Page 219 - British Inquiry into Loss of RMS Titanic Day 27 - 31

as the Labrador Current goes underneath the Gulf Stream as your Lordship has heard from “The United States Pilot.” The Gulf Stream is a comparatively warm stream as many parts of the British Isles experience owing to its effect at the end of its course on the coast. The Commissioner: In Ireland. Sir Robert Finlay: Yes, and the West of Scotland, and it is said also to get round the North of Scotland for a very little bit. But the Labrador Current comes down, as your Lordship knows, from the great opening between Greenland and the Labrador Peninsula. It comes down there with a Southerly course. Then after a time it impinges upon the Gulf Stream. It goes under the Gulf Stream owing to the temperature of the water, the Gulf Stream being some 50 fathoms deep or it may be a little more; and then the Labrador Current, when it has got past the Gulf Stream, which is a pretty wide stream, reappears on the Southern side. The Commissioner: I think that appears in the book you have referred to so often. Sir Robert Finlay: It does, my Lord. These considerations, I think, have considerable importance when we come to estimate the reasons which probably actuated the Captain of the “Titanic” in the course which he took. “You say it is apparently very rare to get such a flat calm as there was that night? - (A.) I only remember it once or twice in about twenty years’ experience - the sea absolutely calm, without a swell, as it was recorded to have been.” I submit that is a very important answer indeed, and it agrees with the other evidence. Then Question 25065 is: “(Q.) And if I followed correctly what you said earlier it would make it more difficult to pick up an iceberg with the eyes? - (A.) Decidedly. (Q.) If you had this calm sea? - (A.) Yes, decidedly so. (Q.) Although it was a clear night? - (A.) Yes. (Q.) There would be no indication of the water breaking round it? - (A.) No, there would be none in a condition like that. It takes very little sea and very little swell, with the northern bergs which are submerged about seven times to one above, for what we call a splash to get up and give you an indication.” Where you have a white iceberg, such as is common, such as all the witnesses describe as the sort of iceberg that they have known, you see them as you see that great cartoon there; but where you have a black berg, which is very rare, a berg which in all probability had recently capsized, then the entire absence not only of wind but of swell is of the most vital consequence, because you are deprived of the breaking of the water at the foot of that black berg which would produce a white line, which would be visible and which would call attention to the berg. It is not of great consequence if it is a white berg because that is seen a long way off, as all the witnesses have said; but if it is that very rare thing, a black berg, like this, then if you have a perfectly calm sea, absence of all wind, and absence of all swell, it is fatal, because the black berg does not catch the eye as the white resplendent berg catches the eye, and you are deprived of the invaluable guide of the water breaking at the foot of it. But there comes in the importance of what Sir Ernest Shackleton and many other witnesses say, that such a sea as that is a thing in the Atlantic which might never occur again. “I only remember it once or twice in about 20 years’ experience - the sea absolutely calm, without a swell, as it was recorded to have been”; and then he adds “It takes it once or twice in about 20 years’ experience - the Northern bergs which are submerged about seven times to one above, for what we call a splash to get up and give you an indication.” I submit that is of crucial importance. Then he describes the phenomenon of the ice-blink which shows a luminous effect on the iceberg. The Commissioner: I do not know that it is very important, but I do not know what produces the ice-blink. Sir Robert Finlay: We had one theory about which I confess I have some doubts given by one of the commanders, that the sunlight is absorbed during the day and given out at night. I am not