On that same day, 21 September, White Star issued a writ against Commander Blunt, it being impossible to sue the Royal Navy, to recover the costs of repairing Olympic. This was immediately countered by a writ from the Navy against White Star to recover the costs of repairing its cruiser.
On 22 September the Royal Navy convened an inquiry into the collision between Olympic and Hawke, which is done after all serious collisions involving naval vessels. At this inquiry only naval personnel were called to give evidence, so it should come as no surprise that the Hawke was found to be in no way to blame for the affair.
The judgement of the naval court of inquiry into the incident was delivered on 19 December 1911, as follows:
‘The president [Sir Samuel Evans] accepted in all material respects the evidence from the Hawke and found that the collision was solely due to the faulty navigation of the Olympic.’
Although the White Star Line would appeal against that verdict all the way to the House of Lords in 1914, they never managed to get it overturned.
Everybody makes mistakes, but this inquiry was more than merely mistaken - it must have been an intentional cover-up, a travesty. In order to accurately fix the position of the collision, the Navy said that it had recovered Hawke’s armoured ram from the sea bed where it had settled after being torn off as the cruiser reeled away from Olympic. In reality Hawke’s ram had not been torn off at all but had survived the collision without any appreciable damage. The ram, clearly still in excellent condition, had still been attached to the cruiser when she returned to Portsmouth Harbour. There is a crystal-clear photograph of HMS Hawke in dry-dock for repair after the incident, the undamaged ram firmly in place on her otherwise badly mauled bow. During the so-called repairs to the cruiser the armoured ram was removed and the whole front end of the ship replaced with an ordinary, more modern-style bow. The local newspapers covered the event and Hawke’s subsequent inspection.
‘Hawke was placed in the dock at Portsmouth Dockyard on Thursday morning, for inspection. Below the waterline the injury appeared even worse than above it. The formidable ram was completely shattered, the whole projection being pushed round to Starboard and the plates shattered and buckled in all directions, many of them folding back and covering the hawse pipes. It is certain that a completely new bow will be necessary before the cruiser will again be ready for sea.’
Clearly the Royal Navy was not telling the press the whole truth.
The whole story of how the so-called accident happened is, of course, balderdash, an obvious attempt to cover up what had really occurred. The official explanation for the collision, that the smaller vessel, Hawke, was drawn into the liner’s side by suction, a phenomenon brought about by the water pushed aside by the movement of such a large hull and returning to fill the space left as it passed on, is unlikely to say the least. In reality, no naval captain, unless otherwise instructed, if he valued his career would approach anywhere near such a huge vessel as Olympic while she was moving at high speed. Anyway, had it been the suction effect that caused the collision between Olympic and Hawke, the two ships should have been drawn together practically broadside to one another. In that case the damage to the larger vessel would have extended over a larger area of her side, but would not have caused all of the internal injuries
As we have seen, the Navy had supposedly established the exact position of the accident by recovering from the sea bed Hawke’s iron ram, which it was claimed had been torn off in the collision, a claim that we now know to have been a blatant lie. The Royal Navy also confirmed that HMS Hawke was out that day on speed trials and that she was at the Nab Buoy at 7.30am. She ran at 96rpm for 4 hours and reduced speed to 82rpm off St Catherine’s Point at 11.30am, and then proceeded through the Needles Channel. This could not be the truth as Hawke’s best speed would not allow her to make the necessary distance in the time available. A knot is about 15% longer than a statute mile. At her top speed Hawke could cover about 22½ miles in an hour, or just over 28 miles in the time available. The distance from St Catherine’s Point to where the collision occurred, making no allowance for turning around the Needles or negotiating past Hurst Castle (guarding the entrance to the western end of the Solent) was something slightly more than 30 miles, very close to the distance she could have covered in the time available, steaming all out. Once any sort of allowance is made for sea room to clear the Needles, Hurst Castle, or any other ships that might conceivably get in her way - and, as we shall shortly see, at least one vessel did get in the way - the figures make even less sense.
