From: Dave Gittins:
A little-known piece of evidence makes it pretty clear.
Third Officer Pitman gave the US enquiry a memo on Titanic's speed each
day.
It includes the actual length of each ship's "day" allowing for westward progress and the average speed for each day. I don't know whether he had a good memory or whether he had a private diary which survived. His distances agree with Ismay's, though Ismay was doubtful about the first day. Pitman measured the voyage from the Daunt Rock lightship, which in the absence of a chart I assume from my rough measurements on Encarta must be near Queenstown.
He gives the days' runs as 484, 519 and 546, which makes a total of 1549 to noon on April 14th. These figures were all available to the passengers, who used to bet on each day's run.
That leaves 211 to make it up to 1760 and 211 is almost exactly 9.5 hours running at the 22.1 knots which Pitman calculated from the last full day's run. It seems that your relative, with or without help from an officer, worked up a position for about 9-30 p.m. on the fatal night. That makes sense. By then they had finished eating and were making souvenirs. Possibly they signed several menus. (The 7-30 position, taken from celestial sights, was not completed until nearly 10-00 p.m. and was probably never made public.)
This was before the collision and the distance is from Queenstown in nautical miles. (A knot is a measure of speed, not distance). Unless I am wrong about the position of the Daunt Rock lightship, I think this accounts for the 1760 miles quite well. It certainly isn't taken from Southampton or Cherbourg. Pitman, Ismay and others seem to have considered that the real voyage started at Queenstown and ignored the roughly 400 miles between Southampton and Queenstown.
Regards, Dave Gittins.
For a navigator's view of "Titanic" visit http://users.senet.com.au/~gittins/index.html
Quote from Dan Butler, "Unsinkable" at p. 58: "As with
most liners of the day, the Titanic held a sweepstakes for the passengers
to wager on the day's run. Once the noon sun-sightings were taken and the
distance known, the ship's siren blew and those passengers who had placed
bets would gather in the First Class Lounge to await the results. A rumor
had sprung up that the ship was going faster than it had yet, and when
the day's figure was posted...the ship had covered 546 miles in the past
day, a speed of nearly 22 1/2 knots--bettering the previous day's run of
519 miles, and making the day before
that--a mere 386 miles--seem positively poky by comparison"--that
was Sunday 4/14, and that adds up to 1,451 miles; maybe 1,760 was their
bet for the total for the next day.
Reg Pitts
KDAD40@aol.com