Did a Stearing Error Sink the Titanic?

(Sept. 22) --

A novelist whose grandfather survived the Titanic's sinking has revealed a long-held family secret: that a helmsman mistakenly turned the ship's steering wheel the wrong way, crashing into an iceberg and causing the ship's demise.

Louise Patten's grandfather Charles Lightoller was second officer on the Titanic's maiden -- and only -- voyage when it sank in April 1912. He was in his cabin when the boat struck the iceberg, and vowed to stay with the ship rather than go to a lifeboat. As it sank, he jumped into the water and was sucked down into the depths -- but then miraculously thrown back to the surface by an underwater explosion, and picked up by a lifeboat.

As the most senior surviving officer, Lightoller testified afterward to official U.S. and British investigative panels, telling them he had no idea why the ship went down. But his granddaughter Patten now says he was lying, and that he told his wife the real story. She told Patten the story after his death.

Central Press / Getty Images Charles Lightoller was the most senior officer to survive the sinking of the Titanic. Although he told officials he didn't know why the ship went down, his granddaughter says he told his wife that a helmsman accidentally steered it into an iceberg. In her new book, "Good as Gold," Patten says the ship's steersman, who died on the Titanic, got mixed up and turned the wheel the wrong way. In 1912, ships were transitioning from using the tiller steering system of sailing ships -- where if you want to turn right, you push the tiller left, in the opposite direction -- to a new system on steam ships, which you drive like a car, turning the wheel in the direction you want to go.

"Crucially, the two steering systems were the complete opposite of one another. So a command to turn 'hard a-starboard' meant turn the wheel right under one system and left under the other," Patten told The Belfast Telegraph.

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