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At the time of the collision, Andrews had retired to
his stateroom and was working on his notes. So engrossed in his work was he,
that he had not noticed the jar of the iceberg scraping the ship.
Unlike Andrews, Captain Smith did notice the impact and
immediately rushed from the chart room to the bridge to inquire of First
Officer Murdoch, who had been on duty, what had happened. Murdoch replied
that the ship had struck an iceberg. "I hard-a-starboarded and reversed the
engines and I was going to hard-a-port around it, but she was too close. I
could not do any more," he explained. Fourth Officer Boxhall could not
report any damage below decks after his brief inspection, but a carpenter
and a mail clerk soon burst onto the bridge announcing that the ship was
rapidly taking on water. Smith then requested that Andrews be summoned to
the bridge.
Smith and Andrews began their own inspection of the ship
so that the builder could assess the damage. The pair kept to the crew
passageways as much as possible, in order to avoid attention, and kept their
expressions unreadable. Back in his stateroom, Andrews reviewed the damage
with the captain: all of the first six watertight compartments were open to
the sea. Though Titanic could float with combinations of up to four
of these compartments breached, it could not do so with all six. As the
weight of the water in the forward compartments pulled the ship down, it
would spill over the tops of the bulkheads and continue until the ship sank.
How long did they have? "An hour and a half," Andrews judged, after
scribbling out some figures, "possibly two. Not much longer." He did not
need to point out to Smith that the ship was carrying lifeboats enough for
only half of the passengers.
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