Lookout Frederick Fleet was the man who actually saw the iceberg first from the crow's nest. He claimed later that if he had been provided with binoculars he would have sighted the menace earlier. However, many historians doubt this as binoculars at night are only useful if you know what you are looking for, and where, rather than being used as a sea-scanning device. Fleet served successfully in both world wars but remained a poor man all of his life. HIs wife died in Southampton in 1964 and he hanged himself with a clothes rope some weeks later. Local obituaries at the time portrayed Fleet as an unhappy man all his life because he felt permanently guilty about the loss of life on Titanic.