Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  7267. …11.20 proceeded on course.

  7268. …[The Commissioner] Is that [by] the ship’s log? — This is the ship’s log, my Lord.

  And Stewart says:

  8825. According to your log, you proceeded on your course at 11.20? — Yes.

  8826. You stopped close to the Carpathia at 8.30? — Yes.

  8827. And remained until 11.20? — Yes.

  Groves, unsupported by anyone else, is forty minutes behind the departure time. Applying that forty minutes to his 6.50 time would give 7.30 a.m. for being on the bridge and arguably seeing the Mount Temple. But Groves’ times are essentially inexplicable and hopeless. Anyone relying on him for proof of anything is clutching at straws. In Groves’ 1957 personal recollections of the affair, entitled The Middle Watch (a poorly punctuated account), he does not mention a time for departure, but remains true to his ever-imaginative self:

  Scanning the sea with his binoculars the Third Officer [referring to himself] noticed a large icefloe a mile or so distant on which he saw figures moving and drawing Captain Lord’s attention to it remarked that they might be human beings was told that they were seals. Californian now made one complete turn to starboard followed by one to port and then resumed her passage to Boston…

  GAMBELL AND THE VIRGINIAN’S TIME

  There is one last matter to be cleared up. The book The Ship That Stood Still, which purports to set out that the Californian was the Titanic’s mystery ship, claims that shortly after 6.10 a.m. (according to Virginian Captain G.T. Gambell in a press interview) the Californian declared: ‘can now see Carpathia taking passengers on board from small boats…’ (p.132). This supposedly damning time is explicable by comparing Virginian’s time with New York time, and then with Californian time. Virginian reported Titanic signals ceasing at 1.57 ship’s time, equivalent to 12.27 New York (British Inquiry Report). This shows she was one hour thirty minutes ahead of New York, compared to Californian’s one hour fifty minutes, so Californian time was twenty minutes ahead of Virginian time. Captain Lord initially received the Titanic’s position from the Virginian at 6 a.m. Californian time: ‘Did you receive a message from the Virginian at 6 o’clock that morning? — Yes’ (7001). But it was not a mere half an hour later (6.10 a.m. Virginian equals 6.30 a.m. Californian time, since there is a twenty minute gap between these ships) when Captain Lord next heard from that ship (US Inquiry, p.732):

  Senator Smith: You heard nothing further from the source?

  Lord: From the Virginian? I had a message about an hour and a half after. He said, ‘When you get to the scene of disaster will you please give me particulars of what is happening?’

  So Lord was replying to this message and reporting his first visuals of the Carpathia rescuing survivors somewhere about 7.30 a.m. Californian time. If Californian replied to Virginian at 7.30 a.m. her time, and we take the twenty minute difference into account, this would be 7.10 a.m., not 6.10 a.m., Virginian time. Captain Gambell, talking to reporters at Liverpool, would be out by an hour. The inconsistency is proven to lie with Gambell because he was also quoted in the same report as stating that the Californian was ‘17 miles north of the Titanic’ at 5.45 a.m. Virginian time. This is just twenty-five minutes before Californian was supposedly so close as to be able to see the Carpathia at about 6.10 a.m. Virginian time!

  This is the relevant extract from the actual report, in the Weekly Freeman, 27 April 1912, p.15:

  At 5.45 a.m. I was in communication with the Californian, the Leyland Liner. He was 17 miles north of the Titanic and had not heard anything of the disaster. I Marconied her as follows – ‘Titanic struck iceberg. Wants assistance urgently. Ship sinking. Passengers in boats. His position latitude 41.46, longitude 50.14.’ Shortly after this I was in communication with the Carpathia, the Frankfurt, and the Baltic, all going to the Titanic. At 6.10 a.m. I Marconied the Californian: ‘Kindly let me know condition of affairs when you get to Titanic’. He at once replied – ‘Can now see the Carpathia taking the passengers on board from small boats’. The Titanic foundered about 2 a.m.

  The converse proof, of course, is that the Californian barely cleared the ice at 6.30 her time (6.10 Virginian) to arrive on the western side of the field. The Mount Temple was still far over the visible horizon to the south, and she confirms she was invisible to the Californian because we have seen there was no reverse sighting. Californian could thus see no ship at all at the relevant Virginian time.

