by Senan Molony
DIFFERING TIMES
Another note about times: after midnight the difference in relative times of Californian and Titanic may have changed. It appears that on Titanic time ran on for most people without going back the twenty-three minutes at midnight that had been planned. They had other things to worry about. On Californian however, ship’s time may have been put back ten minutes. There are some factors which support such a contention. At 11.40 p.m. Californian time, Groves said one bell was struck to signal next watch, due to take over in half an hour. This would have put the changeover at 12.10 a.m. This odd start time would only have been instituted in order to put the clocks back ten minutes, similar to the Titanic plan. Groves separately backs up this theory by saying he stayed on the bridge after 12.10 a.m., when Stone came up to relieve, remaining for five minutes until 12.15 while Stone got his eyes accustomed to the dark. Stone would have no reason to be ten minutes late for his shift. Lord confirms the time:
6843. It was he [Stone] who relieved Mr Groves? — Yes, at 10 minutes past 12.
Meanwhile Stone and Gibson give different times for Stone’s crucial call to Captain Lord, as we have seen. Stone said it happened at 1.10 or 1.15 a.m. Gibson said it had happened by the time he returned at 12.55 a.m. It may simply be that Gibson put his watch back as planned, but Stone did not. If Californian time was retarded at midnight, but the Titanic’s own retardation was overlooked in the confusion, then Californian and Titanic times thereafter vary again for those who engage in the huge task of trying to reconcile the timings of both ships. Amending the ‘twelve-minute theory’ would change Californian time after midnight to a giant twenty-two minutes behind run-on Titanic time, putting the 2.20 a.m. sinking at 1.58 a.m. Californian time. If seventeen minutes ahead is true, Californian would be only seven minutes ahead after midnight. This would closely agree with Titanic rocket timings.
The apprentice officer of the Californian, James Gibson, was sent down to his master to report that their puzzling visitor had disappeared to the south-west. It was 2.05 a.m. by the Californian’s wheelhouse clock. No matter where she was, therefore, she could hardly have saved any lives in the time it would have taken to start engines and get underway to the supposed point of origin of the rockets. Both official inquiries chose to regard Californian and Titanic times after midnight as interchangeable. This is a very doubtful proposition. Lifeboat departure times were expressed by the British Inquiry as if Titanic’s clocks did not go back as planned. Yet if there is a substantial difference in times, then it could be all against the Californian’s room for manoeuvre.
MORE ROCKETS
Stone and Gibson are on the bridge of Californian, with Gibson learning for the first time that the stranger has fired five rockets. Here he takes up the story:
7488. [Stone] told you of five before you came back at five minutes to one? — Yes.
7489. And after that you saw three more yourself? — Yes.
7490. How soon was that after you had come back at five minutes to one? — As soon as I went on the bridge at five minutes to one. I called her up as soon as the Second Officer told me.
7491. You called her up on the Morse [lamp]? — Yes.
7492. You mean the Second Officer gave you orders to do that? — Yes.
7493. And she did not respond to you? — No.
There is an important difference here. Titanic witnesses said their vessel was sending out Morse signals at the same time that she was firing rockets! If we suppose for a moment that the Californian’s near vessel was the Titanic, then the Titanic’s Morse signals ought to have been seen at the time described by Gibson. But he could not see any such thing…
Boxhall claims: ‘My attention until the time I left the ship was mostly taken up with firing off distress rockets and trying to signal [by Morse lamp] a steamer that was almost ahead of us’ (US Inquiry, p.235). And he later states: ‘I even got the Quartermaster who was working around with me – I do not know who he was – to fire off the distress signal, and I got him to also signal with the Morse lamp’ (US Inquiry, p.934). And here is AB Symons:
11468. …That steamer’s light was in sight about a point and a half on the port bow, roughly between five and ten miles away when they fired the rockets, and they were also working the starboard and port Morse lights…
11472. Working the port and starboard Morse lights? — Yes.
Symons saw this dual signalling happening after 1 a.m. He mentions personally seeing it up to half past, but is generally thought to have left in lifeboat No.1 a little earlier. Gibson is working the Morse lamp, as Stone did, and cannot see any Morse in reply. She does not respond. Captain Lord, as we have seen, may already have formed the view that this stranger did not even possess a Morse lamp. Yet we know that the Titanic was frantically working her Morse lamp – in fact both Morse lamps on either side of the bridge – flashing towards the steamer at which she was looking. Gibson now sees more rockets instead of a reply to his Morse:
7494. And then you saw these rockets? — Yes.
7495. Give me an idea of the time – would that take long, or was it at once? — Well, I called her up [by lamp] for about three minutes, and I had just got the glasses on to her when I saw her fire the rocket. That was the first one.
7496. The first of the three? — Yes.
7497. You say you had just got the glasses on to her. Did you see it through the glasses? — Yes.
498. How did you see the second one? — With the eye.
7499. With the naked eye? — Yes, without the glasses.
7500. And the third one? — With the eye.
7501. What colour rockets were they? — White ones.
7502. When you got your glasses on the vessel and saw the first rocket going up through them, could you make out the vessel at all? — No, Sir, just her lights.
