Talk:David Blair (mariner)

This article was nominated for deletion on 2008-03-19. The result of the discussion was nomination withdrawn.

Binoculars

David Blair was an officer on the titanic who was fired last minute before the titanic set sail. being such a quick thing David Blair whom was in charge of the binocular room forgot to hand over the key to the binocular room.

The absence of binoculars being a factor in the sinking of the Titanic, became a point of investigation in the subsequent inquiries into the sinking...The lookouts at the time of the collision Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee maintained during the inquiries that they were informed they were to have no binoculars during the voyage. Fleet, when asked by a commission of inquiry composed of members of the United States Congress whether or not they would have seen the iceberg from farther away, replied that he would have seen it "a bit sooner". When asked "How much sooner?", he responded: "Well, enough to get out of the way."

While this may have been the opinion of the lookouts at the inquiry, it is hardly an unbiased opinion - Fleet and Lee had a personal interest in laying the blame at the feet of someone other than themselves. The considered opinion of many experts today is that binoculars would not have made a difference in spotting the iceberg, and may in fact have impeded the lookouts' ability to see it even as early as they did. Binoculars of that era had a field of vision approximately 4.5 degrees across; they were useful for closely identifying an object once it had been spotted, but not in making the initial sighting. That was best done with the naked eye. If the lookouts were scanning an area other than the narrow field covered by the binoculars (imagine looking through a pair of cardboard paper towel tubes) at the moment the iceberg became visible, then the sighting would've been delayed even longer than it actually was.

The considered opinion of most Titanic experts is that the lack of binoculars played no role in the collision; it does, however, feed into people's appetite for "what ifs"... Insley (talk) 01:50, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wyn Craig Wade...

Around 1980 I read an excellent book on the Titanic, by a guy named Wyn Craig Wade. He devoted considerable attention to the Binoculars. It is true they weren't issued to the look-outs. They weren't regular binoculars, they were apparently very fine, extra-large, Zeiss binoculars. According to Wade the cool-looking binoculars were so cool the Titanic's officers put them around their own necks. Geo Swan (talk) 00:16, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Factual Inaccuracies

I feel like this article deserves some major changes, but am unsure of how to proceed. The 'key to the binoculars' story is a common belief, but incorrect on various points: the real key Blair took has a tag saying 'CROWS NEST TELEPHONE KEY', there were several more sets of binoculars on board that could have been given to the lookouts had that been deemed necessary, and there were no binoculars stored in the crows nest in the first place. None of the lookouts or officers makes any mention of a missing key, missing binoculars or an inaccessible locker in the official inquiries. But I have little experience in editing wikipedia beyond minor corrections, and the customs around what are and what aren't acceptable references doesn't always seem very straightforward. Is it acceptable at all to directly use eyewitness testimony from the inquiries for simple factual statements? And at what point does pointing at eyewitness testimony transform into 'own research'? How to handle statements that do have a reference when the reference can be shown to be wrong?

There are also sentences like 'The absence of any binoculars within the crow's nest is believed to be one of the main contributory factors in the Titanic’s ultimate demise.', which is just false (also see comment Insley above) and doesn't even have a reference at all, or 'Don Blair felt considerable guilt during his entire life for the actions regarding his father being "bumped off the ship" and the issue with the keys to the binoculars', which seems a) unlikely, b) irrelevant to the article and c) completely unverifiable as it's also not referenced. 86.83.220.107 (talk) 19:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]