Crew's 'wrong turn' blunder doomed Titanic
A bizarre communication error led the Titanic to turn in the wrong direction and sail right into the massive iceberg that sunk it, resulting in more than 1,500 deaths, according to a new book.
And once that blunder occurred, the captain was ordered to keep sailing, rather than wait for a rescue ship, which caused the Titanic to sink hours earlier than it had to, the book says.
Louise Patten told Britain's Guardian newspaper that her grandfather, Commander Charles Lightroller, the highest-ranking survivor of the 1912 disaster, revealed the bombshell.
He told his family, but never mentioned it to investigators because he feared it would bankrupt the White Star Line.
The massive misunderstanding that caused the ship to strike the iceberg, Patten claims, occurred because there were two different steering communications systems in place.
When the man at the wheel at the fateful hour, Quartermaster Robert Hitchins, heard the order to turn "hard a-starboard," he thought it meant the opposite, and he turned left.
The different systems were in place because the ship set out during the transition from sail to steam, and the mistake took place because the two relied on "complete opposite" directions, Patten said.
tim.perone@nypost.com
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