on its first time out in the ocean.

One of the more recent and interesting Titanic-themed books is Andrew Wilson’s Shadow of the Titanic which focuses less on the ship itself and more on the people who were aboard for that maiden voyage to New York. How did they handle themselves when the abandon-ship order was given? And what happened to them in the years that followed?

Among the many stories Wilson tells, I found myself drawn most to three men who had at least one thing in common. Each of them—at a given moment—might have been able to do something that would have averted the sinking of the Titanic.

Ignored warnings

The first of the three is Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Lines which had built the Titanic. In testimony before a congressional committee investigating the sinking, he identified himself as the ship-owner.

On the day of the disaster, Bruce Ismay walked the first class deck of the ship engaging in conversation with fellow passengers. In his pocket was a “wire” (telegram) passed on to him by the ship’s captain. The wire spoke of icebergs in the area (“Greek steamer ‘Athenai’ reports passing icebergs and large quantity of field ice today in latitude 41.51 N, longitude 49.52 W.”

According to witnesses, Ismay enjoyed showing the wire to others because—as one witness later testified—”Mr. Ismay’s manner was that of one in authority and the owner of the ship and what he said was law.”

Proud and overconfident

The second man worth noting is the Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith. Ironically, this voyage was to be his last as a ship’s captain. Smith planned to go into retirement when he reached New York.

Captain Smith was well aware of the icebergs which lay ahead of him because he had heard one warning after another from passing ships that day. He was aware that, as night began to fall, most ships in the area were choosing to drop anchor and remain in place until the next morning.

But stopping was not a choice Smith was willing to make. Rather, he set a course ten miles south of the normal shipping lanes and, throughout the evening, maintained a speed of 22 knots, just a knot or two lower than the Titanic’s top speed capability.

Why did Smith choose to do this? Perhaps it had to do with his confidence in his own experience, in the perceived “unsinkability” of this new ship, and the notoriety that might come to him if the Titanic, under his command, set a new trans-ocean speed record.

Fatal fatigue

I said there were three men who played pivotal roles in what happened to the Titanic that night. The third is radioman, Jack Phillips, one of two men in the communication room whose job it was to monitor radio traffic coming from other ships in the area.

Wilson says that Phillips felt “tired and overworked” that night. “He was also furious that the Californian’s (a nearby ship) operator hadn’t bothered with the usual etiquette of asking whether it was acceptable to interrupt (him) …” When his patience snapped, Phillips had replied to the Californian, “Shut up! Shut up! I am busy.”

The message the Californian was trying to get through to the Titanic was (you guessed it) about icebergs and the fact that it (the Californian) was surrounded by ice.

“As a result,” Wilson writes, “the message (regarding that nearby ice) from the Californian never reached the bridge of the Titanic.” Phillips never thought about the message until it was too late.

What if …

Now, it’s time for the what-if games.

What if Bruce Ismay (self-styled ship owner) had taken the wire in his pocket seriously and insisted to the captain that the Titanic slow down, perhaps even stop for the night? What if he had not been romanced by the claims of the ship’s designers that the Titanic was unsinkable and put the safety of the passengers ahead of all other considerations: the prestige of the company, for example, or the glamour of a speed record? What if the owner had forgotten about making impressions and made a courageous decision?

Then there’s the captain, Edward Smith, the man of experience. What if he had paid more attention to the warning signs that potential disaster was all about him and his ship? What if he had not capitulated to what the ancients called hubris—that feeling that one is capable of handling all contingencies, that nothing can go wrong, nothing, anyway, that one cannot handle. What if Edward Smith had said, speed records and reputations are here-today-gone-tomorrow, but the most important thing is to bring this ship, and its passengers, safely into port?

And then there is the radio guy, Jack Phillips. It was his job to listen as well as it was to speak. But, apparently, listening was not on the top of his priority list that night. He was tired. He felt hassled. He must have thought himself insignificant when it came to influencing the fate of a ship like the Titanic. After all, who was he—a lowly radio man—to take bad news to the guys on the bridge? Didn’t they already know?

So, what if Jack Phillips had brushed aside all other things competing for his attention, put the welfare of 2000 plus souls on that ship at the top of his priority list and rushed to the bridge of the Titanic, message in hand, and insisted that serious attention be given to what he should have he’d heard from the Californian?

For want of correct or courageous action on the part of any of these three men, the Titanic plowed full speed ahead through a dark sea cluttered with ice and reached that point of ice berg collision which cost more than 1,500 lives. As Wilson goes on to illustrate, it wasn’t just the deaths that occurred that night on the cold ocean, but the families that were ripped apart for the next two generations. It could be reasoned that, even today, the effects of the Titanic’s sinking—like all other horrific events—cane be felt.

Brave, decisive action on the part of any one of three men—Ismay, Smith, Phillips—might have made a difference.

The aftermath

So what happened to these three men? Bruce Ismay lived in virtual seclusion for the rest of his life, hounded by accusations of his mismanagement and cowardice that night when the Titanic sank. He never got over what happened. Captain Edward Smith worked until the very end to rescue passengers and, having done what he could, went down with his ship. Jack Phillips died of hypothermia in a lifeboat a few hours after the indestructible Titanic went to the bottom.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that this story offers a graphic lesson for anyone who aspires to leadership? That all leaders are on potential “Titanics” of one kind or another? Titanics which, when first launched, gleam brightly in the light of potential and promise, but which, sooner or later, are likely to encounter a sea of proverbial icebergs?

I suspect there’s sermon-illustration material here. I can just hear Jesus picking up on this theme. “A ship went forth to sail the ocean,” he might begin. “On that ship were three confident, competent, hard working men. Each said to himself, ‘This is a glorious, powerful ship I’m on; nothing can go wrong.

“Ah,” Jesus then says, “but something did go wrong. He who has ears, let him hear.”

Gordon MacDonald is editor-at-large for Leadership Journal and Chancellor of Denver Seminary