It appears that up to the time the Nab Channel was dredged, in 1910/11, the dangerous Western Solent was sometimes used by the Royal Navy’s larger vessels entering or leaving Portsmouth. Once the Eastern, or Nab, Channel was dredged, the western route was all but abandoned. Presumably the Nab route was dredged to accommodate the new giant liners using Southampton or the Royal Navy’s new super battleships coming and going from Portsmouth. We can be sure that dredging a channel that was so important to both commercial and military interests would certainly have required Government permission and probably funding. By 1911 it was usual practice for both naval and larger civilian vessels to use the eastern channel between the Isle of Wight and the mainland when entering or leaving Portsmouth or Southampton. To this day Royal Naval vessels still use this route, and they probably have every year except in exceptional circumstances such as wartime. The western channel was, and still is, avoided because of its heavy commercial and pleasure traffic, and for its tricky sandbanks. Given that the newly dredged deep-water channel was available, why did HMS Hawke, an armoured cruiser drawing 23 feet of water, use the more hazardous Needles Channel when returning from a routine excursion?
So what really happened? Well, according to eye-witness reports, Hawke did come up from behind Olympic, on her starboard side, and did appear to be attempting to overtake. However, from that point onwards the received version of events is demonstrably untrue. In Hawke’s path was the brand-new South American patrol vessel 10 de Octobre, which had just been completed by White’s Southampton shipyard and was out for its initial trials. The presence of the foreign warship meant that Commander Blunt had to alter course towards the Isle of Wight in order to pass between her and Cowes, somewhat limiting his room for manoeuvre. Hawke, after going around the new patrol boat, then turned 90 degrees to port (left), which would have taken several hundred yards, and slammed into Olympic’s side at right angles. Hardly the collision one would expect if the smaller naval ship had been accidentally drawn into the liner’s side by the ‘suction effect’. Unfortunately, the Hawke could hardly have caught the liner in a more vital spot. Nor could the angle of attack when the cruiser’s bow had sliced into Olympic have been calculated to do more damage. The Hawke’s bow only remained wedged in the liner’s side for seconds before the race of water along the side caused by Olympic’s momentum twisted the cruiser’s hull through an ear-shattering arc. The tremendous twisting movement would perhaps have sheared off Hawke’s underwater ram as she wheeled away if it had been severely damaged in the collision, but we now know it wasn’t. Luckily, or perhaps as a result of careful planning, the accident had happened at lunchtime when all of the passengers were in the dining saloons, so there had been nobody in the second class cabins destroyed by Hawke’s bow. Nobody was seriously injured in the accident.
As Hawke’s shattered upper bow withdrew from Olympic it dragged a lot of cabin furniture and some luggage out of the liner. Among the detritus was a leather bag containing clothing, surgical instruments, diploma, medical books and other things belonging to Dr Downton. The bag was picked up by a boatman, who it seems just happened to be on the spot, and was handed to the Customs officers at Cowes.
Before Hawke’s bow tore free, the tremendous leverage exerted on the liner’s hull would have stretched the starboard side of the ship, twisting her keel. Had the riveting of Olympic’s shell plating been up to standard, it is just conceivable that the ship might have withstoo
d the colossal forces involved in the impact; but we know that the riveting was not up to standard.
The collision was so violent that Olympic’s stern was pushed around by something more than 45 degrees, which indicates that the cruiser’s engines were still at full-ahead when she struck the liner. The force of the collision and the fact that Hawke was specifically designed to sink large ships by ramming them argues that the damage sustained by the White Star ship would be rather more than that described above.
The circumstances of the Hawke incident raise the question as to whether the collision was an accident at all, or a planned event. Three points argue strongly that this incident was no accident. The first, that no Royal Navy Captain would have taken his ship anywhere near a liner the size of the Olympic in the confined waters of the Solent without direct orders to do so, should be enough to convince anyone. The second point, that Commander Blunt had to go around a foreign warship that he would not have expected to be on the scene in order to reach Olympic, should arouse more than a little suspicion. The third point, that Hawke had no business to be in the Needles Channel at all, without orders, must clinch the matter beyond all doubt. Commander Blunt on the Hawke was almost certainly carrying out specific orders from his superiors. This is supported by the fact that, instead of receiving any sort of reprimand for his part in the collision - and he must have been at least partly responsible just by being where he had no business to be - Commander Blunt was rewarded by being given command of a larger cruiser.
