Who was to blame for the Titanic sinking?

The Infamous Captain Edward Smith. doomed passenger ship the Titanic, which went down in 1912. Captain Smith was responsible for over 2,200 passengers and more than 1,200 were killed that fateful night of April 14.

As the Captain of the Titanic, many people point to E.J. Smith as the immediate subject to blame for the 1912 disaster.

After all, it is the captain’s duty of the ship to navigate the correct course, set the designated speed, appoint the correct number of lookouts, responds timely to warning calls, and ensure the safety of all passengers and crew members.

While Captain Smith certainly held significant responsibility due to his specific duties of overseeing all of the ship’s operations, the assertion of blame in the wake of disaster is never straightforward.

Lawrence Beesley was aware of the complicated and impossible process of assigning blame and therefore he saw several faults in shouldering the fault on Captain Smith entirely. Instead, he claimed, “Every captain who has run full speed through fog and iceberg regions is to blame for the disaster as much as [Smith] is: they got through it and he did not.” (Beesley, 1912, 235-236).