It was about 9:15, as he was laying out his new course, that Rostron was called back to the bridge. A second ship had appeared, steaming up from the southwest. Rostron wondered where she had come from, since Cottam had assured him that, apart from the Mount Temple, there wouldn’t be any other ships arriving for some time. A brief exchange of flag signals followed, Rostron informing the newcomer that the Carpathia had picked up all the survivors and was headed for New York. With that, the little Cunard liner put about and slowly steamed away. The other ship stayed behind for a while, on the off chance that the Carpathia had missed anyone, but soon she too was steaming westward. After all, she was already behind schedule—her captain had a reputation for reliability and he didn’t want to be too late: the Californian was due in Boston in three days.34
CHAPTER 10
Watching Eight White Rockets
Watchman, what of the night?
—Isaiah 21:11
ON THE NIGHT OF APRIL 14, 1912, ON THE FRINGES OF AN IMMENSE ICE field in the western North Atlantic, the Leyland Line steamship Californian lay dead in the water. Bound for Boston from London, the ship had stopped around 10:30 P.M. Small (6,000 tons), slow (14 knots), and decidedly unglamorous, she was under the command of Capt. Stanley Lord, a fourteen-year veteran of the Leyland Line. He had been the captain of the Californian for less than a year and this was his very first encounter with North Atlantic ice. 1
The Californian had been steaming at 11 knots on a course of S. 89 W true when a few minutes after 10:00 P.M. her third officer, Charles Victor Groves, spotted several white patches in the water dead ahead of the ship; when he mentioned them to Captain Lord, he commented that they were probably porpoises.
Captain Lord knew better: one look was all he needed before he strode to the bridge telegraph and rang for the engines put FULL SPEED ASTERN. The white patches were ice—growlers and small bergs that were the fringe of a huge field of ice ahead. Before long the ship was surrounded by chunks of floating ice. Prudence was Lord’s watchword, and as the Californian came to a stop, he decided that he would rather deal with the problem of negotiating a passage through the ice in daylight. After all, his ship was a far cry from the crack Atlantic liners like the Lusitania, the Mauretania, the big German speedsters, or the White Star’s new sisters, the Olympic and the Titanic. They all had precise schedules to maintain: nobody would take much notice if the Californian were half a day late. She would stay put for the night.
At 11:00 P.M. Captain Lord went below to the chartroom, intending to pass the night stretched out on the settee there. He left specific instructions with Groves to be called if anything was sighted, although any disturbance seemed unlikely. “Absolute peace and quietness prevailed,” Groves later recalled, “save for brief snatches of ‘Annie Laurie’ from an Irish voice which floated up from a stokehold ventilator.” The ship drifted quietly on the current, her bows slowly swinging round until she was pointed almost due east. The sea was amazingly calm and the visibility was exceptional, with the stars standing out in the night sky with diamond-like intensity.
About a quarter past eleven Groves noticed the glare of a ship steaming up over the horizon from the east. Ablaze with lights from bow to stern, the newcomer rapidly came abeam of the motionless Californian, passing along her starboard side some ten to twelve miles away. Groves could soon see that she was a large passenger liner, with brightly lit decks piled one on top the other. Around 11:30 he went down to the chartroom, knocked on the door, and told Captain Lord about the newcomer. Lord suggested that Groves try to contact her by Morse lamp, which he did, but gave up after a few moments when he received no reply.
About 11:40 Groves saw the big liner suddenly seem to stop and put out most of her lights. This didn’t seem unusual to Groves, who was an old hand of the Far East trade: it was a custom for ships on the Pacific runs to dim their lights around midnight to encourage the passengers to get to bed. He had no way of knowing at that moment that the stranger’s lights had gone out because she had made a sudden, sharp turn to port.