7503. [The Commissioner] Still this glare of light? — Yes.
7504. Did that indicate, that glare of light, that this was a passenger steamer? — No, Sir.
Let us now examine this question of ‘glare’ that was offered up to Gibson.
A GLARING DECEPTION
It is important to note Gibson’s answer to question 7504. It is often suggested that because he saw a ‘glare’ of light in the after-part of the vessel under observation that this is corroboration of Groves’ ‘brilliant’ light from a ‘passenger steamer’. But of course Gibson denies that the ‘glare’ gives any suggestion whatsoever of a passenger steamer. And we know that Groves said the steamer had put out (or shut out) her brilliant lights before midnight, Californian time – more than an hour before Gibson’s sightings! Thus Gibson’s acceptance of Lord Mersey’s word ‘glare’ in the previous extract cannot be indicative of a passenger steamer, despite efforts to deploy both Groves and Gibson simultaneously, one in corroboration of the other, in support of the theory that this puzzling stranger is the Titanic. Gibson also uses the word ‘glare’ quite loosely it appears. In his original statement for the captain, he said: ‘I also observed her port side light and a faint glare of lights on her after deck’. Here is what Gibson says in further evidence about the ‘glare’:
7328. Could you see more than one white light? — I saw a glare of lights on her after-deck.
7429. You mean the porthole lights? — A glare of white lights on her after-deck.
It doesn’t sound very important, does it? Look again at the answer to 7502. These were ‘just her lights’. He later clarifies again:
7545. What did you think? — I thought she was a tramp steamer, and I told him so.
7546. You thought she was a tramp steamer, and you had seen her side light at what you thought was between four and seven miles away? — Yes.
7547. And you had seen a blaze of light in the after part? — A glare of light [note that Gibson resists accepting the word ‘blaze’. He is using nautical parlance with ‘glare’, rather than the ‘man in the street’s’ equation of glare with brightness].
7548. Four to seven miles away? — Yes.
>
7549. And you thought she was a tramp steamer? — Yes.
7550. (The Commissioner) Did you expect to see a glare of light on the after part of a tramp steamer? — Yes, Sir, on some of them.
Gibson’s ‘glare’ is clearly not counsel’s ‘blaze’ of lights. As if to illustrate this, he next talks about ‘glare’ from only a masthead light!
7626. And after her red light, disappeared could you still see her masthead light or her white light? — Just a glare of it;
7632. Now, tell me, when you first saw that glare of lights in the after-part, could you see a line of lights? — No.
7633. It was more than a single light, was it not? — Yes.
Not much of a glare, then. And here’s more:
7719. And when you looked through the glasses what could you see beyond the masthead light? — Her red side-light and a faint glare of light on her after deck [see original statement].
But the Commissioner, Lord Mersey, is determined to magnify that ‘glare’ from Gibson’s meaning of the word. Just look at this:
7728. [The Commissioner] What was it made you think it was a tramp steamer? You saw nothing but the lights? — Well, I have seen nearly all the large passenger boats out at sea, and there was nothing at all about it to resemble a passenger boat [A categorical answer!]
7720. What is it you expected to see? — A passenger boat is generally lit up from the water’s edge.
7730. This boat was apparently lit up, you know; there was all this glare of light. However, that is all you can say? — Yes.
7733. She seemed to be a big steamer? — Well, a medium size steamer.
Such was the pressure on Gibson to say something entirely at odds with what he knew to be the truth. And the Commissioner will later cynically use Gibson’s ‘glare’ in his final report, damning the Californian, without mentioning that Gibson in fact thought he was looking at a tramp steamer, with ‘nothing at all about her to resemble a passenger boat’. This is from from Lord Mersey’s Final Report of the British Inquiry (p.44):
Mr Stone had with him during the middle watch an apprentice named Gibson, whose attention was first drawn to the steamer’s lights at about 12.20 a.m. He could see a masthead light, her red light (with glasses) and a ‘glare of white lights on her after deck’.
This is a complete traducement and an utter misrepresentation of Gibson’s evidence.
We return to his testimony:
7505. [The Solicitor General] When you saw the first of these three rockets through your glasses did you report what you saw to the officer? — Yes.
7506. Did he tell you whether he saw the second or the third rocket? — Yes, Sir.
7507. Did he? — Yes Sir.
7508. He said he did? — Yes.
7509. Was he using glasses, too? — No.
7510. He saw it with his naked eye? — Yes.
7511. What happened after that? — About twenty minutes past one the Second Officer remarked to me that she was slowly steaming away towards the south-west.
7512. Had you remained on the bridge from the time that you saw these three rockets until then? — Yes.
7513. Had you been keeping her under observation? — Yes.
7514. Looking at her with your glasses from time to time? — Yes.
Here is a comparison summary from Gibson’s original statement, composed for his captain on the Californian:
I then watched her for some time and then went over to the keyboard and called her up continuously for about three minutes. I then got the binoculars and had just got them focussed on the vessel when I observed a white flash apparently on her deck, followed by a faint streak towards the sky which then burst into white stars.
