by Nic Compton
NIC COMPTON
TITANIC
ON TRIAL
THE NIGHT THE TITANIC SANK
TOLD THROUGH THE TESTIMONIES OF HER PASSENGERS AND CREW
To Anna, the unsinkable.
Contents
Timeline
Prologue
Introduction
Part One: Sea Trials and the Maiden Voyage
2–14 April 1912
Part Two: Collision
14–15 April 1912
Part Three: In the Boats
Monday 15 April 1912
Part Four: Rescue
Monday 15 April 1912
Part Five: Epilogue
Extracts from the inquiry verdicts
The Biographies
Footnotes
Timeline
1909
31 March
Titanic’s keel laid at Harland & Wolff, Belfast
1911
31 May
Titanic is launched
1912
2 April
Sea trials; Titanic leaves Belfast for Southampton
3 April
Titanic arrives in Southampton
10 April
8.30am Lifeboat drill, two lifeboats lowered
12 noon Titanic leaves Southampton; narrowly avoids collision with New York
6.30pm Titanic arrives Cherbourg
8pm Titanic leaves Cherbourg
11 April
11.30am Titanic arrives Queenstownaa
1.30pm Titanic leaves Queenstown
12 April
12 noon Titanic clocks 464 miles in 22½ hours
13 April
12am Titanic clocks 519 miles in 24 hours
Sunday 14 April
2am Wilde on watch (senior officer)ab
4am Pitman and Lowe on watch (junior officers)
6am Lightoller on watch (senior officer)
8am Boxhall and Moody on watch (junior officers)
9am Titanic receives ice warning from La Caronia
10am Murdoch on watch (senior officer)
12 noon Titanic clocks 546 miles in 24 hours Pitman & Lowe on watch (junior officers)
1.35pm Titanic relays ice warning from Amerika
1.42pm Titanic receives ice warning from Baltic
2pm Wilde on watch (senior officer)
4pm Boxhall and Moody on watch (junior officers)
5.50pm Titanic turns ‘corner’ and heads west to New York
6pm Lightoller on watch (senior officer); Pitman and Lowe on watch (junior officers)
7.25pm Titanic intercepts ice warning from Californian to Antillian
8pm Boxhall and Moody on watch (junior officers)
9.20pm Captain Smith retires to his cabin
9.30pm Warning sent to lookouts to watch out for ice
9.40pm Titanic receives ice warning from Mesaba (never reaches bridge)
10pm Murdoch on watch (senior officer)
10.21pm Californian forced to stop due to ice
10.55pm Titanic wireless operator rebuffs attempt by Californian to send ice warning
11.40pm Titanic collides with iceberg
12 midnight Captain Smith orders wireless operator to send CQD/SOS
Monday 15 April
12.05am Order given to uncover lifeboats
12.20am Order given to board lifeboats
12.25am Carpathia receives CQD/SOS message
12.45am Lifeboat No 7 launched; first distress rocket fired
12.55am Lifeboat Nos 5 and 6 launched
1am Lifeboat Nos 1 and 3 launched
1.10am Lifeboat No 8 launched
1.20am Lifeboat Nos 9 and 10 launched
1.25am Lifeboat No 12 launched
1.30am Lifeboat Nos 13 and 14 launched
1.35am Lifeboat Nos 15 and 16 launched
1.40am Collapsible C launched
1.45am Lifeboat Nos 2 and 11 launched
1.55am Lifeboat No 4 launched
2.05am Collapsible D launched
2.17am Last CQD/SOS message sent by wireless operator
2.20am Titanic sinks; collapsibles A and B swept into sea
4.10am Carpathia picks up first lifeboat
5.20am Californian heads for Titanic
8am Californian arrives at scene of disaster
8.30am Carpathia picks up last lifeboat; service held
8.50am Carpathia heads for New York
18 April
Carpathia arrives New York
19 April
US Inquiry begins
2 May
British Inquiry begins
Note: All times are ship’s time, ie New York time + 1hr 50mins
Prologue
Frederick Fleet – Lookout
I was on the lookout at the time of the collision. Lee and I relieved Symons and Jewell. They told us to keep a sharp lookout for small ice and growlers. They said they had had orders from the bridge. The sea was calm. The first part of the watch we could see the horizon, then there came a slight haze. It was nothing to talk about; it was only about two points on each side. It did not affect us, the haze; we could see just as well. I daresay it was somewhere near seven bells. The watch was nearly over.
I saw a black object right ahead, high above the water. I struck three bells as soon as I saw it. Then I went straight to the telephone, and rang them up on the bridge. They said, ‘What do you see?’ I said, ‘Iceberg right ahead.’ They said, ‘Thank you.’ I do not know who it was.
