The Great Titanic Conspiracy

by Robin Gardiner

  Contrary to White Star Line standing orders, Captain Smith had elected to follow the ‘Autumn Southern’ route. Company orders forbade the use of this route after mid-March because of the danger of encountering icebergs. Instead the ship should have been on the ‘Outward Southern’ route, which would have kept her about 60 miles further south, and clear of the icebergs and masses of field ice that always came south from the Arctic at that time of year. The ‘Autumn’ route was the slightly shorter of the two, but even the parsimonious management of the White Star Line considered the extra expense in fuel a good investment if it meant not losing a ship. Obviously Captain Smith did not agree.

  On that Saturday morning, then, Titanic was some considerable distance further north than perhaps she should have been. Some distance ahead and about 20 miles further north, the Leyland Line vessel Californian was making her best possible speed westwards, all 11 knots of it. Titanic, making almost twice Californian’s speed, was rapidly closing the gap between them. The White Star liner’s captain and senior officers were all well aware that within 24 hours they would enter an area where masses of ice had already been reported. There was still plenty of time for Captain Smith to order a course change to the south, which would take his ship safely clear of the ice and still allow him to make New York on time if he wanted to. He obviously didn’t want to because Titanic sped onwards toward the hazard ahead.

  Patrolling the fishing grounds around the Newfoundland Grand Banks, an area of shallower sea that abounded in marine life, was the Royal Navy’s cruiser HMS Sirius. It would have been a simple matter for Titanic to contact the Sirius by wireless to find out just how bad conditions ahead really were. Captain Smith chose not to take even this simple precaution.

  As it happened, Sirius was not the only naval vessel abroad on the North Atlantic at the time. Both the British and American navies were ostensibly engaged on anti-submarine exercises in the area the liner was approaching. The naval presence was in fact quite substantial and included not only submarines and anti-submarine ships but heavier units as well, such as destroyers, cruisers and at least one new battleship. The majority of these warships would have been equipped with powerful wireless installations. They would also have been well aware that the liner was approaching them. Ships equipped with wireless were supplied with charts showing what ships should be where at any given time, so that they knew what vessels were in radio range. It would have been a simple matter to have sent a warning to Titanic, but it didn’t happen.

  The wireless apparatus aboard the American and British warships on the North Atlantic was strangely silent. There seems to be no record of any ship, civilian or military, picking up any radio traffic from the naval vessels, intended for them or not. However, it is certain that the warships were picking up the signals sent out from all the wireless-equipped merchant vessels within a couple of hundred miles of them. Wireless sets of the time were not the precision instruments they are today. Any transmission could, and probably would, be overheard by any receiving station within range. That is why all sensitive military traffic was sent in code. The curious radio silence observed by the warships argues that they were deliberately trying to conceal their presence. It wasn’t wartime and the ships were supposedly engaged in a multi-national exercise. Wireless signals between the ships involved should have been almost constant. The anti-submarine exercise, which could have been carried out more conveniently much closer to home, could have been nothing more than an excuse for the naval vessels being in the area. It is not impossible that they were acting as distant escort for the liner and her cargo of gold. The distant escort principle has been used by navies to protect merchant ships for many years because large warships are not only very much faster than most of their civilian counterparts, but also require more sea room to manoeuvre.

  Saturday was relatively uneventful aboard Titanic. Passengers wandered about their own areas of the ship, still blissfully unaware of the fire that supposedly raged in forward bunker No 10. Still nobody noticed the smoke and heat coming from the top of the coal chute for that bunker. Down in the forward boiler room some of the 12 firemen specially signed on to fight the fire apparently toiled to remove the coal from the bunker. The fire had apparently already done a significant amount of damage to the ship. The heat had caused the steel plating at the bottom of the watertight bulkhead to twist and buckle. It would also have burned any paint off the steel and caused it to go rusty. To disguise this damage it seems that the firemen had instructions to smear the bare, discoloured plating with old oil, or so they said. Hardly a satisfactory structural repair, but only what one would expect with this particular ship. The story is patently untrue. If the plating was hot enough to have buckled it was also hot enough to have vaporised any oil smeared on it. The smoke and vapour generated would have made the whole boiler room practically untenable, not to mention the fact that hot oil vapour is an explosive gas that is very easy to ignite, so it is not something anyone would want to see in a boiler room with a dozen furnaces. Getting volunteers for that job cannot have been easy.

  As I have never believed that Captain Smith was demented, I have also never believed he put to sea with an uncontrolled bunker fire aboard. If I am right, there was some other reason why 12 men had been specially signed on to tend to that particular bunker. The most likely use for the bunker was as an extra trimming tank, probably filled with water, to balance that coming in further aft. This is of course mere speculation, as much of the space between the skins of the ship’s double bottom was divided into sections that could be flooded to trim the ship. Those sections were not used as trimming tanks were filled with fresh water for the boilers. Drinking water was kept in special tanks along both sides of the electric generator room on the lowest deck of the ship, well aft.

