"Iceberg, right ahead!" came the call from the forward crows nest.
Murdoch immediately ordered the engines full astern, and a hard turn to port. He wished to "port around" the iceberg. He wanted to swing the ship around the ice, using the iceberg as the apex, and hopefully avoiding it.
He was wrong. 46,000 ton ships don't exactly turn on a dime, and the move may have worked had the ice been spotted long before.
One problem; by reversing engines the center propeller was shut down, as it's turbine wasn't reversible. This removed the propwash normally generated by the propeller from the equation. and greatly diminished it's effectiveness. Had the turn been started before the reversal, things might be very much different today. This is widely understood now one all triple screw boats and ships how to maximize the turning radious of large vessels. Makes you think that more sea trial time would have been important. It is now apparent that even on departure the brute strength of the Titanic was not fully understood as can be pointed out in reference to the near collision with the U.S. New York. That was totally human error on behalf of judgement of the officers in charge of navigating the Titanic past the docked ships in the habor slip. The Titanic pulled the U.S. New York from its tied down dock with the suction it created from the back tow wake that was a result of a excessive speed on departure.