  It may also be, of course, that a passed-on wireless report about ‘Carpathia picking up boats’ has led to an assumption that the ship re-transmitting such a report is herself seeing it, which is not necessarily the case. Captain Gambell was not, after all, his own ship’s wireless man.

  Be reminded: Californian achieved 13 knots (2 knots above usual top speed) that morning. She could not, in twenty-five minutes, have come from a position 17 miles north of the SOS position, across an icefield, in order to then be able to see the Carpathia, which Captain Moore (who was actually at the SOS position) said was 5–6 miles further to the south-east!

  An initial call is agreed by both ships (around 6 a.m. Californian), and Lord’s evidence of the next conversation with Virginian occurring an hour and a half later is consistent with the rest of his evidence. Lord made this statement in evidence in Washington, not knowing what a press report at Liverpool would attribute to Captain Gambell. More importantly, it should also be noted that none of the other ships listening to traffic on the morning of 15 April recorded a conversation between Californian and Virginian at 6.10 a.m. by the latter’s time. Instead the logs of both the Baltic and the Mount Temple record that the Californian was speaking to the Birma at the time in question – and do not mention the Virginian!

  The ‘6.10 a.m. sighting’ is an error on someone’s part – because there now follows further proof that the Californian could not have been talking to the Virginian and seeing Carpathia shortly after 6.10 a.m. Virginian time (6.30 Californian time). This is because at some time close to 6.30 a.m. Virginian time (supposedly twenty minutes after the Californian’s report about seeing the Carpathia), the Virginian herself was talking to the Birma. Virginian told the Birma at 6.30 that the Californian was now ‘only fifteen miles’ from the SOS position – a location that was several miles to the north-west of the Carpathia! Why would the Virginian give out this information if the Californian had reported being able to see the Carpathia twenty minutes earlier? It’s double Californian’s visible horizon!

  Critics of Captain Lord seize on this one strange time of 6.10 a.m. They act once more as if all times were interchangeable. The time was in a newspaper report, and Gambell and his officers never gave evidence at a sworn inquiry. Obviously, if the 6.10 a.m. allegation is right, it would be extremely relevant. But not only is the claim untested hearsay, it is also demonstrably contradicted not once, but twice, by Virginian’s own wireless log! It is also contradicted by testified evidence concerning Californian, Birma, Baltic and Mount Temple. No-one logs this alleged conversation (at what would be 4.40 a.m. New York time). Captain Gambell was not his ship’s wireless operator and never a sworn witness. A so-called 6.10 a.m. sighting flies in the face of a mountain of other evidence, particularly the declaration of Carpathia Captain Arthur Rostron that he first saw the Californian at 8 a.m. If the Californian could see the Carpathia at 6.10 a.m., then the Carpathia should have been seeing Californian… Thus the canard of the Californian being within sight of the Carpathia in the very early morning of 15 April is totally exploded. If she was, how come Carpathia didn’t see her? Rostron says he first saw Californian ‘about 8 a.m.’ (25551). Captain Lord is entitled to be judged on the sworn evidence, and not a single newspaper reference. Meanwhile, as we have seen, all the independent evidence heard at the inquiries verifies the Californian’s account – and does so, literally, time and time again.

  15

  WRECKAGE

  There was no wreckage in the SOS position transmitted by the Titanic for the obvious reason that t
he Titanic did not sink there, but further east. Captain Moore of the Mount Temple, who brought his vessel to the distress-message spot told this to both inquiries.

  Senator Smith: No wreckage?

  Moore: Nothing whatever, sir, in the way of wreckage.

  And at the British Inquiry, he says the same: ‘Did you see any signs of wreckage? — None whatever’ (9242). Moore also estimated the Titanic to have sunk at least 8 miles to the east. But despite his evidence and that of Captain Lord and Captain Rostron, the inquiries persisted pig-headedly in the belief that the Titanic had sunk exactly in the SOS position given – and that the current must have taken the wreckage swiftly to the east. But even in the position where the Carpathia finally came to rest, there was little wreckage. Lord describes the scene when the Californian got there at 8.30 a.m. (US Inquiry, p.723):

  I saw several empty boats, some floating planks, a few deck-chairs, and cushions; but considering the size of the disaster, there was very little wreckage. It seemed more like an old fishing boat had sunk.

