The "key" to the Titanic's sinking??

[mc_squared]

The man who sank the Titanic by walking off with vital locker key

 

By LUKE SALKELD - More by this author » Last updated at 20:27pm on 28th August 2007 Comments (1)

Second Officer David Blair was taken off the Titanic at the 11th hour

 

It was perhaps the most catastrophic lapse of memory in history, costing more than 1,500 lives.

 

A sailor called David Blair forgot to leave behind a key as the Titanic set off on its maiden voyage.

Without it, his shipmates were unable to open a locker in the crow's nest containing a pair of binoculars for the designated lookout.

The binoculars were to look out for dangers in the distance including signs of bad weather - and icebergs.

Lookout Fred Fleet, who survived the disaster in which 1,522 people lost their lives, later told an official inquiry that if they had binoculars they would have seen the iceberg sooner.

When asked by a US senator how much sooner it might have been spotted, Mr Fleet replied: "Enough to get out of the way."

Ninety-five years later, the key which may have saved the luxury liner is up for auction - along with a postcard from Mr Blair telling of his disappointment at not being on the maiden voyage.

 

The key would have opened a locker where the crows nest's binoculars were kept

 

Alan Aldridge, of auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Sons in Wiltshire, said: "Mr Blair was the second officer in charge of the crows nest and he had the key, which we believe was for the binoculars locker in the nest.

 

"A few days before the Titanic sailed he was bumped off the ship, a decision which probably saved his life.

"But in Blair's rush to leave Titanic he carried this key off with him in his pocket and forgot to hand it to his replacement, Charles Lightoller.

"Had Lightoller had the key then there probably would have been a pair of binoculars in the crows nest.

"It is supposition but, in lookout Fleet's own words, they would have seen the iceberg sooner with the binoculars.

"It is the key that had the potential to save the Titanic."

 

Charles Lightoller - who replaced Blair as Second Officer and should have been given the key - was the most senior officer to survive the disaster

 

Mr Blair, from Tayside, was 37 when he sailed on the Titanic from Belfast to Southampton, and Mr Fleet recalled his ship mate having the binoculars with him during the two-day trip.

 

He had been due to be the second officer for the maiden voyage to New York on April 10 but was told at the 11th hour he wasn't going.

Bosses at White Star Line decided Henry Wilde, the experienced chief officer of the Titanic's sister ship the Olympic, should be transferred instead.

As a result everybody was moved down a rank but Mr Blair was deemed too senior to take up the position of third officer and was tasked to another ship.

Although the move would prove to save Mr Blair's life, he wrote of his disappointment in a postcard he sent to his sister-in-law.

He wrote: "Am afraid I shall have to step out to make room for chief officer of the Olympic. This is a magnificent ship, I feel very disappointed I am not to make her first voyage."

The 46,000-tonne Titanic struck the iceberg in the north Atlantic at 11.45pm on April 14 and sank at 2.20am on April 15.

According to the official US inquiry into the sinking, Mr Fleet said he had previously used binoculars - known as glasses - on the RMS Oceanic, another trans-Atlantic liner.

Scroll down for more ...

The Titantic struck an iceberg on April 14 1912

 

Senator Smith, chair of the inquiry, asked Fleet: "Suppose you had glasses ... could you have seen this black object [the iceberg] at a greater distance?"

Fleet replied: "We could have seen it a bit sooner."

Asked "How much sooner?", he said: "Well, enough to get out of the way."

In Mr Blair's defence, Mr Aldridge added: "Blair would have been rushing about tidying up his loose ends before then.

"In his rush it slipped his mind to hand over the key so the fate of the Titanic was in his hands in a round-about way.

"But in terms of blame then you have to look at the captain, EJ Smith. The ship was going too fast in an ice field which he had warnings about."

He continued: "There was a pair of binoculars on the bridge and a pair for the crows nest because Blair had them just days before.

Scroll down for more ...

The image of the ship sinking in the 1997 film Titanic

 

"But the failure to provide the lookouts with them could have been down to Lightoller not knowing where they were.

"He would have found them had he been able to open the locker.

"So in the end all the lookouts had were their own eyes."

A year after the Titanic disaster Mr Blair was awarded the Kings Gallantry medal for saving life at sea.

Mr Blair kept the key as a memento and eventually passed it on to his daughter Nancy who gave it to the British and International Seamans Society in the 1980s and it is now being sold.

The key and the postcard are expected to fetch up to £70,000 at the auction on September 22.

[Black Rose]

Mr Blair should be locked up for the manslaughter of those who died...

[mc_squared]

Mr Blair should be locked up for the manslaughter of those who died...

 

Which "Blair" are you talking about?:rolleyes:

[Black Rose]

Both Tony and David.

[brandon313]

though that may have prevented them from hitting the berg, the ship SHOULD have stayed afloat much longer than it did.....the generally accepted version was that the weight of the water caused the ship to raise hundreds of feet into the air, causing the ship to break in two halves, causing it to sink MUCH faster...

 

 

alot of people ask "why werent there enough life boats?" well simply because there didnt NEED to be enough life boats for the entire ship, the inspection that the ship needed to pass in order to set sail was for at least half of the passengers to fit into life boats, but the ship would take so long to sink, that help would arrive to rescue the others.....

 

So the question historians ask today is, why did it sink so fast? because ALOT of eye witnesses say that the ship DIDNT raise hundreds of feet into the air....just a few feet according to most..(about what a ship would encounter in normal choppy sea waves)

 

But we do KNOW that the ship DID break in half, causing it to sink much faster.....what was wrong with the ship??

 

 

THE EXPANSION JOINT (a very narrow cabin of air running down the middle of the ship, that allows the ship to move with the ocean as it goes over waves...)

 

 

new evidence points out that the expansion joint on the titanic was horribly flawed from the beginning....being the largest ship of its time, designers had to find a way to allow the ship to move with the waves. they were a new thing, since ships of the era were much smaller and didnt need them. Now MODERN expansion joints have a round circular joint in the center of the hull (everyone knows the worst thing for ships and planes is squared edges, it causes tension, which causes cracks, thats why airplane windows arent squared) BUT new trips to Titanic and blueprints of the ship show that the expansion joint was NOT CIRCULAR, but instead was actually a straight crack like joint...(very hard to explain.

 

BUT the Titanic's sister ship "Brittanic" which sunk in the Mediterranean WWII or WWI cant remember which, has been explored, and the expansion joint HAD BEEN CORRECTED TO A CIRCULAR PATTERN JOINT (the modern joint).....which CLEARLY shows that the owner of White Star Lines (who escaped from the titanic) KNEW that the joint had failed, and had therefor changed it in his later designs.

 

 

interesting stuff really.