Eleven Hours and 40 Minutes
	At local apparent noon on Sunday, April 14, the Titanic was about 126 nautical miles before the corner, a point in the North Atlantic at 42° N, 47° W, that marked the end of the westbound great circle route that she was following toward New York. After the Titanic came to a final stop following the collision, she was located close to 41° 46’ N, 49° 56’ W, or about 132 nautical miles west of the corner and about 2.5 miles to the north and about a mile east of the wreck site. Best estimates for the locations of the Titanic are as follows: Noon 43° 01.8’N, 44° 31.5’ W; alter-course point at 5:50 p.m. at 41° 56’ N, 47° 04’ W; corrected stellar fix charted for 7:40 p.m.at 41° 52’ N, 47° 58’ W; collision point at 41° 45.5’ N, 49° 55’ W, and a final stopping point at 41° 46’ N, 49° 56’ W. Some details on estimating the ground track are covered in “A Minute of Time,” Titanic Historical Society’s Titanic Commutator, No. 171 and No. 172, by this author. The results presented here, however, have been revised since that time and also extended from noon to the most likely stopping point for the vessel after colliding with the iceberg. The final stopping point was derived by obtaining an estimate of the local current in the vicinity of the wreck site from the position of the wreckage seen on the morning of April 15 and applying it in reverse from the known wreck site location. This collision point and final stopping point locations for Titanic given here are covered in my on-line article, "Collision Point." Notice that the estimated position of the alter course point for 5:50 p.m. is about 5 nautical miles SW of the corner point.This, and the ground tracks shown here, were derived using a ship speed of 22 knots, a course before the corner of 241° true, and course following the turn of 266° true. Average current set and drift from noon to the star fix charted for 7:40 p.m. was derived as having a drift of of 0.59 knots and set of 174° true. Ground track from star fix to collision point was the line between those derived positions. The distance over ground from noon to the collision point is just about 258 nautical miles over the route taken. If the time of collision was 11:40 p.m. ATS, then the speed made good works out to be 22.11 knots. If however the collision was at 12:04 on an unadjusted clock as Titanic researcher David Brown has suggested, then the speed made good over ground comes out to be 21.38 knots, or almost three-fourths of knot slower. This presents a problem since the ship had averaged 22.1 knots over ground from local apparent noon Saturday to local apparent noon Sunday, a period that lasted 24 hours and 45 minutes. And we know that the ship did not slow up after that. Just the opposite. Additional boilers were lit about 8 a.m. that Sunday morning and connected up that Sunday evening at 7 p.m. A higher rate of engine revolutions were noted that evening by several passengers, and an average speed through the water of 22.29 knots from noon to the collision is derived by the distance run of 260 miles that was reported on the ship's log by QM George Rowe. Additional information can be found in part 2 of my THS Titanic Commutator article, "The Mystery of Time." The chart below shows the likely ground track of the Titanic on April 14, 1912 from local apparent noon until she came to a final stop some short time after striking an iceberg.
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