Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  8824. How many miles had you travelled between the time you proceeded on your course and when you took this position? — About four or five miles… [A much better guess than Groves!]

  8830. Is the position stated in your log as the position in which you were searching for the boats of the Titanic accurate or not: latitude 41° 33’ north and longitude 50° 01’ west? — Yes.

  8831. Was that the latitude and longitude in which you found the wreckage? — Yes.

  8832. How many miles was the position of the wreckage from the place where you had been stopped from 10.21 the night before until six o’clock that morning? — About thirty miles.

  8833. Do you know in what direction, thirty miles? — About south, a little east.

  8834. Assuming the Titanic struck the iceberg in the position which was reported by the Virginian at 6 a.m., according to your log, latitude 41° 46’ north and longitude 50° 14’ west [SOS transmission], how far was that position from the place where you were stopped?

  Stewart — About 19 or 20 miles.

  8835. And bearing how? — Bearing about south-south-west — south, a little west.

  8836. Could the Titanic, assuming she was in either of those two positions, or was to the eastward of either of those two positions, by any possibility have been visible to anyone on board your ship while you were lying stopped in the ice? — No.

  And this is Lord:

  7378. How many miles had you, in fact, to steam to get to the place where the wreckage was found? — I should think 30 miles at the least.

  Lord, Stewart and even Groves are in rare harmony as to the distance between their overnight stopping place and the location of wreckage or search. Lord and Stewart put it at about 30 miles, and Groves agreed both the noon position and the overnight stop. Lord also emphasised the difference between the Titanic’s SOS position and what he believed was the real sinking position. He would be vindicated seventy-three years later with the discovery of the Titanic wreck:

  6821. The spot mentioned here [the SOS position] as 19 miles away is not, in my opinion, where the Titanic hit the berg. [Imagine this heresy!]

  6822. Within a radius of 20 miles of you? — No, 30 miles.

  6823. Do you mean she was further from you? — She was 32 miles from where I left the wreckage.

  He emphasised his belief again, but counsel could not, or would not, grasp what he was saying:

  7018. And then you eventually saw the Carpathia… Did you eventually get to the position of the foundering of the Titanic? — The real position or the position given?

  7019. The position given? — I passed that position.

  7021. That is the position given of 41° 46’ and 50° 14’? — Yes.

  7023. How did you know what was the position? — I got a good observation at noon that day.

  7024. I do not quite understand what you mean. You said just now that you passed the position indicated to you by the wireless messages? — Yes.

  7025. Where the Titanic had sunk? — Yes.

  7026. Did you see anything at all there? — The Mount Temple was in the vicinity of that position.

  7027. She was near there? — Yes.

  7028. Did you see any wreckage? — Not where the Mount Temple was.

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

  7030. Where? — Near the Carpathia.

  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.

  Not only Lord, but Captain Moore of the Mount Temple and Captain Ludwig Stulping of the Birma separately came to the conclusion that the Titanic had sunk a good deal further east than the longitude (east–west axis) indicated in the SOS transmissions. Captain Stulping sent in a statement that was ignored. But there was already enough material to allow the British court at least to conclude that the Titanic’s transmitted SOS position was in error. Instead it concluded the Californian was ‘not accurate’ with her navigation. And this is the moment when Lord Mersey thinks he has finally skewered the Californian – using Captain Lord’s own carefully-logged ‘wreckage’ departure position (British Inquiry Final Report, p.45):

  Captain Lord stated that about 7.30 a.m. he passed the… vicinity of the position given him as where the Titanic had collided [the SOS position, and later the Mount Temple position]… He saw no wreckage there, but did later on near the Carpathia, which ship he closed soon afterwards. And he stated that the position where he subsequently left this wreckage was 41° 33’ N, 50° 1’ W… If it is admitted that these positions were correct, then it follows that the Titanic’s position as given by that ship when making the [SOS] signal was approximately 19 miles from the Californian; and further that the position in which the Californian was stopped during the night, was thirty miles away from where the wreckage was seen by her in the morning… [note that Mersey has no doubt about the Titanic’s position ‘when making the SOS’; in fact his certainty on this point sets up the coming coup de grace…] or that the wreckage had drifted eleven miles in a little more than five hours.

