Flat/ Round Earth Theory

This is a great explanation. Thank you for this. It puts the whole discussion to bed

Lool but even if they did have their glasses, given that the iceberg was not there, your eyes can only see so far right? Like there's no endless limit to our vision but like a boundary as the person aboves said.

Also if you watch carefully... when the iceberg is spotted the order is given hard a starboard and the helmsman steers frantically to port. Not only were the lookouts half blind but the guy doing the steering didn't know his left from his right. Amazed it even made it out of port without crashing.

What you may not know is that at the time of the Titanic disaster helm orders were given on ships, not steering or rudder orders. On a ship, moving the helm to port results in rudder moving to the starboard side and the ship changing course to starboard, and vice versa. The officer of the watch giving the order "hard a starboard" would have been understood by the helmsman to be giving an order to starboard the helm and thus turn the ship to port.

This practice ceased, in the Royal Navy at least, in July of 1913, when rudder orders were commenced.

Fair point. I am thinking now, how is it that we can see the moon and sun but not miles and miles away. It's weird how we can't apply the same distance we see from earth to the sun, than say from the earth to as far as we can see at sea if the earth was flat.

So steering left makes it go right...

Ask any sailor. You port the helm (or tiller) to move the rudder to starboard (which has the effect of turning the boat to the right).

Yes... makes sense with a tiller but when you install a wheel and loads of gears and stuff, you could at least try to get it the right way round.

Yes... makes sense with a tiller but when you install a wheel and loads of gears and stuff, you could at least try to get it the right way round.

Consistency, though, is key, especially in an emergency, and pretty well all ships (even those with wheels) had tillers, but many did not have wheels. Hence the order being concerned with the helm at that time.

Come on... if you have a stick, it works like this but if you have a wheel it works like this. Stick, wheel... small, far away... stick, wheel... small, far away.

And what about when you use a wheel to control the direction of a stick, as was the case in most wooden ships with wheels? Remember, too, that a large wheel in a storm might require upwards of four or six men to handle it, some facing forwards, some aft, and there would also be more men at the tiller itself on the deck below helping those on the wheel by using the relieving tackle. Do you give two orders?

and did you know that port used to be called larboard?

Didn't I tell you that in post number 50?