Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  In his closing speech at the formal investigation, Mr Robertson Dunlop (on behalf of Californian) clearly drew attention to the marked inconsistency between what was seen by the two ships. It is no part of this reappraisal to criticise the Court, but it must be remarked as surprising that no consideration of what he said appears in their Report… There are two possible explanations for what Californian saw. The first and most obvious is that a third ship was present which approached from the east, stopped on meeting the field ice, and then after a period steamed away to seek a break in the ice. This is very far from unlikely; the North Atlantic trade was busy in 1912 and a number of other ships are known to have been in the area… The second explanation, which was first advanced some years ago in an unpublished document, is that Californian did actually see Titanic but at a very much greater range than her horizon because of abnormal (‘super’) refraction. Against this theory, it requires a long period during which Californian could see Titanic, but not vice versa…

  There are two further objections to the super-refraction theory, he adds, before discussing side lights and Titanic’s heading and changes in bearing. In the end however, the DCI declines to reject super-refraction absolutely, and instead reports:

  In sum, I do not consider that a definite answer to the question ‘was Titanic seen?’ can be given; but if she was, then it was only because of the phenomenon of super-refraction, for she was well beyond the ordinary visible horizon. More probably, in my view, the ship seen by Californian was another, unidentified, vessel.

  WERE THE TITANIC’S ROCKETS SEEN?

  Yes, they were, the DCI concludes. The possibility that they were company signals is ‘quite unrealistic’. But he adds (p.14): ‘In those days, before wireless was common at sea, rockets were much more used than is now the case for reasons other than indicating distress… Given the amount of shipping in the area, it must be very probable that Californian was not the only ship to see the signals’. Yet he goes on to state that the use of rockets, while much more common in 1912 than today, ‘was certainly not so ordinary an event that their sighting, particularly in an area where ice was about, required anything less than all practicable positive measures to establish the reason for them being fired’. The DCI says Second Officer Stone should have called Captain Lord, and if he did not immediately respond, should have reported to him in person. The DCI continues:

  Captain Lord’s recollection of what he was told by Mr Stone is somewhat at variance with what that officer recalled; and he had only the vaguest memory, according to his evidence, of Mr Gibson’s call… This seems to me entirely consistent with a common condition when a man is called while he is sleeping heavily; there is a state of somnambulism quite often experienced in which the subject appears to respond to a call but the message given does not break the barrier between sleep and consciousness… Commonly, when the subject does wake he has no recollection of the call until he is told of it, when there is some memory but only in a very hazy sense. In plain language, I think the message from the bridge simply did not get through… This inevitably points to weakness on the part of Mr Stone… one can readily imagine (him) on the bridge, knowing in his heart what ought to be done but trying to persuade himself that there was no real cause for alarm… I sympathise with Mr Stone, but it must be said that he was seriously at fault.

  CONCLUDING COMMENTS

  Even if the Californian had responded immediately she confirmed a second rocket, and if her wireless operator had been roused, and if the difference between the SOS position and the place where the rockets appeared to be coming from was resolved so that the Californian then headed straight for the actual Titanic and not for her mistaken SOS position, Lord’s ship could not have saved any extra lives, the DCI concludes:

  The effect of Californian taking proper action would have been no more than to place on her the task actually carried out by the Carpathia – that is, the rescue of those who escaped… I do not think any reasonably probable action by Captain Lord could have led to a different outcome to the tragedy. This of course does not alter the fact that the attempt should have been made… The Titanic disaster led to a number of changes improving provisions for emergency at sea, but it was not until 1948 that the rules for distress signals were amended to make the requirement that they be red. Had that rule been in force in 1912, when it was much more needed than now, Mr Stone would surely not have remained passive.

  26

  CONCLUSION

  The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, edited by Peter Kemp, (Oxford University Press, 1976), first published nine years before the discovery of the wreck, had this entry under ‘Californian’:

  A 6,233-ton Leyland liner whose captain, Stanley Lord, was blamed by two Inquiries into the loss of the Titanic on 14/15 April 1912 for failing to come to the rescue of the liner’s passengers and crew although within eight to ten miles of the sinking ship and in sight of her distress rockets.

  This is based on ship’s lights seen from the sinking Titanic at 1am, and rockets seen from the Californian at about the same time. However the evidence from both Inquiries is clear that the ‘mystery’ lights moved first towards and then away from the Titanic, and the Californian did not move her engines all night as there was an ice barrier ahead which Captain Lord did not want to negotiate in darkness. The alleged rockets seen by her watch officers were low in the sky, did not make the detonations normally associated with distress rockets or shells, and were not regarded as distress signals until after the news of the Titanic’s loss; company recognition lights and flares were common at the time.

  It is probable, from all log book evidence, that the Californian was 19 miles from the sinking liner, and it is certain that her radio operator was off watch. Many think the late Captain Lord was made the scapegoat for the Titanic disaster for he never received a fair hearing, appearing at both Inquiries only as a witness, with no charges against him, and thus unable to defend himself against the accusations finally levelled by the courts of inquiry.

