RMS Titanic even head-on collisions had not been disastrous. In 1907 , a German liner, had rammed an iceberg but still had been able to complete her voyage, and Captain Smith himself had declared in 1907 that he "could not imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." At 11:40 p.m. (ship's time) on 14 April, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of "Titanic" and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be stopped, but it was too late;
RMS Titanic 'gigantic'. Built in Belfast, Ireland, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (as it was then known), the RMS "Titanic" was the second of the three s—the first was the and the third was the . Britannic was originally to be called Gigantic and was to be over 1,000 feet long. They were by far the largest vessels of the British shipping company White Star Line's fleet, which comprised 29 steamers and tenders in 1912. The three ships had their genesis in a discussion in mid-1907 between the White Star Line's chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, and the American