Lisa Wilkinson

And

And so other vessels in the area were warning the Titanic that they were heading straight towards this enormous ice field and many of them had stopped because it was very unpredictable where the icebergs were.

One of the things that I discovered in looking into this whole story that I never knew is that icebergs can quite often flip and

And so from whatever glacier they've come from, the underside of icebergs is quite often dirt and rocks and dark, not the bright white that we know icebergs to be.

So much harder to spot.

Much harder to spot, particularly at night.

So all of the vessels in the area wanted to make sure that the Titanic was aware of this and was sending Marconigrams

And many of them were not prioritised in the way that they should have been.

And why was that?

Well, part of the problem was the Marconigram Company employed two gentlemen to send and receive Marconigrams.

They weren't employed by the White Star Line, and so they weren't versed in maritime language.

So...

Their priority, being employed by Marconi Graham, was to send and receive all of these postcards from the sea back to shore, you know, to people on Fifth Avenue saying, you know, we're on this magnificent vessel.

Yes.

Because what that means is when they dock in New York, they can present a huge bill to the people who've been sending and receiving the Marconi grams.

So that is their priority.

So when these cable grams are coming in from other ships at sea warning them, not all of them get through to Captain Smith.

And even when they get to Captain Smith, he's not prioritising the warnings the way he should be.

What were the weather conditions like that night, that Sunday night?

It was an extraordinarily clear night.