Captain Lord too had been watching the new arrival from the port in the chartroom, but unlike Groves, who standing one deck higher and had a much clearer view of the other vessel, Lord didn’t believe the ship was much larger than his own Californian. He had stepped over to the wireless office at 11:15 and asked his wireless operator, Cyril Evans, if he knew of any other ships nearby. When Evans replied, “Only the Titanic,” Lord told him to warn her that the Californian had stopped and was surrounded by ice. Now, just a few minutes after the stranger had made that sharp turn, he was back on the bridge, peering intently at the distant ship through his glasses. He remarked to Groves, “That doesn’t look like a passenger steamer.”
“It is, sir,” Groves replied. “When she stopped she put most of her lights out—I suppose they have been put out for the night.” Carefully Groves ventured his opinion that he thought her to be not more than ten miles off. Lord gave a noncommittal grunt, then announced he was returning to the chartroom, where he was to be informed if any other ships were spotted, the other ship changed bearing, or anything else unusual occurred.2
Meanwhile, as soon as the captain had left, Evans slipped on his headphones, adjusted his set, and began tapping out to Jack Phillips on the Titanic, “Say old man, we are surrounded by ice and stopped.” Evans hadn’t bothered to ask Phillips for permission to break into the Titanic’s traffic or even properly identify himself, but just barged right in, so it was little wonder that Phillips tapped back furiously, “Shut up! Shut up! You are jamming me! I am working Cape Race!”
Peeved at Phillips’s brush off—and perhaps realizing his own mistake—Evans pulled the headphones off and shut down his set. Captain Lord, strangely enough, hadn’t asked for an acknowledgment from the Titanic, and Evans wasn’t about to face Phillips’s ire a second time by asking for one, or, an even more frightening prospect, risk his captain’s wrath by reporting the consequences of his mistake. Besides, the Titanic, wherever she was, was so close that her powerful transmitter nearly blew his ears off when Phillips had responded. So just a few minutes before 11:30, Evans pulled on his pajamas and settled into his bunk with a book.
Just before midnight, the Californian’s second officer, Herbert Stone, was making his way to the bridge for the midnight-to-four watch. Stopping by the chartroom, he spoke briefly with Captain Lord, who informed Stone that the ship was surrounded by ice and stopped for the night. He also mentioned the steamer off to the southeast that had come up less than an hour before, and was now showing one masthead light and one red light. Just before Stone climbed up the bridge, Lord gave him one last instruction: to let him know if the other ship’s bearing altered in any way, or if the ship moved closer to the Californian.
Stone duly relieved Groves at midnight and was soon joined by an apprentice officer, a young man by the name of James Gibson. Gibson trained his glasses on the stranger and could clearly make out her masthead light, her red sidelight, and the glare of white lights on her after decks. He tried to raise the ship by Morse lamp but was no more successful than Groves had been, and after a while he left to attend to the patent log.
Meanwhile Groves, after being relieved by Stone, hadn’t gone straight to his cabin, but instead made a short detour and stopped by the wireless office. Evans lay back in his bunk, now glancing idly through a magazine, when Groves came in. Usually Evans welcomed visits from the third officer: young, keen Groves often stopped by to chat with Evans, picking up the latest news of the world or learning something more about wireless.
This night, though, Evans’s usual friendly demeanor was somewhat in abeyance. He had a long, hard day—it began around 7:00 A.M. every day, and Evans was the only wireless operator the Californian had—and the brush off from Phillips on the Titanic had been the last straw. When 11:30 came, his usual shut-down time, Evans had wasted no time in getting off the air. Now he was ready to turn in and didn’t feel like being sociable. Groves tried anyhow: “What ships have
you got, Sparks?”
