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was still fairly basic. The majority of ships were lost to either high seas, or more frequently, collisions with other ships. I turned up an article on the transition from wood hulls to iron: the main point of contention was the inability of iron hulls to absorb the impact of a collision. Wood hulls require a lot of force to buckle the wood, and so they absorb most of the energy of the collision, lessening damage. Steel hulls are more prone to splitting cleanly, as the narrow bow of the ship functions as a can opener, easily shearing through the other ship's hull. Clearly steel hulls increased the likelihood of catastrophic damage from a collision, thus watertight bulkheads were used to limit the amount of flooding an impact could cause. In this context ice was not a serious concern compared to collision: there were very few articles that cited icebergs as a hazard or as the cause of a sinking. The Titanic was very well designed for surviving a collision with another ship, but not with an iceberg. The iceberg opened a gash horizontally along the side of the ship across more than two compartments, which was not within the designed capability. An impact would cause more damage in the vertical plane, and would likely not damage more than two compartments. Given the information that was available to them at the time, its not surprising that they didn't plan for a grazing impact with an iceberg.

The conditions on the night of the sinking were very poor for seeing icebergs. The sea was extraordinarily calm, and there was no moon. Normally icebergs could be seen illuminate by the moon, or by the waves breaking at their base, but the conditions did not favor either of those. In reference to the conditions that night, Second Officer Lightoller said, "Everything was against us." The poor visibility is the most important cause for the accident, and the one that the crew could do the least about. It is estimated that there was roughly 40 seconds between the sighting of the berg and the collision, which is very little time for an 882 feet 9 inches (269 m) long ship to avoid an object.

J. Bruce Ismay has been much maligned, both by the press at the time, and historians throughout the years. The testimony that forms the basis of the allegations leveled at him is somewhat suspect. All testimony that he flaunted iceberg warnings is uncorroborated, and the suggestion that he urged Captain Smith to increase the vessel's speed was not supported by any of the surviving officers

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