1. The captain was steaming Titanic at a way excessive speed at night, in a known iceberg zone and in heavy fog. What a maroon. If a rescue ship had arrived sooner and thus most passengers rescued, the Captain would have been thoroughly disgraced and punished. Going down with the ship was too little for what he deserved.
2. The frequencies that long distance wireless operates at are affected by ionosphere influences having to do with ionization caused by solar wind. The auroras in far northern and southern latitudes are visual representations of this. For long distance radio transmissions, operators chose frequency bands that favor short, medium or long distance to take advantage of the bounce characteristics that will enable their point A to B target. It’s not an exact science. Even fixed land based wireless stations (ex. US Coast Guard, FAA) have several designated frequencies they constantly monitor to assure that they can be reached. Heck, back when we had a CB base station at the lake, I’d mess with it late night and could often faintly receive conversations a few hundred miles away but could not receive consistent signals from truckers on the highway 5 miles away mostly over water. This crazy bounce effect was well known by wireless operators of the day and today.
3. Now, the possible compass effects of the super charged ionosphere breathlessly described. Okay, let’s give the author his theoretical 0.5 degree compass error and assume he knew the compass deviation error perfectly and the dead reckoning plot was perfect. So what... The captain was playing Russian Roulette with lives and ship for the vanity of setting a transatlantic speed record. I think this was his last command before retirement IIRC. Well, no cookies and adoration for him.
There was no fog at all that night. It was a moonless clear night with no chop on the water. If there was chop on the water the lookouts could have seen it breaking at the bergs waterline earlier and alerted the bridge.
my reading over the years gives the distinct impression that Ismay was the one that wanted a record. tough having the boss right there.
also, fleet initially said in the lifeboat that he called and called and they didn’t answer, and hitchens asked who the OOW was (implying he never saw him) - this is interesting in light of the claim made in his grandaughter(or ggrandaughters) book that murdoch was passed out and therefore didn’t answer the call from fleet.