  Mersey is subtracting 19 miles (Californian’s stop distance from the SOS position) from ‘about 30 miles’ (distance to the search abandonment position), to arrive at 11 miles. The north–south separation of 41° 46’ (SOS position) from 41° 33’ (‘wreckage’ departure latitude) is actually 13 miles, and Mersey is being incredibly imprecise – not least in treating different directions from Californian’s stop position as being along the same yardstick.

  Californian did not steam directly south to accord with Mersey’s crude subtraction. The SOS position was considerably to the west of the wreckage area. Longitude comes into it, besides latitude. Californian reached the SOS position, found nothing, and steered an ‘L’ shape from there to meet the Carpathia. The actual separation from the SOS position to Californian’s 11.20 position is a south-east diagonal of 16 nautical miles!

  Meanwhile Lord Mersey’s five-hour time-frame is impossible to understand. The Californian position was determined at 11.20 a.m. and the Titanic sank at 2.20 a.m. (allowing wreckage to begin drifting), which is nine hours. It seems that Lord Mersey is only allowing the wreckage to drift from 6.20 a.m. or a little before. This is bizarre. It appears to link the Californian beginning to get underway in the morning (to steam to the SOS location) with the time the wreckage began drifting. In other words, Mersey seems to think the Californian had been in the latitude of wreckage from the beginning. It appears he has allowed his pre-formed conclusion about her being the mystery ship to get in the way of clear thinking.

  Alternatively, since Lord Mersey favoured Groves, the difference may be between Titanic foundering at 2.20 a.m. (at the SOS position, he believed!) and Californian arriving at the Carpathia’s side at 7.45 a.m. according to Groves.

  Mersey may be equating where Carpathia was with the wreckage. From 2.20 to 7.45 a.m. is five hours and twenty-five minutes. Might this be ‘little more than five hours’? But according to this concept, once the wreckage drifted to the Carpathia position it just stayed there until 11.20 a.m.!

  Yet the sting is in the tail, however much Mersey has misconceived the situation. The crucial point is the question of wreckage drifting ‘eleven miles in five hours’ – from the Titanic SOS position to Lord’s scene-departing position. Mersey was unable to accept that the wreckage could have drifted 11 miles in ‘five hours’ when there was evidence that the current was of the order of half a knot. The distance from the SOS position (Mersey accepted the latter unquestioningly) meant the wreckage had speeded at more than four times the usual rate of drift, by Lord Mersey’s reckonings. Never mind that his distance and time-frame are both horribly misjudged (neither did he app
reciate that the wreckage was not bodies and main wreckage, but might have been merely lifeboat flotsam – the lifeboats having pulled away from the wreck site). So, in Mersey’s determination, Lord and officers are likely lying about their positions. In Mersey’s view, the Titanic’s SOS position could never be open to challenge. The Titanic would not transmit an incorrect position because it is demonstrably in the Titanic’s interest to get her distress position right.

  But the Titanic did indeed get it wrong. The incontrovertible evidence offered by the discovery of the wreck site in 1985 proved her sinking position (latitude 41° 43’ N, longitude 49° 56’ W). Mersey did not know this at the time, so he chose to conclude instead that the wreckage could not have moved so quickly from what must be the sinking position (the place specified by SOS). It therefore must follow that Captain Lord and officers were lying about the wreckage and, in addition, are most likely lying about their overnight position!

  Thus Lord is finally defeated (in the mind of the court), by impersonal mathematics – a science which does not rely on lights or rockets, cannot make mistakes, cannot enter into disputes or contradictions, and which cannot have ulterior motives in its output. Mersey has got his man, even though his figures are wrong, because he thinks they are irrefutable. He chooses to overlook the independent evidence of Captain Stulping and Captain Moore about the SOS position being a nonsense. The apparent impossibility of ‘speeding’ wreckage enables him to conclude that the Californian position of the night before was inaccurate. Of course, we know today that the Titanic’s wreck is 13 miles east and a little south of the SOS location. And the drifting of her wreckage can only ever have been consistent with the Titanic’s sinking position (the wreck site).

