"That silly man who wouldn't use his wireless!"

 

 

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti,

et vobis fratres,

quia peccavi nimis

cogitatione, verbo,

opere et omissione...

--From the 1970 Order of Mass

 

 I'm not a coward, I've just never been tested/

I'd like to think that if I was I would pass/

Look at the tested, and think "There but for the grace go I"/

 
Might be a coward, I'm afraid of what I might find out/

 

Never had to/

 

Knock on wood/

 
But I know someone who has/
 

Which makes me wonder if I could/
 

It makes me wonder if/
 

I've never had to/

 

Knock on wood/
 

And I'm glad I haven't yet/
 

Because I'm sure it isn't good/
 

That's the impression that I get/

 --"The Impression That I Get" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (1997).

The late American author Walter Lord wisely entitled his immortal book about the S.S. Titanic "A Night To Remember." 

Due in no small part to him, the sinking still has a hold on the collective imagination of the world. Even in places like America, where the majority of people increasingly live in a perpetual present tense. Of course, Robert Ballard's 1987 revelation of the wreck site and James Cameron's technically-stupendous and narratively-vicious film from 1997 certainly play even larger roles.

The flow of books has increased because of the latter two, no doubt. Yet, there are still enduring mysteries from the tragedy. What were done with the ice warnings the ship received? What was the speed of the ship at the time of the accident? Did the coal fire in a fuel bunker play a role?

For my part, the great mystery has always been the identity of the ship whose lights were seen from the Titanic. In fact, the lights were so noteworthy that several of the lifeboats started pulling toward the ship lights.

Could this ship have rescued the Titanic's passengers?

Ever since I read Lord's book, the ship that most likely to fit the bill is the Californian, a 5,000 ton steamer which stopped in the evening before the sinking to avoid trouble with the ice. It is undisputed that the Captain of the Californian, 36 year old Stanley Lord (no relation to Walter), had no experience in dealing with field ice. The decision to stop until morning was quite sensible. 

How the Californian's deck officers behaved after they stopped that evening has been the source of endless controversy.

In my opinion, that controversy has always seemed more apparent than real. To me, the defenders of the "slackness" (to use Captain Lord's own term) of the Californian's officers that night offer arguments that are a colorfully-lit flambé of ingenuity sitting atop an over-cooked hash of special pleading, speculation, hero-worship, unsupported claims of frame-ups and studied ignorance of inconvenient data.

That is because there is no dispute that (1) the crew of the Titanic fired eight white distress rockets into the sky starting around 11:40pm and (2) the crew of the Californian saw a ship firing eight white rockets into the sky at the same time.

The Second Officer of the Californian, Herbert Stone, noted the first rocket and reported it to Captain Lord. In response to this, Lord asked for the color of the rocket (he was napping in the chart room at the time), and was told the first rocket was white. He told Stone to try to contact the ship with a Morse lamp.

White rockets were universally known to be distress signals--there is no dispute here.

The ship did not respond. Stone and other crewman noticed other rockets being fired, and noticed, over time, that the lights of the other ship began to look "queer," and admitted this was consistent with a ship with a list.

Then, some time after 2:00am, both lights and ship vanished.

The Titanic sank at approximately 2:20am.

Ever since, the supporters of Captain Lord have, with much hand-waving and minimizing, dismissed the rockets as roman candle flares, some form of unknown shipping company signal, or something else from an unknown ship that has defied the most dogged nautical research in history and also fired eight somethings into the same night sky in the same basic patch of the ocean. Whatever else may be said, the persecuted Captain Lord's ship definitely did not see the Titanic's distress rockets, say the Captain's defenders.

The last word on the subject should be the late Leslie Reade's 1993 book The Ship That Stood Still: The Californian and Her Mysterious Role in the Titanic Disaster.

As a matter of definition, the defenders of Lord and the Californian are called "Lordites." Their opponents are called "anti-Lordites." Reade was a definite anti-Lordite, but it is to his very great credit that his presentation led me to have more sympathy and respect for Lord by the time I finished. 

This was not what I expected, to put it mildly. In my mind, this is extremely important, as Reade points out that it was Stanley Lord's otherwise spotless record and post-retirement gentlemanly charm which created the dogged devotion of the Lordites that persists to this day. As you can see from my last full paragraph above this one, I am in the anti-Lordite camp, despite that increased sympathy and respect.

If I could sum up the crux of Reade's argument in one vulgar catchphrase, it would be 

"THE. CALIFORNIAN. SAW. EIGHT. ROCKETS. DAMMIT!"

As said above, Lordites have tried to dispense with the rockets by claiming such were company signals. 

"Company signals" were a way for ships to identify themselves as part of a particular shipping line--and were fading out of use by 1912 anyway, in part due to the companies themselves frowning on using them. As an example of Reade's impeccable research, he obtained records detailing the company signals used by all the shipping companies which traversed the North Atlantic at the time. And this last company had no ships remotely in the vicinity at the time. Three companies used white lighting or flares, but punctuated them with other lights or signals, and none used full fledged rockets. None of these companies had ships in the area at the time, either.