  Rostron of the Carpathia also said the very same (US Inquiry, p.22):

  I was then very close to where the Titanic must have gone down, as there was a lot of… hardly wreckage, but small pieces of broken-up stuff; nothing in the way of anything large.

  And at the British Inquiry:

  25496. Did you see any wreckage, at all, of the Titanic? — The only wreckage we saw there was very small stuff – a few deck-chairs and pieces of cork from lifebelts, and a few lifebelts knocking about, and things of that description, all very small stuff indeed. There was very little indeed.

  This was because the Titanic lifeboats had pulled considerably away from the site of the sinking, while the current appears to have been drifting slowly south-west (although Officer Boxhall had an alternative view, see later).

  We do not know the exact longitude and latitude of where the last boat was picked up, because Carpathia did not log the position, and neither, apparently, did the Californian when she joined her. Moore estimated the pack of ice between his ship (Mount Temple) and that of Rostron as ‘five to six miles’ wide. We know however that the meeting of Lord and Rostron’s vessels was south-east of the SOS position, while also south-west of the 1985 wreck position.

  Location ‘X’, representing the historic conjunction of the Californian and Carpathia (see Fenwick photograph), is the bottom point of a ‘V’, or inverted pyramid, between the SOS position and the place along the same line of latitude, further east, where the Titanic collided (Captain Lord appears to have approximated the spot; a sketch map he made in 1912 is reproduced towards the end of this book, showing a position for the Carpathia at 8.30 a.m.).

  When the two ships met, Carpathia informed Californian she had taken all of the Titanic’s lifeboats and survivors on board. Californian then offered to search ‘down to leeward’ and cruised off. The Californian, on leaving the Carpathia, certainly searched further east and further south. She encountered wreckage and left that debris at a location 13 miles south of the SOS latitude and nearly a similar distance to the east. She left the wreckage at 11.20 p.m. By noon she was several miles further west, travelling slowly, according to Lord’s description. It can be seen that the logged latitude at which the Californian left the search at 11.20 (41° 33’) was far to the south of the Californian’s overnight stop position of 42° 05’ N. A minute of latitude is 1 nautical mile, so the separation on the north–south axis from the Californian stop position to the abandonment of the search was 32 miles (the Titanic actually sank over 23 miles from the Californian’s reported stop position). There is a ten-minutes latitude gap between the Titanic’s sinking position at 2.20 a.m. (wreck site) and Lord’s point of ‘leaving the wreckage’ exactly nine hours later at 11.20 a.m. It might appear wreckage had thus drifted 10 miles in nine hours, contradicting general drift evidence of half a knot (½mph)… This suggests that Lord’s ‘leaving the wreckage’ is a loose phrase meaning ‘abandoning the search’, while the wreckage seen at higher latitude was not main Titanic wreckage. Yet both Lord and Rostron referred to ‘deck-chairs’ where they met, which could hardly be from lifeboats. How could they drift there and not lifebelt-supported bodies? Surface items drift more quickly – but the wreckage evidence on the whole is unsatisfactory.

  Lord said in a 1959 affidavit that, while carrying out his search, ‘we passed about six wooden lifeboats afloat, one capsized in the wreckage…’ This then is certainly lifeboat wreckage, and the lifeboats had pulled far from the main wreck. Captain Rostron says: ‘Of course lots of gear had been knocked out of the [life]boats and thrown out of the way of the people as they were getting up…’ (US Inquiry, p.24). Lord also declared that his position for leaving the wreckage (wreck area?) was an estimate, and not one taken at the wreckage scene itself, but arrived at through backtracking once his officers had taken the noon position forty minutes later, having left the scene at 11.20: ‘From this [noon] position, I placed the wreckage in position 41° 33’ N, 50° 01’ W’. Captain Arthur Rostron of the rescue ship Carpathia confirms that abandoned lifeboats had been scattered over a wide area, essentially meaning to the east – where Lord found them – since the icefield itself was a barrier to the west:

  25500. [The Commissioner] I understand you to say those [life]boats were spread over an area of five miles? — Four to five miles, yes.

