No special training was provided for the ship's officers on the handling characteristics of a ship the size of the Titanic.

When traveling at over 20 knots, a ship like the Titanic cannot be easily stopped. Therefore, in such a large vessel, the actions necessary to avoid a collision are not intuitively clear. On the night of April 12, the officer on the bridge did what seemed to be obvious: he turned away from the iceberg and put the ship's engines in reverse.

Although reversing the engines is how a ship is stopped, we now know that his actions were wrong in this case. He should have turned into the iceberg and increased the ship speed, thereby missing the iceberg or at least minimizing the area of contact.

Today, supertanker crews use simulators to learn the operating characteristics of their giant vessels.