  First-class passengers stayed in their cabins, strolled on the promenade decks or enjoyed a cigar in their richly appointed, mahogany-panelled Georgian smoking room. Ladies talked or composed letters in the light and airy reading and writing room. Men and women gathered in the Louis Quinze Lounge. First and second class had access to the sycamore-panelled library, which was notionally a second class public room. Both upper classes had access to the restaurant and Café Parisien at the aft end of B Deck. Otherwise second-class passengers had their own oak-panelled smoke room and promenade decks. Too much fraternisation between first and second class was not encouraged, while fraternisation between third class and the upper two classes was actively discouraged, to say the least. Except when they were enjoying their own promenade areas on the aft well deck, and sometimes the forward one as well, third-class passengers were not even allowed to see those in first and second class, and even then they had to look up to them. Third class had their own areas on the ship and woe betide them if they strayed.

  Much the same applied to the crew concerning the passengers in first and second class, and to a great extent to those travelling in third class. Only officers and stewards were allowed to meet first and second-class passengers. The ordinary working seamen aboard first-class liners had their own passageways throughout the ship, which took them well clear of the passengers. The firemen, for example, had their accommodation, messes and galleys on C, D, E, F and G Decks beneath the forecastle, right in the bows of the ship. To reach their workplaces in the vessel’s boiler rooms they had to descend a couple of spiral stairways to the very lowest deck of the ship, the tank top. From there they would make their way through a specially constructed tunnel beneath the forward two holds and on into the forward No 6 boiler room. Then they would make their way aft to whatever boiler room they wanted through the watertight doors in the bottom of the bulkheads that divided the ship’s hull into so-called watertight compartments.

  The doors cut through these bulkheads were an obvious source of danger should the vessel’s hull be holed. To minimise this risk watertight doors that could be closed by the flick of a switch on the bridge were provided. As an additional safeguard the watertight doors were also fitted with s
witches, operated by floats, that would detect any amount of water flooding the bottom of the ship and automatically close the doors - a fairly foolproof design, one might suppose, until one takes a closer look at the arrangement. In the first instance any opening in the watertight bulkheads is an undesirable feature and automatically means that they are not truly watertight. Before the automatic switches could operate a considerable amount of water would necessarily have entered the boiler rooms. The only true safeguard lay in the fact that these doors were closed by gravity (a law against which there is no appeal). They were held up in the open position by powerful electro-magnets. As soon as the electricity supply to those magnets failed, the doors would close under their own weight, provided that there was nothing beneath that could jam them open. In reality the watertight doors were a joke. Any piece of equipment or rubbish, a fireman’s shovel or even a quantity of coal would suffice to prevent a door from closing properly. If the door was not fully closed then it might as well not have been there at all.

  The previously mentioned tunnel used by the firemen to reach their workplaces was known to be vitally important to the safety of the ship in the event of a serious accident or collision. If the firemen could not reach the boiler furnaces there would be no steam to run the ship’s engines, pumps or electrical systems. Because of the importance of this ‘Firemen’s Passageway’ it was provided with its own watertight doors and pumps. The passageway ran along the lowest deck of the ship but it was, because of the way the hull was constructed, with a double skin at the bottom, at least 5ft 3in away from the outer hull and keel. The passageway ran along the centre line of the ship and at its closest point to the side of the hull was still more than 12 feet from the hull plating. The designers clearly believed that, barring a head-on collision with an immovable object, the firemen’s passageway would survive intact, allowing firemen and engineers ready access to, and egress from, the engineering sections of the ship. In the event they were to be proved wrong.

  Chapter 13

  ‘Westbound steamers report bergs...’

  Sunday 14 April 1912 on the North Atlantic dawned cold and clear. Titanic still headed westwards at better than 22 knots. Less than 200 miles further west and a little to the north the Leyland Line’s Californian was also ploughing along westwards but at less than half Titanic’s speed.

  Even before Titanic had left Southampton Captain Smith had been informed that huge amounts of field ice and a great number of icebergs lay along the route he had chosen to follow. The winter of 1911/12 had been exceptionally mild in Greenland and many more than normal massive pieces of ice had broken away from the Disco glacier to become icebergs. The pack ice in those northern latitudes had not frozen anything like as hard as it usually did. As a consequence of this mild weather the Labrador ocean current, which flowed from the north, had begun to move massive quantities of this ice into the shipping lanes weeks before it would ordinarily have done so. However, a little ice did nothing to discourage Captain Smith; in fact, it appears to have had exactly the opposite effect on him.

