I don’t often regret being retired…

The key factors that will have affected her stability were the speed at the time of impact, the force and direction of the wind and (particularly) her speed when she finally turned to port. The speed is important because the faster a ship travels, the greater the “squat” – the phenomenon that pushes her lower in the water. This effect is greater in shallow water. It was squat that made the QE2 (which drew 39 feet in my terms) ground at high speed on a sandbank off Nantucket many years ago, and I suspect may have been a factor this time.

Equally important will have been the wind-speed. Assuming it was the prevailing south-westerly, it will already have been pushing the slab-sided ship heading north slightly to starboard. This was probably by no more than three or four degrees – but when water rushes in that’s enough to push it across the hull and to increase the list. But the fatal factor will have been the captain’s delayed decision to put the helm hard over - presumably to reach shallow water while she was still under way.

When a ship turns she leans outwards, so the sharper the turn to port, the greater the tilt to starboard, and once there’s enough water in the hull, there’s no way of rebalancing. So the ship was doomed to sink from the moment she turned.

To my mind the most surprising thing is that such shallow-draught ships with such high freeboard have ever made it off the drawing-board. That may be okay for pottering around close inshore in popular destinations like Venice, but how would they handle in a violent storm in mid-Atlantic or Pacific? Expect numerous TV documentaries asking similar questions as we approach the Titanic centenary in April.

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