Normally an ‘Olympic’ class ship at the time would have a loaded draught of about 35 feet, meaning that the lowest part of the vessel’s bottom would have been 35 feet below the water line. Photographs of Titanic leaving Southampton at the start of her supposed maiden voyage show her to have been drawing only about 33 feet. Under normal circumstances a ship would be at her heaviest right at the beginning of a voyage with her bunkers full of coal, provisions for her passengers and crew, and cargo in her holds. Clearly this ship was not fully laden, which makes perfect sense if she was only to steam a limited distance. Why would they go to all the trouble and back-breaking labour of lifting unnecessary amounts of coal from the bunkers of other ships and transferring it to their own vessel? At the very best of times coaling a ship was considered to be by far the worst task faced by a crew, and having to first remove that coal from the bunkers of four or five other vessels would have made the job infinitely worse.
To return to what was happening at Southampton as the White Star liner prepared for what was presumed to be her first transatlantic voyage, even as carpenters and painters put the finishing touches to cabins, and carpets were laid over the tiles in the public rooms, bed linen, towels, food and drink, and all the other paraphernalia needed aboard a ship to make life comfortable during a six-day Atlantic crossing were supposedly put aboard and stored away.
Cargo began to be lowered into the ship’s holds, much of it perishable goods that could only realistically be transported aboard an express liner, but otherwise it was of no great intrinsic value; after all, why would White Star put valuable items aboard this ship when there were other, more reliable, vessels available? Cargo was not just put anywhere but was placed in the ship’s holds according to the second officer’s carefully worked-out plan so as not to upset the vessel’s trim. Then there was Mr Morgan’s shipment, which had to go aboard and probably be stowed in No 5 hold, in the aft part of the ship. As previously mentioned, Morgan had his own Customs arrangements. His shipments were inspected by his own tame Customs man, Mr Nathan, before being sealed and transported to the docks. They were not opened again by Customs officers on either side of the Atlantic, but were to be taken directly from the ship when it arrived in New York to the Metropolitan Museum, so we have no way of knowing what was in any crate being shipped. In this instance most of Mr Morgan’s crates, instead of containing valuable artefacts and statues, might well have been filled with heavy valueless rubbish, but nobody outside his organisation would have known that.
The liner was a hive of activity as the work to get the ship ready for sea went on apace. It is hardly surprising that none of the dock workers noticed that the ship they were working on wasn’t the brand-new Titanic at all, but her older sister in disguise. They did not have the run of the ship but were only allowed access to the parts of the vessel where their services were required, such as the upper decks and holds. Just as now it was not unheard of for items of cargo or even ship’s fittings to mysteriously disappear while a vessel was being loaded, so some security arrangements were in place to prevent, or at least minimise, this unfortunate tendency.
As it happened, Easter weekend fell right in the middle of Titanic’s preparations for sea. Easter Sunday was a national holiday and nobody worked. The dockyard was unusually quiet on that Sunday as Titanic, dressed with flags in her rigging, rode at the quayside. Despite the seeming urgency to get the ship ready, nothing much was done in that respect. However, not everyone had taken the day off. There is some evidence to suggest that early that morning a couple of vans belonging to the Dominion Express Security Company arrived on the quayside and unloaded their cargo of wooden crates and small barrels. Under the watchful gaze of the ship’s First Officer the crates and barrels, which were all unmarked, were quickly lifted aboard and stowed in No 5 hold together with Mr Morgan’s cargo. The British Government’s gold shipment had arrived, all £8,000,000 of it. Of the ship’s company, only the three most senior would be aware of what the crates contained. Without further ado, Mr Murdoch would have signed for the consignment and the vans would depart as quietly as they had arrived. There was nothing unusual about any of the procedure. Neither the owners nor the shippers wanted to advertise the fact that there was a large quantity of gold aboard the ship. Its anonymity was its best safeguard.
Chapter 10
Carpathia and Californian
With all of the unemployed seamen looking for a berth at Southampton, the White Star Line should have been able to put together a top-class crew of picked men for the coming so-called maiden voyage with very little effort. Instead they signed on a crew largely made up of inexperienced men who had never been to sea before or who had never worked aboard a first-class express liner - men who would be unlikely to realise that the vessel they were serving aboard was not what she pretended to be. For example, it was White Star company policy to only take on experienced lookouts who had recently passed an eye test. For this particular voyage that policy was suspended. At least one of the lookouts employed had never taken the eye test and on his own admission could judge neither distance nor speed. To make bad matters worse that same lookout was also incapable of judging the size of anything he might see from the crow’s-nest. When the time came, this was the senior man on lookout duty and on whose ability to perform his allotted task depended the safety of all aboard the liner. As it turned out the lookout was a model of efficiency, but he was let down by the ship’s senior watch officers.