“Only the Titanic,” Evans replied, and Groves nodded, remembering the big passenger liner he had seen overtaking the Californian half an hour before. He picked up the headphones and put them on, hoping to catch some traffic. Groves’s Morse was getting quite good—Evans was teaching him, and Groves joked that he could now catch one letter in three, though he was actually better than that—but he didn’t know enough about the equipment to realize that the Californian’s wireless set was equipped with a magnetic detector driven by clockwork, so when he failed to wind it up, he heard nothing. Disappointed, he put the headphones down on the desk and said good night to Evans, turning out the cabin light as he left. It was just after 12:15 A.M. and Jack Phillips had just sent out his first distress call.3
While Gibson worked on the log, Stone paced back and forth across the bridge. At 12:40 Captain Lord called up the voice tube from the chartroom, asking if the stranger had come any closer. Stone replied no, everything was the same as before. Lord informed him that he was going to lie down a bit on the chartroom settee. Stone resumed his pacing.
Less than ten minutes later he was startled by a flash of white light bursting above the other ship. Unsure of what he had seen, he watched the stranger closely, and after a few minutes, was rewarded with another white flash—a white rocket bursting high above the unknown vessel, sending out a shower of white stars. Several minutes later he saw another—then later still another—and still another. Five white rockets....
Stone called down the voice tube to Captain Lord and told him about the five rockets. “Are they company signals?” Lord asked.
“I don’t know, sir, but they appear to me to be all white.”
“Well, go on Morsing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when you get an answer, let me know by Gibson.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lord returned to his nap on the settee and Stone returned to studying the distant ship. The Californian continued to drift, slowly turning to starboard, her bow gradually coming around until it was bearing directly on the other ship. About this time Gibson returned to the bridge, and Stone told him about the strange ship firing rockets. Gibson raised his glasses to his eyes and as he focused on the unknown vessel he was rewarded with the sight of another rocket being fired off. Gibson’s glasses, which were more powerful than Stone’s, allowed him to see detail Stone couldn’t pick up with the naked eye: the white detonating flash, the rocket streaking up into the sky, the near-blinding white flash as the rocket burst, and the spray of slowly falling white stars.4
It seemed strange, Stone thought, that a ship would fire rockets at night. As the two officers watched, a seventh rocket climbed into the sky and burst above the stranger. Stone borrowed Gibson’s glasses and studied her for some minutes, then handed them back to the apprentice officer, remarking, “Have a look at her now. She looks very queer out of the water—her lights look queer.”
Gibson peered at the stranger carefully. She seemed to be listing, and had, as he later described it “a big side out of the water.” Stone noticed her red sidelight had disappeared.
The Californian continued her slow, drifting turn to starboard until the stranger was now off the port bow. About 1:40 A.M. they saw an eighth rocket burst over the ship. “A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing,” Stone remarked and Gibson agreed. “There must be something wrong with her.” Gibson said he thought she might be in some sort of distress.5
As the men continued to watch, the stranger slowly began to disappear. To Stone she had seemed to be steaming away from the time she began firing the rockets, and now she seemed to be changing her bearing—Gibson hadn’t noticed any bearing change, though he too decided that she was gradually disappearing, but he remarked how she had showed her red sidelight but never her green, as would have been the case with a ship steaming away to the southwest.
At 2:00 A.M. Stone sent Gibson down to wake up Captain Lord. “Tell him that the ship is disappearing in the southwest and that she had fired altogether eight rockets.” Gibson knocked on the chartroom door, opened it, and relayed Stone’s message. Sleepily, Lord asked, “Were they all white rockets?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time is it?”
“Two oh five by the wheelhouse clock, sir.”
Lord nodded, turned out the light, and went back to sleep, and Gibson went back to the bridge. At 2:20 Stone thought he could still faintly make out the strange ship, then her lights seemed to fade away completely. By 2:40 he was certain that the stranger was gone, and whistled down the speaking tube to the chartroom. When Lord answered, Stone told him that the other ship had disappeared to the southwest and was completely out of sight. One last time Lord asked about the rockets, and Stone assured him that there were no colors, “just white rockets.” Lord told Stone to record it in the log, then went back to sleep.6
Stone and Gibson resumed their watch. For the next hour nothing happened. Then at 3:30 A.M. Gibson suddenly saw another rocket, this one off to the south and farther away than the other rockets had been. Drawing Stone’s attention to it, Gibson watched as a second, then a third rocket was launched. The ship firing these rockets was below the horizon, so the two officers never actually saw her, but both men noted that these rockets were company signals, not the white rockets the other ship had fired earlier. Oddly, Stone did not report these new rockets to the captain.7
At 4:00 A.M. Chief Officer George F. Stewart appeared on the bridge, relieving Stone. Stone described the night’s events—the strange ship to the southwest, the eight white rockets she fired, the ship slowly disappearing, and his informing Captain Lord of these events three different times.
