I hadn't known about the binoculars box being locked. I'm a little surprised nobody saw fit to force it.

Once the iceberg was spotted, a major factor was the attempted swerve to avoid it, oblique impact opening a long gash below waterline and making the separated compartments less useful as more than one was flooded (and the compartments could be overtopped). The ship was designed so that *one* compartment could be flooded - which a straight-ahead impact would have done.

Post impact, the ship could have been kept afloat for a number of hours longer by blocking the gash from the outside with mattresses. It probably would have still sunk, but given additional time, more lives could have been spared.

This notion of mattresses is not original to me. I got it from a co-worker as a pre-teen - and it saved my bacon the day I managed to 'find' a rock with the family sailboat (I used a live preserver to block the influx). My dad was glad we'd gotten back - and mad at me for the damage I'd done. The guys in the shop (at the time I was a go-fer in a marine engine shop) thought it was hilarious.