The "watertight" compartments of the Titanic's hull were not actually watertight: they were open at the tops. This is one main factor that aided in her demise. The ship could have actually stayed afloat had only four compartments flooded; sadly, five became flooded. One witness, Colonel Archibald Gracie, stated the collision was “a sudden shock and noise forward on the starboard side.” Other passengers might not have heard or felt anything, that is, until the boat started sinking. In my opinion, if the captain would have listened to the warnings instead of placing the piece of paper in his coat pocket, they might have been able to change course again for a little while until they passed the ice and survived. A couple days before they left England, Captain Smith decided to alter slightly his route because of the many iceberg warnings that he received. The entire day of April 14, 1912 (the day of the sinking), Captain Smith was still receiving iceberg warnings from the other ships around her. They were all saying the same thing: the route he switched to had large amounts of ice floating about. Ignorantly, the Captain did not heed their warnings very well and did not re change it. He did, however, tell the watchmen to tell him if they saw anything ahead of them that could be potentially dangerous. Not only did Captain Smith ignore the ice warnings, he also decided to allow the boat to speed up faster than
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