Frederick Fleet

Frederick Fleet was a British sailor, crewman and survivor of the sinking of the RMS160Titanic after it struck an iceberg onApril 1912. Employed as a lookout aboard the Titanic, it was Fleet who first sighted the iceberg, ringing the bridge to proclaim, Iceberg, dead ahead Fleet testified at the inquiries that had he been issued binoculars, he would have seen the iceberg in advance, because it was a blue iceberg in calm seas on a moonless night.

Fleet was born in Liverpool onOctober 1887. He never knew his father, and his mother abandoned him and fled with a boyfriend to Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States never to be seen or heard from again. Frederick was raised by a succession of foster families and distant relatives. In 1903 he went to sea as a deck boy, working his way up to able seaman.

Source: Wikipedia