  Note that ‘19 miles’ refers to the SOS position. The actual wreck site had not been discovered.

  The Marine Accident Investigation Branch added sixteen years later in the last lines of its 1992 reappraisal: ‘The simple fact [is] that there are no villains in this story; just human beings with human characteristics’. But it had missed one of the most relevant factors: the importance of the transmission of the Californian’s location at 6.30 p.m. In the nearly four hours thereafter to 10.21, when she stopped, Californian was steaming west at 11 knots. She in fact covered 43 nautical miles when the positions are compared. Applying this 43 miles towards the Titanic where she was later sinking (41 nautical miles away) means the Californian could have got there, but would have had to alter course sharply to the south-west immediately after 6.30 p.m., and stay plunging a remorseless diagonal for the next four hours. But it was the duty of ‘whistleblower’ Groves for most of that time, and he was in charge of a course of due west.

  But the Californian had no reason to go south-west or south at all, as she was not troubled by ice at any stage during those four hours. This is one of the most simple, and yet most compelling of the arguments against her being the Titanic’s mystery ship. No new wireless report about ice from the Californian for four hours shows that she held her course to the west – staying north. She simply had no reason to head south towards the Titanic.

  Lord Mersey was a man who might have deserved censure in 1912. He escaped with the neglect of evidence adduced in his own court. Mersey was seventy-one at the time, having been two years retired from the bench. Yet he was hand-picked for the Titanic Inquiry.

  When this was announced to the House of Commons by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Sir Edward Carson provoked ironic cheers by asking whether Lord Mersey would be influenced by the Board of Trade. Asquith told him it was an insult to suggest it. But perhaps Carson recalled that Mersey had made it a point throughout his career never to miss the Annual Dinner of the Chamber of Shipping.
On St Valentine’s night, Friday 14 February 1908, a scant four years before he would preside at the Titanic Inquiry, the learned judge gave this typically grandiloquent toast to that Chamber (The Times, Monday 17 February 1908):

  Mr Justice Bigham [later Lord Mersey], in proposing The Shipping Interest, said that those connected with the industry had to see that nothing was done by legislation, or in other ways, which would decrease the carrying power of this great country.

  Mersey was thus advocating nothing less than a freemasonry of big shipping, whose adherents should act in the industry’s sole interest at all times. The following year he dined with Lord Pirrie of Titanic builders Harland & Wolff, with his Liverpool contemporary, J. Bruce Ismay of the White Star Line, and with others at a function hosted by a guild known as the Shipwrights Company (source: The Times, 10 June 1909, p.8). Less than three years later, this man had sole control of the ramifications of the Titanic sinking. He later became Viscount Mersey, having presided over the 1914 Empress of Ireland and 1915 Lusitania Inquiries (privately describing the latter as ‘a very dirty business’, with First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill having secretly urged that William Turner, captain of that torpedoed vessel, be extensively blamed; Mersey also found that the Lusitania had been hit by two torpedoes when British intelligence already knew from German intercepts that only one had been fired). When Mersey died suddenly at a Littlehampton beach hotel in 1929, the Times recorded, in an uncommonly negative obituary, that he was ‘too apt to take short cuts; and by no means free from the judicial fault of premature expression of opinion or bias, nor always patient with counsel whose minds did not work on the same lines as his own’.

  Mersey’s son Charles, who had been secretary to his father’s Titanic Inquiry seventeen years earlier, succeeded to the Viscountcy. But when Stanley Lord died, his son, also called Stanley, was left to carry a tarnished name.

  Lord Mersey, with a modicum of care and the application of his professional skills, might have cut through the vengeful fog to come to the aid of a British seafarer in grave difficulties in 1912. He did not do so.

  Benjamin Kirk, who went up in a coal basket shackled high to the mainmast of the Californian on the morning of 15 April 1912, asked to go there in order to better scan the horizon, had this to say in 1969 of his former captain, who had died seven years earlier: ‘I always found Captain Lord very understanding and a good Master to serve under’. By their deeds ye shall know them. And Kirk was there that night and morning.

  Also there, in the wider vicinity, was another party; a ship that approached to within 5 miles of the Titanic, turned and stopped. A ship that both saw and heard the giant White Star liner’s distress rockets, yet instead of coming to assist, decided instead to depart the scene.

  Her identity remains one of the last secrets of the sea.

  APPENDIX 1

  Original statement of Herbert Stone, Second Officer, SS Californian, prepared at Captain Lord’s request, 18 April 1912:

  On going up to the bridge I was stopped by yourself at the wheelhouse door, and you gave me verbal orders for the watch. You showed me a steamer a little abaft of our star[board] beam and informed me that she was stopped. You also showed me the loose field ice all around the ship and a dense icefield to the southward. You told me to watch the other steamer and report if she came any nearer, and that you were going to lie down on the chartroom settee.

