by Tim Maltin
- No, sir; except the apprentice. I think he told me that he had called the captain.
CFE189. Did this talk occur on board the Californian?
- Yes, sir.
CFE190. Immediately after the accident to the Titanic?
- Before we got to the Titanic; yes, sir.
CFE199. Was there any talk of this kind after you left the scene of the sinking of the Titanic?
- Yes; it has been talked about all the time since then.
CFE200. They have talked about it all the time since then?
- Yes, sir.
CFE201. As an unusual and extraordinary occurrence?
- Yes, sir.
Lord’s attitude looked criminally callous and irresponsible in the light of the Titanic disaster, which is why he decided he could not tell the truth about his mistakes and decisions that night. After all, he had ignored what could have been distress signals, no matter how confusing and dangerous the circumstances:
6941. …you were not satisfied it was a company's signal. You did not think it was a company's signal?
- I inquired, was it a company's signal.
6942. But you had been told that he did not know?
- He said he did not know.
6943. Very well, that did not satisfy you?
- It did not satisfy me.
6944. Then if it was not that, it might have been a distress signal?
- It might have been.
6945. And you remained in the chart room?
- I remained in the chart room.
It is clear from the following exchanges that Captain Lord had little previous experience of ice and that he had decided, firmly, not to move until daylight, in the interests of the safety of his own ship:
STL221. But you could have gone to the Titanic?
- The engines were ready. I gave instructions to the chief engineer and told him I had decided to stay there all night. I did not think it safe to go ahead.
7111. You have not had much experience of ice?
- No I have not; of field ice this is my first experience.
7134. You were treating the ice, so to speak, with great respect, and behaved with great caution with regard to it?
- I was treating it with every respect.
7135. May I take it that you were not anxious if you could help it, between 10 o'clock and 5 o'clock, to move your engines?
- I did not want to move them if I could help it. They were ready to move at a moment's notice.
7245. Under those circumstances, seeing that there was a possibility of the boat being near, do you consider it reasonable that you should go off duty?
- Perfectly reasonable. I was looking after my own ship.
The Commissioner:
These are answers that do not do you the least good, and they are not the answers that you want.
Faced with a similar situation, in the same area of the North Atlantic, on 26th March 1912, Captain Hoie of the Norwegian steamship the Romsdal had at least made the attempt, as reported in The Atlantic Daily Bulletin, although he had had the advantage of seeing the ship in daylight first…and the ship he had seen sink was not the largest, newest and safest ship in the world:
This afternoon the Norwegian steamship Romsdal came to an immense field of ice with a steamer of about 8,000 tons trapped in it. After dark the steamer commenced signalling for aid by rockets. Captain Hoie endeavoured to assist her and ran into the ice, but was compelled to stop, as the ice had injured his vessel in several places. About midnight the vessel seen from the Romsdal stopped firing rockets and all her lights disappeared. After daylight nothing was seen of the steamer which had been firing rockets during the night and Captain Hoie concluded that she had probably sunk.
At 5.40am on 15th April 1912, Captain Lord found himself in a terrible situation, when the Virginian confirmed to him by wireless that the Titanic had sunk nearby, during the night when rockets had been reported to him, which he had decided to ignore.
As a Massachusetts newspaper called the Clinton Daily Item reported on Tuesday 23rd April 1912:
“According to Mr. Frazier's cousin [the Californian’s carpenter, James McGregor], the captain of the California [sic] had the appearance of being 20 years older after the news reached him.”
Although Captain Lord should have gone to the aid of the ship that was firing rockets, if there had not been deceiving circumstances which caused her to look completely unlike the Titanic – the only ship with wireless in the area – and made it inexplicable to him that she did not reply to his repeated attempted communications by Morse Lamp, he would have gone; and he would probably have used his wireless immediately to talk with the largest liner in the world, stopped by ice on her maiden voyage.
But we now know, 100 years later, that the cold water of the Labrador Current and large area of field ice at Titanic’s wreck site was causing abnormal refraction, which both caused Titanic to see the iceberg too late and caused the nearest ship to fail to come to Titanic’s aid. Had Titanic looked anything like the Titanic, Lord would certainly have radioed to her when she came to a stop, instead of trying to Morse her.
That there was abnormal refraction that night is the further information that Beesley was waiting for. Rather than there being two ships - the Californian and a mystery ship in between - the nearer ship was in fact just the looming image of the more distant Californian.
It is ironic that Titanic, the largest moving object ever made by Man at that time, was brought down by a trick of the light; but it is perhaps even more ironic that, were it not for the abnormal refraction at her crash site, most of us today would probably never even have heard of the Titanic, because she would not have hit an iceberg in the first place.
Titanic at Queenstown, now Cobh, Southern Ireland at lunchtime on Thursday 11th April 1912
© Cork Examiner, Author’s collection.
The casualty of Titanic is an awesome testimony to the power of nature, both at her most serene and, at the same time, at her most deadly. On that calm April night, Titanic was in fact unwittingly sailing into a perfect storm of abnormal refraction.
Captain Lord summed up the conditions very well that night, in the final question he was asked at the US Inquiry, in 1912, which was also referred to in the British Inquiry:
7194. Did you tell the American Court of Enquiry that the light that night was very extraordinary; the conditions were very deceiving?
- I told them it was a very strange night; it was hard to define where the sky ended and the water commenced. There was what you call a soft horizon. I was sometimes mistaking the stars low down on the horizon for steamer's lights.
STL285. (Senator Smith) From the log which you hold in your hand, and from your own knowledge, is there anything you can say further which will assist the committee in its inquiry as to the causes of this disaster?