  He had also said earlier: ‘They were within a range of four or five miles’ (25491).

  It is a common supposition that the Carpathia reached the area, stopped once, and had all the lifeboats row towards her. But this is a fallacy: she did not.

  Instead Rostron says: ‘We had been dodging about picking up the other boats. As soon as we had finished taking the passengers from the boats I cleared off to another boat to pick them up, and was dodging about all over the place to pick them up…’ (25499). And a little earlier: ‘We picked them up here and there within a range of four or five miles, as I say’ (25494).

  When the Carpathia finally stopped, Rostron says his ship was ‘only two or three miles from a huge icefield’ (25501). So some of the lifeboats were abandoned further east (only thirteen boats of twenty were brought to New York) in the area where Lord searched, with Officer Groves saying the search yielded ‘only boats and wreckage’ (8364–8367). The point is that this may not have been wreckage that had drifted from the main Titanic sinking site. From Lord and Rostron’s guesstimates, plus the linking of wreckage to lifeboats, as well as the very little overall wreckage, it would seem that most of the wreckage was instead elsewhere and had not drifted that far south or west.

  It may be assumed that the current was not anything of the order of 1 knot. Otherwise the Californian could have been expected to see bodies, and she did not see any. Here is Lord:

  7283. Had you also any observations to enable you to fix the spot where the wreckage was found? — I had very good observations at noon and that afternoon.

  7265. Can you give your noon observations? — Yes, 41° 33’ N. and 50° 9’ W.

  7266. That is your noon position? — That is my noon position on the 15th April.

  Earlier, Lord has stated:

  7029 Did you see any wreckage anywhere? — I did.

  7030. Where? — Near the Carpathia.

  7031. What did you see? — I saw several boats, deck-chairs, cushions, planks.

  7033. Did you see any bodies? — No.

  7034. Any lifebelts floating? — No.

  7035. Any wreckage? — Yes.

  7036. Much? – Not a great deal.

  7037. Did you cruise round and search? — I did.

  7038. To see if you could find any bodies or any living persons? — I did. I did not see anything at all.

  7039. I should like to understand from you, if you say that the position indicated to you was wrong, what do you say was the position? — The position where I left the wreckage was 41° 33’ N, 50° 1’ W.

  Groves says:

  8433. …How far do you think you had tra
velled from the time that you got on your way after searching round the wreckage until your noon position? Do you think it would be about five miles? — No, more than that, about 11. That is in distance.

  Groves is wrong again here. Probably because of his 10.40 departure time. Lord left the wreckage at 11.20 and could not possibly have covered 11 miles in the forty minutes until he took his noon position. His ship had a top speed of 13–13½ knots. Lord also said (in response to question 7270) that when he left the scene of the wreckage he ‘went slow… I went back slow’.

  Groves continues:

  8434. You would be in the same latitude then as the wreckage was found? — That I could not say… [The noon sights and the leaving position of 11.20 are indeed at the same latitude of 41° 33’ N, indicating a straight line steered since breaking off the search]

  8436. If the Titanic was in latitude 41° 33’, which is… the position in which the wreckage was found, and your vessel was [stopped overnight], as stated in the log, in latitude 42° 5’, the Titanic would be some 33 miles to the southward of the position where you were lying stopped? — If she [Titanic] stopped in 41° 33’ and we were in 42° 5’?

  8437. Yes? — Yes, about 30 miles.

  8438. And if the Titanic was 30 miles to the southward of the position where you were stopped, I do not suppose you could see any navigation lights at that distance? — No, none whatsoever.

  Incidentally, Titanic struck the iceberg in 41° 46’, not 41° 33’ as suggested. Wreck site in 41° 43’.

  Chief Officer Stewart gives the following evidence:

  8823. That is your noon position? — Yes.

  8823. Are you able from working back from that noon position to fix accurately the position of the wreckage, which you came up to at 8.30? — Yes.