  Moore, Stulping, and Lord (and Rostron, with his flare encounter ‘twenty miles’ early) were all correct in their comments. Mersey was toweringly wrong. But it was Lord who paid the price!

  NO BODIES, NO WORRIES

  Neither the Carpathia nor the Californian saw any massed bodies. Carpathia saw one, wearing a lifejacket, almost certainly pushed overboard by a lifeboat. Here is Rostron: ‘Any bodies in the water? — We only saw one body’ (25497). Rostron states that the Californian, left behind to search for wreckage, later transmitted this message to Carpathia: ‘Have searched position carefully up to noon and found nothing and seen no bodies’ (US Inquiry, p.34). And Lord confirms this: ‘Did you see any bodies? — No’ (7033). Yet there was a sea of bodies floating in the vicinity of the Titanic wreck. Several witnesses confirm this. Scarrott states: ‘We were amongst hundreds, I should say, of dead bodies floating in lifebelts’ (question 439). Frank Evans says: ‘There were plenty of dead bodies about us. You couldn’t hardly count them, sir’ (US Inquiry, p.678); ‘I should think between 150 and 200. We had great difficulty in getting through them to get to the wreck’ (US Inquiry, p.751). Archibald Gracie states: ‘I saw what seemed to be bodies all around’ (US Inquiry, p.994). The chairman of the US Inquiry wrestled manfully with the problem, confident at all times that the Carpathia had actually reached the sinking site when in fact she had not (US Inquiry, p.780):

  Senator Smith: I think I may be pardoned for saying that when I found the Carpathia’s Captain saw no bodies, and then found from the testimony of those in the lifeboats that there were hundreds of bodies all around in the water, I came to the conclusion that they had either been sucked in with the sinking ship or that they were inclosed somewhere in the ship.

  Captain Moore of the Mount Temple attempted to help out. He speculated to Smith: ‘It may be that, as you say, the ice has covered the spot where the Titanic sank, and that has kept those bodies under. I think that is a very feasible suggestion that you have made as to that’ (US Inquiry, p.785). On 19 April, four days after the disaster, the North German Lloyd vessel Bremen passed through the vicinity and saw masses of bodies: ‘The officers of the Bremen estimated that in one group there were two hundred corpses’ (Daily Sketch, 25 April 1912). It is clear why the Californian did not encounter the mass of bodies: she did not go far enough east and north.

  Titanic bodies in fact drifted east and only a little south. The recovery ship MacKay–Bennett would report: ‘Bodies are numerous in Lat. 41° 35’ N, Long. 48° 37’ W’ (Daily Sketch, 26 April 1912). The Titanic wreck site is at 41 43’ N, 49 56’ W. It can thus be seen that the bodies drifted only eight minutes south – but a full seventy-nine minutes east. The Gulf Stream current in later days was pushing the flock of corpses almost ten minutes to the eastward for every minute they slipped to the south. Note also that this ten-day old latitude of 41° 35’ for the bodies is still 2 miles to the north of latitude 41° 33’, where Captain Lord said he left the ‘wreckage’ at 11.20 the morning after! Yet, unlike the US Inquiry, the absence of bodies in the SOS position or even further south-east in both Carpathia’s position and Lord’s scene-departure position did not impinge at all on the British investigation.

  Perhaps it ought to have done.

  16

  ERNEST GILL

  Breaking off her fruitless search for bodies or survivors, the Californian resumed her course to Boston. Notoriety was not far away. It was at Boston that Ernest Gill, a below-decks member of the Californian’s crew, turned ‘whistleblower’. Gill had been planning on making money from the tragedy, according to the evidence of Californian wireless operator Cyril Evans (US Inquiry, p.746–7):

  Senator Burton: Was it said [on the Californian] that the rockets [seen] were those which had been sent up by the Titanic? Was that the talk on board the ship?

