In a recent story published in Smithsonian magazine, it theorizes that the atmospheric conditions on the night of the sinking created optical illusions that prevented the Titanic’s lookouts from seeing the iceberg. At the time, lookouts were not equipped with binoculars to see iceberg in time to avoid collision. First Officer William Murdoch attempted to turn the ship to swing it past the berg but the ship was too large shift. The final report stated that “the loss of the said ship was due to collision with an iceberg, brought about the excessive speed at which the ship was being navigated.”