As can be seen, Reade leaves no shell unturned in his analysis. He read the voluminous transcripts of the American and British inquiries. It is patently clear that Reade regarded the American chairman and Michigan Senator William Alden Smith as a good-hearted buffoon: florid, ignorant of nautical matters, painfully repetitive and given overmuch to bombastic speechifying. And to be fair, there was a good deal of posturing, ignorance and baffling question threads on display from the American Senators on the committee. 

But Reade just as readily concedes that the findings and recommendations of this much-condemned (at least by the British) American assemblage were sensible, well-supported and judicious. And, for all of his understandable facepalming at Smith's rhetorical flights, Reade concedes that Smith's presentation speech for the findings was delivered to a spellbound audience and elicited no few tears. [For a more positive and largely-persuasive evaluation of Smith and the work of the American hearings, I recommend Wyn Craig Wade's The Titanic: End of A Dream.]

Yet Reade is no respecter of persons or nations, and he takes a switch to the flaws in the British hearings, too. He pointedly notes that, unlike the supposedly-inferior American version, there wasn't much interest in hearing from passengers in Britain--certainly no one below First Class. It was the British Board of Trade as both plaintiff and defendant, and despite the selection of capable and knowledgeable men to head the hearing, it was an upper class corporate proceeding from beginning to end. Reade is scathing about that part of it, sounding like an old school Labour man--and I mean that as a compliment. 

Moreover, Reade is in the ideal position to swat at each of the hearings, as his familiarity with and command of both volumes of transcripts is that of a virtuoso.

Finally, to the transcripts themselves and the Californian officers' testimony. 

It is some of the most irritating testimony I have ever read. Most of the Californian's officers refused to admit that they thought the white rockets were "distress rockets." The British questioners, experienced barristers all, were almost indignant with the obtuseness of this evasive testimony, as white rockets were uniformly-recognized as distress signals. 

One can only come to the conclusion that there was a meeting of Lord and the senior officers to coordinate their stories after learning of the sinking. Statements were drawn up on the way back to Boston. An additional dubious oddly was that the ship's "scrap log," a standard draft document which contained the weather conditions and locations of the ship for entry into the official log, went missing. This, to me, suggest that the Californian was much closer to the Titanic than the 19.5 miles claimed by Lord.

These and other problems were noted in the British inquiry, which finally squeezed out of Lord an admission that the white rockets may have been distress signals.

To which the Californian responded with a Morse lamp, but not turning back on its wireless. Tragically, the Californian's wireless officer ended his 16 hour shift at 11:30pm that fateful night, missing the distress signals that blared from the Titanic until nearly the end.

It would have been a simple matter to wake him up and crank up the wireless--but that did not occur to any of the deck officers.

Hence the quote at the top of this post. 

It came from Carpathia Captain Arthur Rostron, whose ship under his orders heroically charged to the rescue of the Titanic's passengers that night. While sympathetic to Lord as a brother officer, he uttered that statement to his fellow officers when privately discussing the controversy.

A final interesting fact about Reade's book is not that he spent years writing it. It is that it took nearly twenty years from his completion of the work in 1975 for it to see print. Edward DeGroot was Reade's Dutch friend and collaborator and authored the final chapter added to the book after Reade's death to account for yet another British inquest in 1992. This last contained conflicting views, and satisfied no one.

He indicates that the publication delay was due in part to the eminent Lordite Leslie Harrison, the greatest champion of Stanley Lord, revoking his permission to use certain material that he originally granted to Reade. After publication, Harrison sued Reade for defamation (on dubious grounds to me, objecting to being characterized as badgering an elderly witness to make a pro-Lord statement) and unauthorized use of a photo of Harrison given to Reade (on more solid ground here, but petty beyond words). If I understand correctly, the suit was settled with an agreement to remove this material in the next printing of The Ship That Stood Still--which never occurred.

Indeed, it is probably safe to say that the antagonism between anti-Lordites and Lordites exceeds that displayed when the principals involved in the incident were still alive. Reade certainly had no respect for Lordite arguments and the bare civil minimum for their persons--though at least some sense of genuine respect for Harrison occasionally glints through the contempt for the latter's efforts.

I've never been a Lordite, and never will be. The answers given by most of the Californian's officers during the British investigation were incredibly (in both senses of the term) evasive. But I do feel considerably more sympathy for Lord. His nautical service was otherwise honorable, including later in wartime. But on the night of the sinking, the "slackness" (to use his own term) of the officers was inexcusable. Faced with that reality, he followed the self-serving route and tried to cover his backside. The cover story broke down under contradictions and sheer weight of falsehood. The stain never came off. 

In the end, I think he came to believe his untruthful version. Ultimately, and unfortunately for Lord, there was another captain on the ocean that night who behaved in the finest traditions of seamanship: Rostron. Against that exemplar, he did not remotely measure up. Lord is not the cartoon villain some anti-Lordites will suggest, but he is certainly a moral cautionary tale. But for the grace of God go I.