As Stone was talking, Stewart raised his glasses and peering southward spotted a four-masted steamer with one funnel and “a lot of light amidships.” He asked Stone if this was the ship that had fired the rockets, and Stone replied that he had not seen this ship before, and that he was sure that it was not the same one that had fired the first eight rockets. With that, Stone went below, leaving a somewhat bemused Chief Officer Stewart alone on the bridge.
Stewart had an uneasy feeling, a vague sense that “something had happened.” Rockets at sea normally meant distress, and Stewart couldn’t help but think that may have been the case here. Even so it wasn’t until 4:30 that he did anything, and that was to awaken Captain Lord at his accustomed hour. Knocking politely on the chartroom door, Stewart began recounting the night’s events as told to him by Stone. About halfway through this recitation Lord stopped him, saying, “Yes, I know. Stone’s been telling me.”
Once he was dressed Captain Lord went up to the bridge and began to describe to Stewart how he intended to work his way out of the ice field. Stewart asked him if he was going to first try to learn something about the ship that had been firing rockets off to the southwest. Lord raised his glasses and studied the four-masted steamer off to the south and said, “No, she looks all right, She’s not making any signals now.” For some reason Stewart did not explain to his captain that the ship he was looking at was not the one Stewart was referring to and was not at all the ship that had fired the eight white xockets.8
Over the course of the next hour, conversation on the bridge was desultory as the two men waited for the dawn. Finally the feeling that had been nagging at Stewart caused him to run down to the Californian’s wireless room and wake up Cyril Evans with the words “Sparks, there’s a ship been firing rockets in the night. Will you see if you can find out what is wrong—what is the matter?”
Evans fumbled about a bit, then wound up the magnetic detector, slipped on the headphones, and began listening. Within minutes Stewart was racing up the stairs to the bridge, shouting to Captain Lord that a ship had been sunk. A quick dash back down to the wireless office, then back up to bridge with the devastating news: “The Titanic has hit a berg and sunk 9
Lord immediately started his engines and began steaming toward the Titanic’s last reported positio
n. It was slow going for the first four or five miles as Lord picked his way through the heavy field ice that had drifted in during the night and which was frequently studded with bergs. He moved at what he deemed a maximum safe speed—four knots. By 7:00 A.M. the Californian was in clear water and carefully worked her way up to her top speed of fourteen knots.
Around half past seven Captain Lord calculated that he had arrived at the Titanic’s position, but the ship was nowhere to be seen. Only the Mount Temple, another ship that had answered the Titanic’s distress call, was nearby. Some six miles to the east of these two ships sat the Cunard liner Carpathia. Evans sent a message to the bridge saying that he had learned that the Carpathia was conducting the rescue of the Titanic’s survivors. Lord decided to make for the rescue ship to see if he could be of any assistance. The ice made a direct course impossible, so the Californian had to take a roundabout route, coming up on the Carpathia from the southwest. As his ship approached the Carpathia, Captain Lord noted that the Cunard vessel had four masts and a single funnel.
The whole crew of the Californian was roused by now. Extra lookouts were posted and lifeboats were swung out. Third Officer Groves, awakened by Chief Officer Stewart, stopped by Second Officer Stone’s cabin to ask if it was true about the Titanic. “Yes, old chap,” Stone assured him, “I saw rockets on my watch.”
Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic Page 25