After I rang them up, I looked over the nest, and the ship was going to port. The iceberg struck on the starboard bow, just before the foremast, about 20 feet from the stem. The ship did not stop at all; she did not stop until she passed the iceberg. Some ice fell on the forecastle head and some on the well deck, just a little bit higher than the forecastle.
I went back to my own place again. I told Lee I thought it was a narrow shave. That was only my idea; it was such a slight noise, that is why I said it.
Introduction
The sinking of the Titanic was not the worst maritime disaster in history. That dubious honour belongs to the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff, which was sunk by a Russian submarine in January 1945, while evacuating civilians and troops from East Prussia. More than 9,000 people are thought to have died in that incident, half of whom were children. The worst peacetime maritime disaster took place as recently as December 1987, when the Philippines ferry Doña Paz collided with an oil tanker on her way to Manila, creating a firestorm which enveloped both ships. All but 24 of the estimated 4,000-plus passengers and crew on board both ships perished, including more than 1,000 children.a By comparison, the Titanic’s death toll of nearly 1,500, although horrific, seems relatively small. Yet how many people have heard of the Wilhelm Gustloff or the Doña Paz? And who hasn’t heard of the Titanic?
One explanation for the phenomenal notoriety of the Titanic is purely geographical. At the beginning of the last century, Britain and the United States were the dominant world cultures – albeit one was in decline while the other was in the ascendant. By sinking two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic en route between these two great powers, the Titanic ensured it gained maximum media coverage, not just in the immediate aftermath, but for decades to come.
Another factor was its famous cargo. Thanks to the great fanfare that surrounded its launching, the Titanic carried more than its fair share of celebrities. There was real estate tycoon John Astor IV, billed as ‘the richest man in America’, returning from honeymoon with his new wife Madeleine (who would give birth to their child four months after saying goodbye to her husband on the Titanic). The great British socialite Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, famed for her Lucile range of boutiques, was travelling to New York with her husband, the Olympic sportsman Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon
. Ironically, given the events that would follow, they were travelling incognito as ‘Mr & Mrs Morgan’, to avoid the attention of the press. There were millionaire industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim and his mistress, and the co-founder of Macy’s department store, Isidor Straus, along with his wife Ida, as well as various actors, politicians and titled gentry. Most of them would never be seen again.
But perhaps the main reason the sinking of the Titanic has exerted such enduring fascination is because it contains so many of the elements of a classic drama – or even a soap opera. There is action aplenty (a 46,000-ton ship colliding with an iceberg), there is pathos (people separated from their loved ones for ever), there are heroes (the crew staying on the ship to the last), and villains (the wealthy socialites supposedly buying their way to safety). There’s courage (the engineers fighting to keep the ship afloat), there’s cowardice (men rushing the lifeboats), there’s romance (there were thought to be 13 honeymooners on board), and there’s class conflict (First and Second Class passengers vs Third Class passengers and the stokers).
And the stories work at every level. There are big themes, such as the arrogance of man brought into check by the elements (technology vs nature), the greed of multinational companies putting corporate profit before human life (was the White Star Line trying to outdo the Cunard Line by setting a new record?), and the failure of public institutions (why did the Board of Trade not specify more lifeboats?). And then there are the minutiae of individual lives, such as the plucky suffragette who not only survived the Titanic but went on to witness the Russian Revolution at close quarters; the only black passenger returning with his family to Haiti to escape the racism of pre-war France; the journalist turned military attaché returning from a mission to the Vatican; and of course the numerous emigrant families travelling to America to start new lives. Even before the ship left the dock at Southampton, most of the people on board, it seemed, had a story to tell.
The intrigue surrounding the event started even before the survivors had disembarked in New York. For various reasons, the telegraph operators on the rescue ship, the Carpathia, were slow to send the list of survivors to the authorities, leaving anxious relatives and friends in an agony of suspense. They were even slower in releasing details of the disaster, leading to accusations of controlling the news to their own benefit, when it later emerged they had sold their stories to the New York Times. Already the conspiracy theorists were having a field day, and the revelations had only just begun.
Not surprisingly, the Titanic has been seized upon by filmmakers as ready-made material for the most emotive kind of disaster movie (after all, these are the lives of real people we’re talking about, and the last survivor died as recently as 2009). At least eight movies about the Titanic have been made since Saved From the Titanic was premiered just a month after the sinking, and the ship has featured indirectly in many more – such as The Unsinkable Molly Brown, based (very loosely) on the life of Titanic survivor Margaret Brown (née Tobin). But of course none came near to achieving the success of James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic, which for 12 years held the record of highest-grossing movie of all time. Cameron took enormous liberties with the facts, however, including showing First Officer William Murdoch shooting himself in the head – something vehemently denied by the relatives of the unfortunate man.