If Gibson can see the flash of a rocket discharging from the deck of the steamer he is looking at, then he surely knows the exact size of the steamer. There can be no two ways about it. But if Stone says the rockets were low-lying, then it is possible Gibson’s flash may be one rocket actually detonating (having been fired from over the visible horizon), followed quickly by another that goes rather higher. It shall be seen in another section that just as the Titanic was working both the port and starboard Morse lamps, there are good grounds for believing she was firing rockets from two positions also. Symons will say that rockets were going up ‘simultaneously’.
But put the deck-flash to one side for the moment. Gibson goes on in this original account:
Nothing then happened until the other ship was about two points on the starboard bow when she fired another rocket. Shortly after that I observed that her side light had disappeared but her masthead light was just visible, and the Second Officer remarked after taking another bearing of her, that she was slowly steering away towards the SW. Between one point on the starboard bow and one point on the port bow I called her up on the Morse lamp but received no answer. When at about one point on the port bow she fired a rocket which like the other burst into white stars.
Think about the above for a moment. Gibson is not saying he saw three rockets in rapid succession with a few minutes between them. But it is a requirement of signalling distress by rockets at night that they should be fired at ‘short’ intervals. Gibson is saying that he saw those three rockets fired with long intervals between them.
There is a lead-in period to the first rocket seen by Gibson (rocket No.6), since he comes back on the bridge at 12.55 a.m. and Stone tells him that five rockets have been fired. Even if this lapse is only a minute or two, Gibson says he now ‘watched her for some time’ before calling her up for ‘about three minutes’. Only when he gets his binoculars back on the vessel does she fire the first rocket he sees. This interval, then, is ‘some time’ plus ‘some time’, plus three minutes. It would appear a relatively long lapse. The second rocket for Gibson (No.7 overall) then arrives after ‘nothing then happened until she was about two points on the starboard bow’, which again implies a relatively long lapse. The third (No.8) is finally fired after another long lapse, as Gibson says the ship in whose direction the rockets were seen has moved three points of the compass in the time between these rockets. His second was seen when she was ‘two points on the starboard bow’ and his third ‘when at about one point on the port bow’. Such long-delay firings for all three rockets hardly chime with our impression of desperate men on the Titanic sending up rocket after rocket! The Board of Trade regulations said that distress could be indicated at night by a range of options, of which the third method was to fire rockets at ‘short’ intervals. But if the intervals were not short, how was the observer to deduce distress?
The following signals, numbered 1, 2 and 3 when used or displayed together or separately shall be deemed to be signals of distress at night: 1) A gun fired at intervals of about a minute; 2) Flames on the ship as from a burning tar barrel, oil barrel, etc.; 3) Rockets or shells of any colour or description fired one at a time at short intervals.
How short is ‘short’? Is there an implication in the regulations that the rockets should substitute for the gun, making the intended intervals the same – of ‘about a minute’? The Board of Trade certified the Titanic as carrying socket signals (noise-making rockets) ‘in lieu of guns’.
It can meanwhile be seen that, in question 7511 above, Gibson is asked ‘what happened after that?’ when he has just described Stone also seeing three rockets during their time together. Gibson replies: ‘About twenty minutes past one…’ This leads to a possible inference that the three rockets had all been seen by 1.20 a.m., which would mean relatively short firing intervals. But in fact it is a matter of how one reads evidence. The author is satisfied that counsel is dragging Gibson back to the period after the first rocket – following a detour as to whether Stone had equally seen the second and third that Gibson later observed. In fact, both Stone and Gibson elsewhere put the last rocket very late. Gibson says it came ‘when at about one point on the port bow’, and in his original statement for his captain writes: ‘just after two o’clock she was then about two points on the
port bow’. It can be seen that the last rocket was therefore fired close to 2 a.m. rather than 1.20 a.m. Unfortunately we cannot draw any definite conclusions as to Californian clock time for rockets despite Gibson’s detailed comments on the bearing of the other ship at the time his second and third rockets were fired.
When Gibson arrived on the bridge (12.55 a.m. by Gibson’s evidence), Stone told him that the vessel had fired five rockets. The ship was ‘then about 3½ points on the starboard bow’, according to Gibson in his original statement. He then discusses the movement of the observed ship to ‘two points on the starboard bow’ for the second rocket and his third ‘when at about one point on the port bow’. So the interval between his three rockets by compass bearings is 1½ points between Stone telling him of rocket No.5 and the firing of rocket No.7 (Gibson does not offer a bearing at the time of rocket No.6, his first). There is then an interval of three points between rocket No.7 and rocket No.8, the last.
The problem is that the evidence is contradictory as to the rate of drift. Here are our markers: from 10.21 p.m. to 12.10 a.m. there is a swing by the Californian of only two points (from north-east to east-north-east), according to the evidence. Groves (8150) and Lord testified as to their vessel’s heading (the direction in which the bows are pointing) at the time the Californian stopped, which was at 10.21 p.m. This heading was north-east. Nearly two hours later, both Stone (8061) and Gibson (7437) said she was east-north-east at the time they started their watch (12.10 a.m.). This is a swing of barely one point per hour.