This was a pretty interesting read. I'm not up on ship steering of the period and have no opinion on the subject but this guy tries to debunk some of this woman's claims.
"For all of you that think that the ship continued to steam on after the collision, I suggest that if you want to know the truth then you READ the book by Walter Lord. "A Night To Remember." Within minutes of the Titanic hitting the berg, the Captain appeared on the bridge and orders the carpenter to sound the ship. Moments after that, the safety valves from the boilers began to open, and the pressurized steam began to escape. After that, the stokers were sent to trim the boilers.
Ok a ship powered by steam has to build a lot of pressure. 1200-1600 PSI. That steam is what the boilers produce. The steam leaves the boilers and in the end spins either a piston or a turbine If the pressure gets too great, then the steam will make the boilers explode. When the ship stopped the boilers were still building high pressure steam. Within minutes the safety valves open and that steam escapes. To keep it from happening the boiler is trimmed. That means that the fires are reduced in the boiler to have less heat, thereby making less steam. Less steam means that the boilers are safer. Once the safety valves have lifted and the boilers were trimmed it could take up to an half an hour to build up steam again. Within a half an hour, the lifeboats were already being lowered. The ship never moved under her own power again, if they had tried then the ship would have broken up.
The rudder may have looked small, but it was strong enough to move the ship. This theory has been de-bunked since 1912. You need to remember that large twin screw ships are steered as much with the engines as they are with the action of the rudder. Especially when they need to turn fast. Or are moving slowly.
There was no steering error either, the Titanic was built with a helm that was rigged to act as a tiller does. If you want to turn to the right with a tiller, then you push the tiller to the left. When Murdoch said he was trying to "Port around it." He meant that he had turned to Starboard (right) to make the ship MOVE to the left. He would have backed the Starboard engine to make the turn faster. That would have pushed the stern harder to the right and made the bow move quicker to the left. It was not some strange steering manuever, it was the way that ships were steered in 1912. It would not be until the mass use of the auto changed the way that steering was rigged, even the first cars used a tiller instead of a wheel."
