Smith was born in 1850. Back then 52,000 tonne displacement ships were pretty rare (rocking horse shit rare).

I contend that the likes of Titanic were too complicated and too big and unsafe by design. Nowadays we have far bigger ships. I've sailed on a monster cruise ship into NOLA from the Gulf of Mexico - we overtook a tanker on the way upstream and the manoeuver took about 30 minutes. The really mad thing was that we all had to park up for several hours in a herringbone formation before entering port.

Huge stockpiles of coal means that you have loads of dust which is easy to ignite. We know she set sail with at least one fire on board.

The Captain (Smith) didn't stand a chance, in retrospect and in my opinion. There was way too much going on.