The United States Senate Inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic was set up in response to the rising hysteria that was sweeping the United States as details of the tragedy trickled out to an outraged public. The inquiry was instigated by Senator William Smith on 17 April, the day before the Carpathia arrived in New York, and subpoenas for key witnesses were issued the following day. On 19 April, just four days after the Titanic sank, the inquiry began. Bruce Ismay, Chairman and Managing Director of the White Star Line, was the first witness to testify. Over the course of 18 days, 86 people were questioned, and more than 1,000 pages of testimony were taken.
The UK soon followed suit with its own British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, chaired by John Bingham (aka Lord Mersey), which took place over 36 days, starting on 2 May. 95 people testified, and 1,500 pages of testimony were recorded.
Some of the issues the inquiries were set up to investigate were:
• Why did the Titanic ignore ice warnings from nearby ships and continue to steam at full speed into an ice zone?
• Did Ismay exert any pressure on Captain Smith to maintain or even increase the ship’s speed in order to gain publicity with an earlier-than-expected arrival in New York? This was particularly important in the light of possible legal claims by victims’ families against the White Star Line. According to the Limitation of Shipowners’ Liability Act of 1885, the owners of the Titanic were only liable for the post-wreck value of the ship and could not be held responsible for any loss of life due to acts of nature or the negligence of the ship’s captain and/or crew. The only exception to this rule was if the owners could be proven to have prior knowledge or any involvement in the events that led to the accident. In other words, if it could be proven that Ismay tried to influence either the course or the speed of the Titanic, then his company would be liable for the 1,500 lives lost.
This rule was one of the main reasons the subpoenas were issued so quickly in the US, and why the subsequent inquiry was held so soon. The US Navy had intercepted a message from Ismay, sent while he was recuperating on board the Carpathia, that the surviving Titanic crew should be sent back to the UK at the ‘earliest moment possible’ after arrival in New York – possibly the very next day. He may simply have been concerned for his employees’ welfare and wanted them to be reunited with their families, but there was a strong suspicion that he was trying to spirit potential witnesses away before anyone had had a chance to question them.
• Did the Titanic have enough lifeboats? The ship was carrying 20 lifeboats of various kinds, with a total capacity of 1,176 people. Yet its total complement of passengers and crew when it left Queenstown in Ireland (its last port of call before setting off for New York) was around 2,200. Even if the lifeboats had been fully filled, that would have left more than 1,000 people with only lifejackets to save them. Yet the ship’s lifeboats had been passed by the British Board of Trade shortly before she left Southampton. How could that be?
• Were the lifeboats properly equipped?
• Were Third Class passengers unfairly discriminated against? Even before the Carpathia docked in New York, the lists of survivors telegraphed ahead of her raised uncomfortable questions. While 60 per cent of First Class passengers had been saved, only 42 per cent of Second Class passengers and a mere 25 per cent of Third Class passengers had escaped. Just 24 per cent of the crew had survived.
• Were the lookouts supplied with binoculars, and if not, why not?
• Were the wireless facilities on board functioning correctly, and were they used as effectively as possible? Wireless communication was then in its infancy, and it was just 13 years since the first ship-to-shore communication had been achieved by Guglielmo Marconi. The Titanic was fitted with the latest apparatus from Marconi, but its range was still limited to 400–500 miles by day and 1,000 miles at night. The system depended on the recipient being at a machine to receive the signal, and because the Titanic sank late at night, only a few ships received her CQD/SOS. Nevertheless, those lives that were saved can be directly attributed to the use of her wireless. Had the ship struck ice only a few years earlier, the outcome would have been even more horrific.
• Did nearby vessels ignore or respond too late to the Titanic’s calls for help? At least two ships were thought to be close to the position where the Titanic sank. Why did they not respond immediately to her radio messages and distress signals? In particular, the SS Californian was stopped in ice less than 20 (possibly even as little as five) miles away and came under heavy criticism for ignoring the ship’s distress flares. The crew’s excuse was that they thought they were ‘company signals’, used by ships to communicate non-emergency messages.
> As the inquiries proceeded, the individual behaviour of both passengers and crew came under the spotlight. Predictably, the public wanted not just answers to questions but scapegoats to pin the blame on. In particular, the inquiries had to grapple with two highly contentious questions:
• Did Sir Cosmo bribe the crew of Lifeboat No 1? Sir Cosmo was widely ridiculed by the press on both sides of the Atlantic when it emerged he and his wife had been among 12 people to escape on a boat which had a capacity of 40. During the course of the night, he told the crew he would give them each £5 to cover the loss of their possessions, an act which was widely interpreted as a bribe. The boat was immediately called the ‘money boat’ by the press, and its passengers and crew were dragged into the media spotlight.
