Short Wave Sportfishing wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 10:52:46 GMT, "Clams Canino"
wrote:


I'll use this as a jumping off point for a question that's always disturbed
me....

IMHO if Capt. Smith was guilty of anything, it was a clear ability to *not*
think outside the box. So..... could they have offloaded the extra
passengers to "the" iceberg? Or any other berg?

It is my understanding that of the six nominal types of icebergs, only
one could have been an extra life boat - the wedge shape which has a
sloping "beach" if you will. Those are only associated with the
Antarctic and in particular, the northern most part of the Ross Ice
Shelf.

Most Arctic icebergs are block or tabular type which is not conducive
for boarding. Captain Smith may not have had that option. I also
believe, based on reading the various books and such about the Titanic
incident, the ship moved beyond the contact point, thus the iceberg
was unavailable anyway.

In truth, I'm not an iceberg expert, but the question did come up in a
conversation many years ago with somebody who knew a lot about
icebergs and he pointed that out to me. For some reason, I've never
forgot it. :)

Later,

Tom

If boarding icebergs was possible they should have shuttled passengers
to the iceberg as they didnt have enough lifeboat space ..

But I think one of the main problems was that once someone was int he
icecold water they were dead after 10 minutes or so .... Even if
pulled from the water they would have died shortly from hypothermia,
unless they would have set up some sort of warming method or even a
fire on the iceberg ...

Matt