Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  This first confirmed report, according to Lord, was from the Frankfurt, received ‘between 5 a.m. and half past’ (US Inquiry, p.731). Durrant on Mount Temple, at 5.26 a.m. ship’s time, could now hear the Californian working the Frankfurt and receiving Titanic’s SOS position. Evans states (US Inquiry, p.737):

  The Chief Officer was in the room, and I said, ‘Wait a moment; I will get an official message’. I got the official message and the positions were both the same.

  The DFT [Frankfurt] answered me. He said, ‘Do you know the Titanic has sunk during the night, collided with an iceberg?’ I said, ‘No; please give me the latest position’. He gave me the position. I put the position down on a slip of paper, and then I said, ‘Thanks, old man’, to the German operator, and then the Virginian started to call me, ‘MGM’. He started to call me up, and I told him to go. I answered him and told him to go. He said, ‘Do you know the Titanic has sunk?’ I said, ‘Yes, the Frankfurt has just told me.’ [Evans did not need the Virginian at this point. But when further confirmation was required, he would have to call her back up again]

  Evans continues:

  9084. The Frankfurt told me the same thing [as the Mount Temple]. The Chief Officer was in my room at the time.

  9085. I gave him the position, and he went off to get the Captain.

  And here is Lord’s account:

  The Chief Officer was delivering the message. I was on the bridge, and he was running backward and forward to the operating room. I said, ‘Go back again and find the position as quickly as possible’. So he went back…

  He (Stewart) came back and said ‘We have a position here, but it seems a bit doubtful’. [Possibly from the Mount Temple mentioning that she had arrived at the transmitted SOS position to find nothing]

  He went on to state (US Inquiry, p.730–1):

  I said, ‘You must get me a better position. We do not want to go on a wild goose chase’. So in the meantime, I marked off the position from the course given me by the Frankfurt in the message just from one operator to another. I marked that off and headed the ship down there.

  Lord said in his British evidence that he himself left the bridge for the wireless room:

  6974. What did you say then? — I left the bridge and went to the wireless room myself…

  6982. It never occurred to you [that there might have been any connection between the sinking and events of the night before] at all? — Not then.

  6979. …I never mentioned a thing to [Stewart] then. I went right to the wireless.

  Evans confirms that Lord did indeed arrive:

  9090. When you gave Mr Stewart the message and the position what did he do? — He went off to the Captain and fetched the Captain. Then I got the Virginian and asked him for an official message.

  9092. You asked the Virginian, did you, for an official message? — Yes, so that I could give it to the Captain.

  Thus, Evans called up the Virginian, the vessel he had minutes earlier asked to stand by (US Inquiry, p.737):

  I sent them a message of my own, what we call a service message, that an operator can always make up if he wants to find out something. I sent a service message, and said, ‘Please send me official message regarding Titanic, giving position’.

  Evans at the British Inquiry:

  9093. What was the message that you got from the Virginian? — It gave the position of the Titanic, and said she was sinking, passengers in boats.

  9094. [The Solicitor General] I have it here: ‘Titanic struck berg, wants assistance, urgent, passengers in boats, ship sinking. His position, 41° 46’ North, 50° 14’ West – Gambell, Commander’. Is that right? — Yes.

  Lord says the same in his US evidence (p.731): ‘As we were trying to get official news from the Frankfurt, the Virginian chipped in, and he gave me this message, which I will read to you: ‘Titanic struck berg; wants assistance; urgent; ship sinking; passengers in boats…’ Evans says: ‘The position I got from the Virginian and the position I got from the Frankfurt were both the same. I sent that up to the skipper’ (US Inquiry, p.737). Lord now had the best position obtainable. But it was by no means certain that the Titanic had indeed sunk. He therefore ordered his own lifeboats cleared away and swung out, and the Californian was put on an urgent course to assist.

  At 6 a.m. the Californian was determinedly underway. Wireless Operator Evans could hear ‘the ship trembling a bit through hitting the ice…’ (question 9169).