  All the time the ship had been at sea more and more indications that ice lay ahead had been received by wireless. Such messages, regarding the safety of the ship, were supposedly treated as a priority by Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, the Marconi operators, and were meant to be taken to the bridge immediately. In reality the wireless operators used their own discretion in deciding what was urgent and what could wait until a convenient time for them to deliver it to the Captain and his watch officers. This was only a natural attitude for the operators to adopt as many of the navigational signals were merely repeating information that those on the bridge had already received, and were mostly inexact in their nature anyway. On this Sunday, however, all that changed. At 9.00am the first of a series of specific ice warnings was received by Titanic. This message was from the Cunard liner Caronia eastbound from New York to Liverpool, via Queenstown:

  ‘Captain, Titanic. Westbound steamers report bergs, growlers and field ice in 42° N, from 49° to 51° W. April 12. Compliments, Barr.’

  This message, clearly indicating a concentration of dangerous ice in an area directly ahead of Titanic, was taken directly to the bridge and delivered into the hand of Captain Smith. The Captain appears to have had the position of the ice marked on the chart so that all of his officers would be aware of its presence.

  A lifeboat drill for the passengers and crew had been scheduled for that Sunday morning, but it was Captain Smith’s usual practice to hold a divine service every sabbath. The Captain, who also had to fit in a full tour of inspection of his ship that morning, decided that there was not the time available for all three, so the lifeboat drill went by the board. Clearly Smith considered the spiritual wellbeing of his passengers and crew to be of paramount importance. That the ships’ boats were only capable of taking less than half of the people aboard the ship, and that the officers did not know how to effectively load and lower those lifeboats, probably had very little influence on the captain’s decision. The service went off without a hitch and by about 11.15, with the singing of the hymn ‘O God our help in ages past’, it was all over, and with it went many of the passengers’ and crew’s chances of surviving the coming night.

  At midday the ship’s officers were assembled on the bridge with their sextants to take a sight on the sun and calculate the vessel’s latitude. At the same time the massive ship’s whistles were sounded and the engine room telegraphs were tested, in accordance with company rules. Captain Smith could adhere to company rules when it suited him.

  In the wireless room shortly before 1.45pm another ice warning was received, this time from another White Star liner, Baltic, also eastbound from New York to Liverpool:

  ‘Greek steamer Athinai reports passing icebergs and large quantities of field ice today in latitude 41°51’N, longitude 49°52’W. Wish you and Titanic all success. Commander.’

  The second wireless operator, Bride, took this message directly to Captain Smith, who at the time was talking to J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line and Smith’s employer. For some reason Smith handed the Marconi form to Ismay, who promptly put it into his pocket. After his conversation with Smith was concluded, Ismay showed the ice warning to several first class female passengers. He must have known that the contents of the message would be spread among the rest of the passengers by this ‘jungle telegraph’ more assuredly and quickly than if he had broadcast them through a loud hailer. He must also have known that the contents of the message would be distorted in the retelling and would inevitably cause a certain amount of consternation. From then onwards at least the first-class passengers would believe that anything unusual that occurred was occasioned by ice.

  Captain Smith did not retrieve the message from Baltic until about 7.15 that evening and only then was the information it contained passed on to the rest of his officers and the position of the ice marked on the chart. Almost an hour and a half before Smith delivered the Baltic ice warning to the rest of his officers, Chief Officer Wilde, on the Captain’s instructions, had the ship’s course altered from 242 degrees to 265 degrees, directly towards where the ice mentioned would be later that night. At 6 o’clock, just 10 minutes after the course change, Wilde handed over control of the ship to Second Officer Lightoller and left the bridge.

  At about 7.30pm, 15 minutes after the presence of icebergs directly ahead of the ship was made known to First Officer Murdoch, he ordered Lamp Trimmer Samuel Hemmings to secure the forward hatch covers. The light that usually escaped through the forward hatches would have seriously interfered with the crow’s-nest lookouts’ view forward through the darkness ahead of the ship. Clearly Mr Murdoch was fully aware that the ship was approaching an area where they could expect to meet a few icebergs. He was at least doing something to help the ship’s lookouts see a berg in time for avoiding action to be taken. Murdoch also knew that he would be on the bridge himself from 10 o’clock and that then the safety of the ship and her passengers wou
ld be his responsibility. Knowing as he did that there was every chance of Titanic encountering an iceberg, Murdoch would have been fully justified in placing an extra lookout or two right in the bows of the ship where light pollution from the vessel would not adversely affect their view. Unfortunately he failed to do so. Placing extra lookouts in a ship’s bows, the ‘eyes of the ship’, under the prevailing conditions would have been quite normal. Other vessels in the same area did take this simple precaution; all of them appear to have survived the night.

  A quarter of an hour after Mr Murdoch had so completely demonstrated his knowledge that the ship was entering an area where ice was likely to be found, another wireless signal was received. This signal, the first as far as we know received from the Leyland Line’s Californian, was not apparently directed at Titanic at all but was intended for another Leyland vessel, Antillian, Captain Lord’s first command six years previously: