Perhaps the single most important human culprit was the ambitious autocratic White Star director J. Bruce Ismay, who was aboard the Titanic for its maiden voyage and who ordered the experienced senior captain, Edward Smith to abandon caution and race to reach New York. In record time. A surviving witness actually documented a key conversation in the Cafe, in which is they pressured Smith to beat the record of a sister ship without this pressure from the boss's speed. Some of the other what ifs might have had different outcomes