  CALIFORNIAN’S COURSE

  Lord recalls the course of the Californian:

  7001. Did you receive a message from the Virginian at 6 o’clock that morning? — Yes.

  7002. That the Titanic had struck a berg? — ‘Passengers in boats, ship sinking.’

  7003. And it gave you the position? — Latitude and Longitude 41° 46’, 50° 14.’

  7004. And did you at once start for that position? — I did.

  7005. What course did you make? — I made, from 6 a.m. until half-past, anything between South and Southwest. I was pushing through field ice.

  7006. That was of course in order to reach the position of the Titanic? — Yes.

  For half an hour until 6.30, Lord was pushing his vessel slowly.

  At the end of this first half-hour of floe-traversing, Lord had worrisome things on his mind:

  6983. Were you quite comfortable in your mind when you heard the Titanic had sunk, in reference to your own actions? — Well, I thought we ought to have seen her signals [rockets] at 19 miles, that was the only thing that was worrying me.

  And later:

  7201. At what time did you think it was possible to have seen her signals? — At half-past six the next morning I was thinking about it.

  Stewart had no such doubts:

  8653. It was a little later that your wireless people heard that the Titanic had sunk? — Yes

  8654. When you heard that, did it occur to you that the steamer that had been sending up distress rockets might have been the Titanic? — Not the steamer we saw.

  8655. That is not what I asked you, I will put my question again, if I may. When you heard that the Titanic had sunk that night, did it occur to you that that steamer which you had heard had been sending up rockets, might have been the Titanic?

  8656. [The Commissioner] Now, come, answer that question? — No I did not think it could have been the Titanic.

  Lord meanwhile wanted to establish for himself that the Titanic had been warned of ice:

  7215. When I heard that the Titanic had sunk, I sent along and asked [Evans, the wireless operator] whether he delivered the message I sent at 11 o’clock [telling Titanic the Californian was stopped and surrounded by ice]. He said he had, and they told him to please keep quiet, or shut up.

  7216. To shut up? — Something like that; they were busy.

  7217. Did you have any conversation with him as to the character of this message? — No.

  Evans gave evidence of warning the Titanic late on the Sunday night at 11 p.m. ship’s time that the Californian was stopped and surrounded by ice:

  8992. What did you say? — I said, ‘We are stopped and surrounded by ice’.

  8993. Did you get an answer from the Titanic? — They said, ‘Keep out’.

  To digress for a moment, it is perhaps revealing to hear the attitude of the surviving Titanic wireless operator, Harold Bride, to the Californian’s warning, in his evidence at the US Inquiry (pp.902–3):

  Senator Smith: Mr Bride, did you receive, or did Mr Phillips to your knowledge receive, a wireless message from the Californian at 11.15 ship’s time or about 10 o’clock New York time, Sunday evening, saying, ‘Engines stopped. We are surrounded by ice’? Now, think hard on that, because I want to know whether you took that message.

  Bride: Mr Phillips was on watch at the time.

  Sen. Smith: Do you know whether he received a message of that kind? — He did not say so, sir.

  Sen. Smith: And you have no means of knowing?

  [The witness did not answer]


  Senator Fletcher: What do you mean by saying [earlier] there was no necessity for keeping in communication with the Californian?

  Bride: If the Californian had anything for us he would call us, or if we had anything for the Californian we would call him; and there was no necessity for us to call the Californian unless we had business with him, or vice versa, because it would then interrupt other traffic.

  Sen. Fletcher: The Californian said he was endeavouring to communicate with you and you stopped him and said he was jamming. Do you know about that? — No; the chances are he might have been jamming during the evening, when the senior operator was working Cape Race [to receive incoming private messages for passengers, invariably those in First Class].

  Sen. Fletcher: But you cannot say that you on the Titanic knew of all that he [Californian] was endeavouring to communicate? — No, sir.

  Senator Smith: Do you know whether… the Californian operator was told ‘Keep out; am working Cape Race’? — I heard nothing about it at all, sir.

  Sen. Smith: Would Mr Phillips have made a memorandum of such a message if he had received it? — He would have if the Californian had persisted in sending it.

