How authority bias contributed to the sinking of Titanic

Introduction

Article shows how authority bias affected communication flows and actions of crew members, leading ultimately into the sinking of Titanic. I encourage everyone to read an excellent case study, at Case Centre which discusses extensively all the factors behind the disaster.

Authority bias

Authority bias, which is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure and be more influenced by that opinion, was already described in the previous ’PM with Nordic flavour’ newsletter article. This time we will see how authority bias affected design choices of the Titanic and actions and communication flows on her maiden voyage.

Design changes

Joseph Bruce Ismay, White Star Line's managing director and chairman, was the owner of the Titanic project. In 1907 he and Lord Pirrie, chairman of shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, came up with an idea of building the new leviathans Olympic and Titanic (and later Britannic), which shared a design plan and common themes: luxury and bigness. They estimated them to be about one-and-a-half times the size of the competitor’s (Cunard Line) largest ships.

The size of the Titanic in conjunction with the planned construction and safety technologies created the idea that the ship was practically unsinkable. Captain Smith, during a voyage with Olympic, declared: “Anyhow, the Olympic is unsinkable, and Titanic will be the same when she is put in commission. Why either of these vessels could be cut in halves and each half would remain afloat indefinitely. The non-sinkable vessel has been reached in these two wonderful craft. I venture to add that even if the engines and boilers of these vessels were to fall through their bottoms the vessels would remain afloat.”

At the review meeting in July 1908, Ismay asked for several modifications:

• Number of lifeboats was reduced to 32 from the original 64. Ismay believed that the quadruple-stacked lifeboats in the original design would block the panoramic views from the promenade deck.
• Ismay wanted the dining room to be the largest room ever to go to sea (51.2 meters by 28 meters), hosting 532 people. For the vision to be realized, 3 out of 15 of the bulkhead walls dividing the ship into 16 watertight compartments would have to be shortened so that they did not cut through the dining room.
• The design included a double hull along the bottom of the ship, continuing up the sides and providing an all-around double skin. This offered extra-safety but it also reduced space. The compromise limited the double hull just to the bottom.

After returning from the maiden voyage of the Olympic, Ismay requested the following changes for the Titanic project:

• Reduction of the number of lifeboats from 32 to 16 to provide more space for verandas, sundecks, and sports by having just one lifeboat hanging from each davit. The 16 lifeboats now planned were the minimum required by the regulations so 4 collapsible lifeboats (Engelhard) were added making the lifeboats capacity 25% above regulation standards. Carlisle, chief draftsman, resisted this further reduction in the number of lifeboats but shortly afterward left the company. These 20 lifeboats provided enough seats for roughly 50% percent of the Titanic’s passengers without the crew and consisted of 2 emergency cutters with a capacity of 40 persons each, 14 standard wooden lifeboats with a capacity of 65 persons each and 4 collapsible lifeboats with a capacity of 47 persons each.
• Convertion of one promenade to create extra first-class staterooms and suites, two of these with private verandas. Ismay also wanted to create a trellised café overlooking the sea.
• Reduction of the amount of ship vibrations by reinforcing the steel structure in key areas.

Testing issues

White Star tests should have followed after the test performed by the shipbuilder. The sister ship Olympic went under 4 weeks of extensive tests. However, to get Olympic back to service as soon as possible after the accidents, parts and resources had to be pulled from Titanic. Since the maiden voyage of Titanic was very close and it was already been postponed once, tests were cut to 1 day. In fact, testing the Titanic longer was considered not very useful provided that Titanic was almost a perfect copy of the Olympic that positively passed all of the tests.

The maiden voyage

1?324 passengers and 875 crew members were on board when Titanic set sail for New York. Only 711 people survived after the Titanic hit the iceberg and sunk. Certain issues leading to the disaster were:

• Ismay created pressure over the team by advertising on New York Times the arrival of Titanic one day ahead of schedule.
• The message from the Californian reporting 3 large icebergs was delivered to the bridge but did not reach the Captain and was not posted on the chart room.
• Normally in case of ice warnings, additional lookouts are called to their duties. In this case it did not happen. In this way Titanic had fewer “sensors” than the contingent situation was asking for.
• Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, two lookouts, repeatedly asked for binoculars but they never arrived. When after the crew changes the second officer Blair was made redundant and asked to leave the ship he unintentionally forgot to report that binoculars were stowed in his cabin (or in another version of the story he forgot to give back the keys of the case where binoculars were stored).
• The radio operators did not pass all the messages related to safety to the bridge. Among them, the most important one from the Californian reporting that they decided to stop for the night since they were surrounded by ice.
• After the collision, Ismay bypassed captain Smith by deciding to restart. It may be, that without that decision Titanic would not have sunk.
• Captain Smith never gave the “abandon the ship” command. In this way passengers and crew members made subjective interpretations of the situation and acted in different and poorly coordinated way.
• The belief that Titanic was unsinkable had adverse effects. Some passengers even returned to their cabins even though others were already at sea on lifeboats. Witnesses reported that passengers that returned to their cabins told them that Titanic was unsinkable and there was nothing to worry about.
• Crew was not fully trained and informed about the functioning of the lifeboats. As a consequence they did not know that lifeboats had been tested full-boarded so that they did not want to fully board them. As a result, the first lifeboats were half empty. Also, the last two collapsible lifeboats floated off upside down and without having pulled up the canvas side thus embarking water.

Conclusion

Authority bias undermined the ’safety first’ culture, which was part of the early design choices of Titanic. Even after the design changes she was still a very safe ship, but not unsinkable, which was a widely publicized feature. Because of this belief some passengers even returned to their cabins after the ship had collided with the iceberg.

Also decisions related to the recovery of the situation were poorly coordinated and even erroneous – such as restarting the ship. Lifeboats had not been properly tested either, so they were not used to their full capacity. If we think that based on the original design 44 more lifeboats would have been available and if we further estimate, that each one of them would have been able to carry 50 persons, at least theoretically (although most likely not in practice) all of the people on board could have been saved, especially if enough of the training drills had been performed.

As a general rule person acting as a project manager or having another authority position should withdraw him- or herself from giving estimates or opinions in face-to-face meetings or workshops, or at least express them cautiously, specially if project team members tend to follow manager’s opinions. In this case decisions undermining the original choices and putting the public relations and advertising ahead of the safety considerations strongly affected passengers’ and crew’s attitude and behaviour.