I'm not a sailor by any means, but from all I have seen/read (mainly Hollywood I am afraid), it seems that his biggest booboo, as far as the Titanic goes, was failing to SLOW DOWN when entering a known area of iceburgs. Wanting some type of speed record was his undoing, and of course all of the passengers and crew. Seems like poor judgement to me...
This still happens. Shipping schedules are very tight, every hour not moving cargo is wasted. Combine that with traditional captain-crew dynamics and the vagaries of navigation on the sea and you get lots of accidents, for a scary look:
http://www.cargolaw.comAlso, as mentioned in Gonzales' Deep Survival book, Normal Accidents by Perrow is a good read about how complex systems, such as ships, nuclear plants and the space shuttle are prone to catastrophic accidents just because they are tightly coupled, dynamic systems. There are lots of examples where ships steered INTO each other.
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