  Bride also said in this evidence (p.903) that Phillips ‘had finished working with Cape Race ten minutes before the collision with the iceberg’.

  Meanwhile, 3 miles and half an hour have now elapsed since Lord began his attempt to assist, the Californian pushing slowly south-west through field ice at half-speed (6 knots, or nautical miles per hour). It is now 6.30 a.m. Stewart states:

  8780. What pace did you make for the first three or four miles? — We were going very, very slow.

  8781. How slow? — I could not tell you what we were going, I was not very much on the bridge after that time.

  8782. Cannot you give us any idea of the pace? — I could not give you any idea.

  8783. Just crawling through? — Just crawling through the ice.

  For the next hour (6.30–7.30 a.m.) the Californian could enjoy a major navigational breakthrough. She had diagonally penetrated the ice barrier to the west (as represented by ‘/’) during the previous half hour, and could now steer directly south, aiming for the Titanic’s SOS position. Since she had reached open water after crawling through the ice barrier, her speed now increased dramatically:

  [Robertson Dunlop to Stanley Lord] Then at 6.30 you steered a southerly course, and passed the Mount Temple [where she had stopped] at about 7.30? — Yes.

  7261. What rate were you going at? —We were driving all we possibly could. The Chief Engineer estimated the speed at 13 and-a-half [knots]. I estimate it at 13.

  Ninety minutes had now elapsed from 6 a.m. when the Californian got going. In that ninety minutes a minimum of 16 miles has been steamed by Lord’s vessel. That is 3 nautical miles in the first half an hour, and 13 miles (top speed) in the next hour. Lord is now, at 7.30 a.m. at the position indicated by the Titanic’s SOS messages. Mount Temple is already in the vicinity. It has taken Lord ninety minutes to get there, but of course the Titanic did not sink in this place.

  Meanwhile Lord would estimate the distance between the SOS position and his overnight stop position to be some 19½ to 20 miles at the time of the sinking. With overnight drift southward by the Californian, it turns out to be a minimum of 16 miles away from her position at 6 a.m., as we have just seen. This is 16 miles of dog-leg separation from Californian’s position in the daylight, and not from her position at the time of collision or sinking. With southerly drift factored back in – to account for slippage over the hours from 2.20 a.m. (sinking of the Titanic) to positive movement at 6 a.m. (and from 10.21 p.m. to 11.40 p.m. the previous night when Californian was drifting slightly south but Titanic steaming west) – it is clear that Lord’s original estimate is remarkably accurate. So, 10.21 p.m. to 6 a.m. on the Californian (both her own times) gives seven hours thirty-nine minutes of drift at half a knot. Half a knot is half of 1 nautical mile per hour. Californian will therefore drift south 3½ miles over the seven hours, plus mile for the remaining two-thirds of an hour. A grand total of 3.83 nautical miles – plus the 16 miles steamed – gives Lord’s estimate to a nicety. He said 19½ to 20… the crude count-back shows 19.83 (it doesn’t matter at this point where the Titanic actually sank – which actually was to the east and further south – since Lord is only ever assessing his distance from the SOS position). The encounter with the Mount Temple, stopped at the Titanic’s SOS-declared position, is now described:

  7257. How far from that point was the Mount Temple? — I think she was very close to it [the distress position]. I should think she had been looking for the Titanic, boats or wreckage, or something. She was stopped there.

  7258. You went on from that point? — Yes.

  7259. In what direction did you proceed after that point? — I steered, as far as I recollect, about South, or South by East true, from there along the edge of the ice – the Western edge of the ice.

  7260. …I passed her somewhere about half-past seven – somewhere in the vicinity of half-past seven.

  There was no sign of wreckage in the transmitted SOS position, which Lord now knew must be wrong. He concluded the Titanic had sunk the other side of the ice barrier and that he would have to steam across there.