- No, sir, there is nothing; only that it was a very deceiving night. That is all I can say about that. I only saw that ice a mile and a half off.
Picture credits
All image rights holders are credited wherever they have been positively identified and I am grateful to them for the grant of rights for this publication.
Bibliography
RMS Titanic Reappraisal of Evidence Relating to SS Californian by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch of the Department of Transport (HMSO, 1992)
The Maiden Voyage of the Titanic – A Meteorological Perspective by D. K. Howells
The Titanic disaster – a meteorologist’s perspective by E.N. Lawrence
Weather and the Titanic by Robert Paola
The Ship That Stood Still by Leslie Reade (Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1993)
A Titanic Myth, By Leslie Harrison (William Kimber & Co., 1986)
Titanic and the mystery ship by Senan Molony (Tempus Publishing Limited, 2006)
The Titanic and the Californian by Peter Padfield (Hodder and Stoughton, 1965)
The British Titanic Inquiry
The US Titanic Inquiry
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Greenwich Mean Noon Form records from US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Archive, Ashville USA
Ships Logs from UK Met Office, Exeter, UK
Ships Logs from German Marine Archive, Hamburg, Germany
Dr. Andrew T. Young’s Green Flash and Mirage Website http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/mirages/mirintro.html#mirpics
Pekka Parviainen’s Polar Image website http://www.polarimage.fi/
Sam Halpern’s Titanicology website http://www.titanicology.com/
On Board RMS Titanic, by George Behe (Lulu.com press, 2011)
The Formation Of Fog And Mist by G.I. Taylor
Eddy Motion In The Atmosphere by G.I. Taylor
On the Dissipation of Eddies by G.I. Taylor
The Life History of Surface Air Currents by Shaw and Lemphert
Report on the work carried out by the SS Scotia, 1913
The King’s Mirror
Discovery of the Titanic by Dr. Robert D. Ballard (Madison Press Books, 1987)
Titanic and Other Ships by Charles Herbert Lightoller (Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1935)
The Loss of The Titanic, by Lawrence Beesley (Philip Allan & Co. Ltd., 1912)
Tramps and Ladies by Sir James Bisset (Angus & Robertson (UK) Ltd., 1959)
Home From The Sea by Sir Arthur Rostron (Cassell & Company Ltd., 1931)
The Truth about the Titanic by Colonel Archibald Gracie (originally 1913 but Allan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1985)
Lloyd’s Weekly Shipping Bulletin and Atlantic Daily Bulletins
Stanley Lord interview with Leslie Harrison
Home From The Sea by Captain Arthur Rostron
A Night To Remember, by Walter Lord (Longmans Green & Co. Ltd, 1956)
Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic – A Centennial Reappraisal by Sam Halpern and others (The History Press 2011)
RMS Olympic by Mark Chirnside (Tempus Publishing Limited, 2004)
Reviews:
“Tim Maltin has shown that there was a strong superior-mirage display in the ice-field where Titanic sank, using both archival weather records and the logs of numerous ships in the area. The mirage and related refraction phenomena, such as looming, contributed to the confusion at the time of the accident. In particular, he has established that the crews of the Titanic and Californian saw each other's signals, but were unable to interpret them because of atmospheric effects acting in the unexpectedly large distance between the two ships.”
Dr Andrew T. Young – Atmospheric refraction expert, San Diego State University
“Defenders of Captain Stanley Lord have long tried to rewrite the history books by claiming that Lord's vessel, the Californian, was well beyond visual range of the sinking Titanic on the night of April 14/15, 1912. Tim Maltin's groundbreaking research goes a long way toward explaining why these revisionist claims are untrue and why peculiar atmospheric conditions led the Californian's crewmen to mistakenly believe that the rocket-firing ship they were observing that night could not have been the Titanic. The author goes on to reveal the true nature of the "haze" that was reported by the Titanic's lookouts shortly before the appearance of the fatal iceberg, and he also explains how the night's peculiar atmospheric conditions created a "miraging zone" that tended to camouflage any obstacles that lay in the ship's path. Starting from a completely fresh perspective and utilizing brand new sources of information, Tim Maltin has added crucial missing pieces to key puzzles surrounding the Titanic saga, and researchers everywhere should be grateful for his outstanding contributions to the subject.”
George Behe, author of On Board RMS Titanic, Vice President, Titanic Historical Society 1992-96
“For once there is a book that dares to delve into the question of unusual atmospheric conditions contributing to some of the strange and conflicting sightings that took place the night Titanic sank. In this book Tim Maltin presents a strong case that there was an atmospheric inversion over the area of the wreck which led to the formation of superior mirages and looming that was not readily apparent to those who were there at the time. The case for this is backed by hard data taken from ship’s logs and meteorological observation forms which Tim has tracked down. Questions as to why was haze seen by Titanic lookouts and not by others, why lights of vessels appeared closer than they actually were, why some reported seeing two masthead lights while others said they saw but one, are but a few of the topics addressed. If nothing else, this book will cause the reader to rethink some of what people had claimed they saw that fateful night; observations that may have led to confusion and inaction. This book is a must read for any Titanic enthusiast.”
Sam Halpern, Titanic researcher and author
"Tim Maltin has pieced together an incredible jigsaw puzzle. I found it truly fascinating and felt compelled to get this unique story of the Titanic tragedy onto television screens for all to enjoy. In these technologically obsessive times it's reassuring to know that Mother Nature is ultimately pulling the strings, and we can all benefit from remembering this truth."
Stuart Burrage, AIRBORNE TV & FILM