Titanic's mirage, part 2: Did a mysterious mirage-associated haze camouflage the iceberg?

The Titanic saga has mystified people for more than a century. One of the most debated questions is why the iceberg was spotted too late to avoid the collision. A recent theory declares that the lookouts could not have seen the iceberg earlier because a mirage-associated haze camouflaged it. Many Titanic researchers do not believe the haze was real. Lord Mersey, British Wreck Commissioner, said, I mean the evidence before and after the accident is that the sky was perfectly clear, and therefore if the evidence of the haze is to be accepted, it must have been some extraordinary natural phenomenon. This article (the second of four articles that look into the Titanic mirage theory) discusses the hazardous nature of icebergs, examines the testimonies of the Titanic's lookouts and other eyewitnesses in regards to the haze, and offers some arguments regarding a few natural phenomena that could explain the origin of the haze. The article argues that the haze could very well have been real - and not due to some extraordinary phenomenon, nor a mirage, but rather due to a relatively common phenomenon known as sea smoke'.