When you read about a disaster like the sinking of the RMS Titanic, sometimes you muse about the details. Like “who first saw the iceberg, and what did they do?” In this case, we know exactly who first saw the iceberg and what they did. It was Frederick Fleet, a British sailor and part of the Titanic crew. On the night of April 15, 1912, Fleet was one of two lookouts on duty in the “crow’s nest”. He saw the iceberg and called the bridge to say “iceberg, right ahead.” The other lookout at Fleet’s station was Reginald Lee.
Fleet was an experienced lookout; he had served in that role on the RMS Oceanic for four years by the time he joined the crew of the Titanic. He was born October 15, 1887, and never knew his parents. He was raised by foster families, and went to sea when he was 16. He began as a “deck boy” and progressed to able seaman.
The lookouts on the Titanic hadn’t been issued binoculars, which was unusual. So was the reason. At the last minute before sailing, there was a change in the ship’s officers, and one named David Blair was replaced. It was the very last minute, and in the change, Blair never mentioned where the binoculars were kept. Or possibly he forgot to turn over the keys to the binocular locker. It’s never been clarified exactly what happened, but the result was the same: the lookouts never got the binoculars they asked for.
The binoculars might not have helped anyway; it was night and the sea was very calm. In those conditions there are no waves breaking at the base of icebergs, which is said to be how they’re first spotted.
After the Titanic scraped along the iceberg, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the ship was grievously damaged. Fleet stayed at his post in the crow’s nest for another twenty minutes, until his regular shift ended. The shifts had been shortened to two hours because of the extreme cold up in the lookout’s post. When Fleet reached the deck, he helped prepare lifeboat #6. He and one other sailor were ordered aboard the lifeboat to row it (some of the passengers took up oars as well). The ranking officer on the boat was Robert Hichens, the Titanic’s quartermaster, whose insults and arguments reportedly made it even more unpleasant to be on a lifeboat at night in freezing cold in the North Atlantic. But thanks in part to Fleet, the boat reached the RMS Carpathia after about six hours.
After the Titanic, Fleet served on her sister ship, the RMS Olympic for a few months, but found that the White Star Line treated Titanic survivors differently than everyone else. He stayed at sea, though, for the next 24 years. He served in merchant ships during both world wars, and lived to be 77. In his later years he suffered from extreme poverty and even worse depression, and committed suicide. His grave was unmarked until 1993, when the Titanic Historical Society raised funds to place a headstone with an engraving of the Titanic and Fleet’s name and dates.
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