  Lord can see the ice extending further to southward. He must now go below the Titanic’s SOS position and turn to port to go back through the ice in an ‘L’ shape:

  7401. [Mr Dunlop] After 7.30 had you to navigate through the field ice again? — Yes, I ran along till I got to the Carpathia bearing north-east and then I cut straight through the ice at full speed.

  7402. From 7.30 to 8.30? — We were not going through ice the whole of that time. We were running ‘til it must have been about eight.

  ’Running’ in this context means going south, beside the field. So the Californian went south for half an hour after passing the Mount Temple at 7.30 a.m. At 8 a.m. she stopped ‘running’ and ‘cut’ through the ice towards the Carpathia.

  7260. How, far did you go till you got to the wreckage? — I passed her [Mount Temple] somewhere about half-past seven – somewhere in the vicinity of half-past seven. I got there [to Carpathia] at half-past eight.

  7261. What rate were you going at? — We were driving all we possibly could. The Chief Engineer estimates the speed at 13½. I estimate it at 13.

  7262. You were about an hour? — We were an hour.

  They were running at full speed, even through the ice. This was a distance of a further 13 or 13½ miles from the SOS position at 7.30 to the location where the Carpathia was picking up boats. Californian reached her at 8.30 a.m. A quick bit of calculation – half an hour at full speed south sends the Californian 6½ to 6¾ miles south of the Mount Temple in the period 7.30–8 a.m.

  If Lord now cuts through the ice at full speed at 8 a.m. and reaches the Carpathia at 8.30 a.m., then that distance covered, no matter how one cuts it, is also 6½ to 6¾ miles in the half hour. She has thus covered a total of 13 to 13½ miles since she left the SOS position an hour earlier at 7.30.

  Of course the actual separation between the SOS position and the rescuing Carpathia is less ‘as the crow flies’ than the 13 or 13½ miles the Californian travelled to reach her – but there is a mass of intervening ice that had to be negotiated. Let us now cross-check the Californian’s course (which resembled the symbol ‘/’ on top of an ‘L’) and her elapsed time. We can use other viewpoints. How far away from the SOS position, for instance, was the Carpathia?

  Firstly we can say that she was unquestionably south-east of the Titanic’s transmitted SOS position when she stopped to pick up survivors in the lifeboats.

  18089. [The Attorney General] Having followed out where the Carpathia was to some extent, we make her a little to the SE [of the SOS position when she stopped].

  [The Commissioner] South and east.

  18090. [The Attorney General] Yes, almost exactly SE; but we will work it out later, and your Lordship will see from the
evidence of the Captain of the Carpathia it will be made clear. That is calculating it according to the evidence already given in America. He did not give his position, but he did give a position at one time, and said how many miles he steamed after it, and from that we work out she would have been to the SE [of the SOS position].

  Captain James Moore of the Mount Temple (at the SOS position) tells us expressly the distance from his vessel to the Carpathia as that vessel lay stopped diagonally (as represented by the symbol ‘’) to the south-east (US Inquiry, p.778):

  Senator Smith: How near the Carpathia did you get that morning?

  Moore: This pack of ice between us and the Carpathia, it was between 5 and 6 miles. She did not communicate with me at all. When we sighted her she must have sighted us.

  If the three ships form a triangle of locations (which can be represented by the symbol ‘w’) with the Mount Temple to the north, the Californian having journeyed down to a position at the south so that the Carpathia bears to the north-east of her (as Lord indicated at question 7401) and the Carpathia is to the east of both other vessels (north-east of Californian and south-east of Mount Temple), then we can make certain observations. We can say, very roughly, that it resembles an equilateral triangle. If the line between the Mount Temple and the Carpathia is 6 miles, then the Californian’s hour-long journey is the sum of the other two sides to close the triangle, making a distance of up to 12 miles travelled.

  One can reconstruct the Californian’s journey after passing Mount Temple through any series of changing lines, but the triangle is the most economical. Californian passed Mount Temple at 7.30 a.m. and arrived at the Carpathia at 8.30 a.m. She travelled 13–13½ miles in that hour, thereby completing a 2½ hour journey since starting off at 6 a.m.