Once Olympic had been brought to a halt, a quick assessment of the damage was made and all passenger communication with the shore was suspended. Only signals approved by the Captain were allowed to leave the stricken liner. Even though Olympic was noticeably down by the stern very shortly after the collision, no preparations were put in hand to evacuate the liner.
Despite Captain Smith’s apparent lack of concern, some passengers were prepared to make their own arrangements to either get a message away or to leave the damaged ship. Immediately after the Hawke collision Captain Smith issued orders that nobody, except White Star officials, was to enter or leave Olympic. (It was not unusual for a security clampdown to be put into effect aboard White Star vessels that were involved in any serious incident. However, this one was applied with more expedition than was normal even for the White Star Line.) In this instance the security measures adopted were not particularly effective. Mr Magee, of San Francisco, an American passenger, who was particularly anxious about getting back to New York, succeeded in getting off the ship. He hailed a boat that was being rowed by a young fellow called Spencer and, sliding down a rope that was passed out of a porthole, he managed to reach the boat and was taken ashore. He rewarded Spencer with a couple of sovereigns.
On reaching Cowes, Magee made straight for the shipping office of W. T. Mahey and telephoned from there to try to book passage to New York on the Adriatic, which was sailing from Liverpool on Thursday evening. He was unable to complete the arrangements and left by passenger steamer for Southampton. Mr Magee explained his hasty departure: ‘The fact is, I wanted to see my baby at home, and seeing that the Olympic was out of commission, I thought I had better look out for another ship.’ He had dangled, up to his waist in the water, for 4 or 5 minutes before Spencer had rescued him. Once he had reached Southampton he went to the White Star office ‘and booked my three berths on the Adriatic’. He was only just in time as there were only seven berths left on that ship when he booked. He would be two days late in seeing his baby. Who really was the American passenger on Olympic who was so desperate to get off the ship after the Hawke collision? His explanation that there was a child he must see is a little unlikely, to say the least, but he was so desperate to reach America that he was prepared to risk his life, and to pay for a three-berth cabin on the Adriatic.
Another enterprising American on the Olympic, probably a journalist, threw overboard a watertight container attached to a piece of wood. It was picked up by Mr Ernest Kirk, a photographer, and found to contain a cable message to the Boston Herald, briefly reporting the collision and stating that while there were many narrow escapes all were safe on board. Although no money was enclosed, Mr Kirk dispatched the cable at a cost of some £2.
That a passenger had to get a message away by putting it in a bottle and throwing it overboard confirms that Captain Smith had stopped the transmission of any messages from the damaged liner. It also argues that the American passenger was prepared for what happened, as was Mr Kirk. Is it really believable that Kirk would have sent this telegram at his own expense unless he had been pre-warned that the necessity might arise? After all, £2 was a considerable sum of money in 1911, the equivalent today of a week’s wages for an ordinary working man.
There was no shortage of small boats on hand to collect anything that came from the damaged liner. There was even one, at least, with a cameraman aboard who managed to get a picture of the collision. The picture is not very clear and has not withstood the passage of time particularly well, but it does show that Hawke did strike Olympic at an angle of about 90 degrees. Perhaps the cameraman was simply there to get a shot of the world’s largest liner leaving port.
The damaged liner returned to Southampton the following day so that the damage might be examined at Harland & Wolff’s repair facility there. It was soon apparent that Olympic was very badly damaged indeed and that any further planned voyages, for the foreseeable future, would have to be abandoned.
