Real reason Titanic sank revealed

A basic steering error was at the heart of the famous 1912 disaster.

It has long been believed that the crew of the Titanic didn’t see the iceberg that sank the ship until it was too late, with some versions of the story blaming the misplaced binoculars of a lookout as the culprit. But a new book by the granddaughter of the Titanic’s last surviving officer Charles Lightoller reveals that the fatal iceberg was spotted in plenty of time, but the helmsman steered the wrong way. Confusion arose because under the old steering system the order “hard a-starboard” meant a left turn, but under the then-new steamship system “hard a-starboard” meant a right turn. Lightoller kept the incident quiet because he feared it would cost his friends their jobs.