  I went on the bridge about eight minutes past twelve, and took over the watch from the Third Officer, Mr Groves, who also pointed out ice and steamer and said our head was ENE and we were swinging. On looking at the compass I saw this was correct and observed the other steamer SSE dead abeam and showing one masthead light, her red side light and one or two small indistinct lights around the deck, which looked like portholes or open doors.

  I judged her to be a small tramp steamer and about 5 miles distant. The Third Officer informed me he had called him up on our Morse lamp but had got no reply. The Third Officer then left the bridge and I at once called the steamer up but got no reply. Gibson, the apprentice, then came up with the coffee about 12.15. I told him I had called the steamer up and the result. He then went to the tapper with the same result. Gibson thought at first he was answering, but it was only his masthead lamps flickering a little. I then sent Gibson by your orders to get the gear all ready for streaming a new log line when we got under weigh again.

  At 12.35 you whistled up the speaking tube and asked if the other steamer had moved. I replied ‘No’ and that she was on the same bearing and also reported I had called him up and the result. At about 12.45 I observed a flash of light in the sky just above that steamer. I thought nothing of it, as there were several shooting stars about, the night being fine and clear, with light airs and calms.

  Shortly after I observed another distinctly over the steamer which I made out to be a white rocket though I observed no flash on the deck or any indication that it had come from that steamer, in fact, it appeared to come from a good distance beyond her.

  Between then and about 1.15 I observed three more the same as before, and all white in colour. I, at once, whistled down the speaking tube and you came from the chartroom into your own room and answered. I reported seeing these lights in the sky in the direction of the other steamer which appeared to me to be white rockets.

  You then gave me orders to call her up with the Morse lamp and try to get some information from her. You also asked me if they were private signals and I replied ‘I do not know, but they were all white’. You then said: ‘When you get an answer let me know by Gibson’. Gibson and I observed three more at intervals and kept calling them up on our morse lamps but got no reply whatsoever.

  The other steamer meanwhile had shut in her red side light and showed us her stern light and her masthead’s glow was just visible. I observed the steamer to be steaming away to the SW and altering her bearing fast. We were also swinging slowly all the time through S and at 1.50 were heading about WSW and the other steamer bearing SW x W.

  At 2 a.m. the vessel was steaming away fast, and only just her stern light was visible and bearing SW a half W. I sent Gibson down to you and told him to wake you and tell you we had seen altogether eight white rockets and that the steamer had gone out of sight to the SW. Also that we were heading WSW.

  When he came back he reported he had told you we had called him up repeatedly and got no answer, and you replied: ‘All right, are you sure there were no colours in them’, and Gibson relied: ‘No, they were all white’.

  At 2.45 I again whistled down again [sic] and told you we had seen no more lights and that the steamer had steamed away to the SW and was now out of sight, also that the rockets were all white and had no colours whatever.

  We saw nothing further until about 3.20 when we thought we observed two faint lights in the sky about SSW, and a little distance apart. At 3.40 I sent Gibson down to see all was ready for me to prepare the new log at eight bells.

  The Chief Officer, Mr Stewart, came on the bridge at 4 a.m. and I gave him a full report of what I had seen and my reports and replies from you, and pointed out where I thought I had observed these faint lights at 3.20.

  He picked up the binoculars and said after a few moments: ‘There she is then, she’s all right, she is a four-master’. I said: ‘Then that isn’t the steamer I saw first’, took up the glasses and just made out a four-master steamer with two masthead lights a little abaft our port beam, and bearing about S; we were heading about WNW. Mr Stewart then took over the watch and I went off the bridge.

  Herbert Stone, Second Officer

  APPENDIX 2

  Original statement of James Gibson, Apprentice Officer, SS Californian, prepared at Captain Lord’s request, 18 April 1912:

  It being my watch on deck from 12 o’clock until 4 o’clock, I went on the bridge at about 15 minutes after twelve and saw that the ship was stopped and that she was surrounded with light field ice and thick field ice to the southward.

  While the Second Offic
er and I were having coffee, a few minutes later, I asked him if there were any more ships around us. He said that there was one on the starboard beam, and looking over the weather-cloth, I saw a white light flickering, which I took to be a Morse light calling us up.

  I then went over to the keyboard and gave one long flash in answer, and still seeing this light flickering, I gave her the calling-up sign. The light on the other ship, however, was still the same, so I looked at her through the binoculars and found that it was her masthead light flickering. I also observed her port side light and a faint glare of lights on her after deck. I then went over to the Second Officer and remarked that she looked like a tramp steamer. He said that most probably she was, and was burning oil lights.

  The ship was then right abeam. At about 25 minutes after twelve I went down off the bridge to get a new log out, and not being able to find it, I went on the bridge again to see if the Second Officer knew anything about it. I then noticed that this other ship was about one point and a half before the beam. I then went down again and was down until about five minutes to one.

  Arriving on the bridge again at that time, the Second Officer told me that the other ship, which was then about three and a half points on the starboard bow, had fired five rockets and he also remarked that after seeing the second one, to make sure he was not mistaken, he had told the Captain through the speaking tube, and that the Captain had told him to watch her and keep calling her up on the Morse light.

  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.