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broke the camel’s back.
    A recent theory centers on simple human error. In 2010, the granddaughter of Second Officer Charles Lightoller—the highestranking surviving officer of the
Titanic
—published a family secret:
Titanic
, she said, had its fatal collision because of confusion over which way to turn the ship’s wheel. Louise Patten’s 2010 novel
Good as Gold
focused on this explosive secret, which covered up the confusion resulting from two conflicting sets of steering orders. For centuries, sailors executed Tiller Orders, named for the horizontal attachment to the top of the rudder. Ordered to turn left, the helmsman pushed the tiller to the right. That swung the rudder to the left, where its drag caused the bow to move left. As ships moved from sail to steam, new steering mechanisms led to Rudder Orders, in which the pilot rotated a wheel to the left to go left, as a driver would turn a car. In 1912, Patten said, North Atlantic ships operated schizophrenically between the two. Some officers learned under one system and sailed under another. The crew of the
Titanic
was still operating under Tiller Orders.
    When First Officer William Murdoch barked “Hard a-starboard” to avoid the iceberg, he used Tiller Orders to mean he wanted Quartermaster Robert Hichens to turn the wheel right, to steer left. According to the Lightoller family account, Hichens, who was trained under Rudder Orders, panicked, momentarily forgot that they were sailing under Tiller Orders, and turned the wrong way—toward the ice. Lightoller hid those facts to save the White Star Line’s reputation, Patten said.
    Hichens’s great-granddaughter, Sally Neillson, replied to the British press that the quartermaster had many years’ experience, including several shifts at
Titanic’
s helm in the days before April 14. He never would have made such a basic error, she said. In addition, the British and American inquiries into the sinking established that Sixth Officer James Moody verified the proper execution of Murdoch’s orders.
    The study of
Titanic
and why it sank has remained hit-and-miss. Pieces brought to the surface have yielded clues, but their usefulnesshas been muted by the lack of a comprehensive study. Scientists long clamored for a systematic archaeological observation and research expedition to the wreck site.
    Until 2010, nobody brought together the finances, technology, and know-how to pull it off. That year, a scientific expedition coalesced around a plan put forward by RMS Titanic, Inc. to create a detailed, accurate, comprehensive map of the shipwreck site. It would fix upon its grid every known
Titanic
artifact, whether in situ or already recovered. Top-quality images of the bow, stern, and artifact field would augment the map. Together the data would form an archaeological geographic information system, or GIS.
    â€œSimply stated, we ultimately want to understand the process of
Titanic
going from ship and floating community to scattered and broken artifacts on the seabed,” said James Delgado, principal investigator of the expedition and director of the Maritime Heritage Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
    Besides NOAA, the exploration team included representatives of Woods Hole, the National Park Service, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, an imaging team at Michigan State University, and the Waitt Institute, which provided the best deep-sea exploration vehicles.
    The team set sail from St. John’s, Newfoundland, on
Jean Charcot
, a ship used by explorer Jacques Cousteau. The ship arrived at the
Titanic
site in late August 2010. Having examined data from previous expeditions, the science crew began by choosing a rectangle measuring three miles east to west and five miles north to south for an initial inspection of the site with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) using acoustic sensors.
    Owned by the Waitt Institute and developed and operated