  Evans: Some of them seemed to think so, and some not, sir.

  Sen. Burton: Has anyone told [you] that he was to receive $500 for a story in regard to these rockets – anyone on your boat?

  Evans: I think the donkeyman mentioned it.

  Sen. Burton: What did he say?

  Evans: He said ‘I think that I will make about $500 on this’.

  Sen. Burton: He said that he thought he would make $500?

  Evans: Yes.

  Sen. Burton: When was that said?

  Evans: The night before last… I had gone ashore, and I was outside the station, I think. It was after I had landed, yes, sir. He asked if I was not going back anymore [Gill never returned to the ship after making his charges and was marked as a deserter at Boston]. He said he had been up and had told the newspaper about the accident. He said, ‘I think we shall make about $500 out of it’.

  Gill duly told a sensational story about the Californian seeing rockets on the night the Titanic went down. It resulted in him being called to give evidence at the US Senate Subcommittee Inquiry into the greatest maritime disaster the Western world had known. This is the statement from donkeyman Gill that was read into the record of those proceedings (p.710–11):

  I am 29 years of age; a native of Yorkshire, single. I was making my first voyage on the Californian.

  On the night of April 14, I was on duty from 8 p.m. until 12 [midnight] in the engine room. At 11.56 I came on deck. The stars were shining brightly. It was very clear and I could see for a long distance. The ship’s engines had been stopped since 10.30 and she was drifting amid floe ice.

  I looked over the rail on the starboard side and saw the lights of a very large steamer about 10 miles away. I could see her broadside lights. I watched her for fully a minute. They could not have helped but see her from the bridge and lookout.

  It was now 12 o’clock and I went to my cabin. I woke my mate, William Thomas. He heard the ice crunching alongside the ship and asked, ‘Are we in the ice?’ I replied, ‘Yes but it must be clear off to the starboard, for I saw a big vessel going along full speed. She looked as if she might be a big German’.

  I turned in but could not sleep. In half an hour I turned out, thinking to smoke a cigarette. Because of the cargo I could not smoke ‘tween decks, so I went on deck again. I had been on deck about 10 minutes when I saw a white rocket about 10 miles away on the starboard side. I thought it must be a shooting star. In seven or eight
minutes I saw distinctly a second rocket in the same place, and I said to myself, ‘That must be a vessel in distress’.

  It was not my business to notify the bridge or the lookouts; but they could not have helped but see them. I turned in immediately after, supposing that the ship would pay attention to the rockets.

  I knew no more until I was awakened at 6.40 by the Chief Engineer, who said, ‘Turn out to render assistance. The Titanic has gone down’. I exclaimed and leaped from my bunk. I went on deck and found the vessel under way and proceeding full speed. She was clear of the field ice, but there were plenty of bergs about.

  I went down on watch and heard the Second and Fourth Engineers in conversation. Mr J. C. Evans is the Second and Mr Wooten [sic – actually ‘Hooton’] is the Fourth. The Second was telling the Fourth that the Third Officer had reported rockets had gone up in his watch. I knew then that it must have been the Titanic I had seen.

  The Second Engineer added that the Captain had been notified by the apprentice officer whose name, I think, is Gibson, of the rockets. The skipper had told him to Morse to the vessel in distress. Mr Stone, the Second Navigating Officer, was on the bridge at the time, said Mr Evans. I overheard Mr Evans say that more lights had been shown and more rockets went up. Then, according to Mr Evans, Mr Gibson went to the Captain again and reported more rockets. The Skipper told him to continue to Morse until he got a reply. No reply was received.

  The next remark I heard the Second [Engineer Evans] pass was, ‘Why in the devil didn’t they wake the wireless man up?’ The entire crew of the steamer have been talking among themselves about the disregard of the rockets. I personally urged several to join me in protesting against the conduct of the Captain, but they refused, because they feared to lose their jobs.

  I am quite sure that the Californian was less than 20 miles from the Titanic, which the officers report to have been our position. I could not have seen her if she had been more than 10 miles distant and I saw her very plainly.