Consequently, the White Star Line refused to pay Olympic’s crew for the remainder of the aborted voyage after 22 September, justifying that decision by claiming that the ship was a wreck; only in these circumstances were the owners entitled to stop the crew’s pay. If the vessel was merely damaged, the seamen were due payment for the complete voyage for which they had signed aboard. Not unexpectedly, the crew were not happy with this decision and consulted their union officials at the earliest opportunity. As was only to be anticipated, the seamen’s union contested the owner’s decision to stop its members’ wages and the first court case began on 29 September. It was initially heard at the petty sessions of the Southampton County Court, but the magistrates were unable to come to a verdict, so on 11 October they referred the whole thing to the Admiralty Court. The date set was in March 1912, and a determination was arrived at on the first day of April. The court found in favour of the owners. They agreed that following the Hawke incident Olympic was a wreck. Still not satisfied, the seamen took their grievance to the Court of Appeal, basing their case on Section 58 of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894:
‘Where the service of a seaman terminates before the date contemplated in the agreement [of service], by reason of the wreck or loss of the ship... he shall be entitled to wages up to the time of such termination, but not for any longer period.’
The word ‘wreck’ within this section [of the Act] means something less than total loss. Any damage to a ship from a cause for which neither the master nor the owner, on the one side, nor the seamen, on the other, is actively responsible, which damage does not constitute loss of the ship, but of necessity renders her incapable of carrying out the maritime adventure in respect of which the seamen’s contract was entered into and so terminates the service of the seaman, will render the ship a ‘wreck’ within the section.’
The appeal failed.
The Appeal Court hearing the seamen’s claim that their wages should not have been stopped following the collision between Hawke and Olympic would have been aware that the accident, according to the Naval Inquiry, had been entirely the fault of the liner. They knew that the owners and master had been found responsible. As the accident had been judged to be the responsibility of the owners, there can only be one justification for the court upholding their decision to terminate the crew’s wages. Olympic really was a wreck following her brush with HMS Hawke.
Indeed, the liner was very badly damaged. From the available photographs we can see the large hourglass-shaped hole punched in the side of Olympic, suppos
edly about 8 feet deep, extending from D Deck down through E, F and G Decks, well below the water line, about 86 feet from the stern. The White Star Line, for reasons of its own, claimed that the cruiser’s armoured bow had only penetrated about 8 feet into the interior of the liner. The 8-foot-deep-gash story must have been an attempt by Olympic’s owners to play down the full extent of the damage.
HMS Hawke had not escaped the encounter unscathed. Photographs of the cruiser following the collision show that at least 15 to 20 feet of the cruiser’s bow was damaged, which argues that it penetrated at least that far into the interior of the liner. Armed with that knowledge it is easy to understand how the liner’s centrally mounted turbine engine and probably also her keel could have been critically damaged.
It took Harland & Wolff’s repair yard at Southampton two weeks to patch up the damaged liner well enough for her to even attempt the voyage back to Belfast for proper repairs. A gigantic patch, not unlike a big sticking plaster, made of heavy timbers above the waterline and steel plates below it, was placed over the damaged hull plating to seal up the hole. For the trip back to the builders, which began on 3 October, Olympic was obliged to steam on just her port main engine, which tells us that the centrally mounted turbine really was damaged and unusable, together with the starboard reciprocating engine. Under normal circumstances this turbine could operate on the exhaust steam from one or both of the main engines. By the time the ship made it back to the Belfast yard the patch on her hull had failed and the same two aft compartments were once again flooded, which argues that the hull was no longer rigid and that the flexing had loosened the patch.
What might have been the motives for the attack by the Royal Navy on an American-owned, British-registered White Star liner, which were to set in motion a chain of events that would culminate in the most famous shipwreck in history? It has been suggested to me that as the new government-funded Cunard liners had failed to live up to their planned capabilities as armed merchant cruisers, the Army and Navy were concerned that the new White Star vessels might prove to be no better. What could be more natural, given the facts as they emerged at the 23 August meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence, than that the new troopships should be severely tested? After all, the safety of the whole British Empire rested on the ability of the mercantile marine to move troops around the world, or so the government believed at the time. As well as the need to test the new ships, the British were faced with another dilemma. Could they allow the Coptic scroll, described in Chapter 4, to fall into the hands of J. P. Morgan without at least showing him that Britain was not a force to be trifled with?
The Great Titanic Conspiracy Page 8