To support the scratch crew, some men were signed on who had actually served on Olympic before, together with others who had worked aboard different vessels in the fleet, men who knew how to do what they were told. Officers were drafted aboard who had also served on Olympic previously, including a Chief Officer who, as we shall see, seems to have wanted nothing to do with the vessel. The senior officers signed on were Henry Tingle Wilde as Chief Officer, who came directly from Olympic; First Officer William McMaster Murdoch, also straight from Olympic; Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller from Oceanic; Third Officer Herbert Pitman from Oceanic; Fourth, and Navigating, Officer Joseph Groves Boxhall from Arabic; Fifth Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe from Delphic; and Sixth Officer James Moody from Oceanic. So we have a situation where the only three senior officers with any experience of managing the huge new liners were concentrated aboard just one of them.
Captain Herbert Haddock had taken over from Captain Smith as skipper of what he had been told was Olympic (but was really Titanic) less than a fortnight before. With no previous experience of these giant liners Captain Haddock needed all of his experienced officers, not that his needs made any impression on the White Star Line. For what they had in mind they required experienced officers they knew to be loyal on the ship masquerading as Titanic. Haddock’s senior officers were taken from him to serve on the sister ship. Olympic, as the class leader, was the flagship of the line and would remain so until well after the Great War. Nonetheless, although he was skipper of the flagship of the White Star fleet, he and his ship would just have to manage as best they could, and learn on the job.
A new black gang of men to serve the vessel’s furnaces, boilers and engines was signed on at Southampton to replace those who had decided that they wanted nothing further to do with the ship after the short run down from Belfast. The new men, although many of them were experienced, did not have the same opportunity to spot the age of the ship as those who had previously toiled in the bowels of the vessel. Now, of course, after that voyage from the builder’s yard the boilers could not be expected to look brand new, especially since the ship had been run hard and the furnaces had been fed tons of coal. Even so, not all of the new firemen and trimmers were fooled, as later conversations in the public houses of Southampton frequented by them showed. Rumours that the vessel lying in the Ocean Dock was not really the Titanic were rife. Just as had happened in Belfast, nobody in authority did anything to find out if there was any truth in the rumours and the newspapers were strangely silent on the subject. Then, as now
, newspapers tended to print any sensational rumour they heard about, because sensational stories sold papers. Could it be that they had been told what to report just as it seems had been the case concerning the Hawke incident six months earlier?
As was usual at the time, not all of those members of the black gang who signed on for the maiden voyage joined the vessel straight away, as their services would not be required until the morning of the 10th when the ship prepared to leave port. Only then would the majority of the boilers be fired up and steam raised to feed the mighty engines. Until that time only a couple of boilers would be worked to provide power for the electrical generators and so forth, so a skeleton crew would suffice, and many of its members returned to their homes and visited their favourite public houses during their off-duty periods. This meant that the ship was short-handed when the time came to fill the bunkers, another reason to suspect that those bunkers were never properly filled. Under normal circumstances the firm of Thomas Rea would see to the loading of the coal, but these were anything but normal circumstances, and Rea’s men could hardly be expected to transfer coal from one vessel to another. Usually all they had to do was pour the coal into the waiting bunkers through chutes, not to manhandle it up from deep within an assortment of other vessels, load it onto their own vessel and transfer it to the liner. Nevertheless, according to the received version of events, this is exactly what happened, despite all of the labour unrest that was crippling the rest of the country.
By the end of Monday 8 April 1912, most preparations as far as provisioning the ship were concerned had been all but completed. There were still civilian workmen aboard fitting carpets and finishing off the fitting-out of some staterooms, which would mean that those rooms could not be used. It should again be remembered that very few ships had recently been able to make an Atlantic crossing because of the shortage of coal. This meant that many would-be passengers had also been unable to make the crossing and were waiting for a ship, any ship. With this available pool of thousands of impatient passengers awaiting a ship to take them to America, there should have been no problem in finding enough eager travellers to fill every available space on the new White Star liner. She should have been filled to capacity. Curiously, instead of being fully booked, tickets for less than half of the available passenger berths had been sold. Supposedly in an effort to boost the numbers aboard for the maiden voyage, passengers who had already booked to sail aboard other, less prestigious, White Star vessels were transferred to Titanic. Many of the people transferred were not at all happy about what was going on as some of them had booked to travel first class on the ship of their choice, and now they were expected to occupy second-class accommodation for the voyage. While second class on Titanic was more ostentatious and comfortable than first on most lesser vessels, it did not carry the same cachet as first class. In fact, third-class accommodation on Titanic was better than first class on a lot of other liners. Even with the extra passengers pressed into sailing on the ship, still less than half of her cabins would be occupied.
To be fair, a lot of regular transatlantic passengers did not like to sail on ships making their maiden voyage but preferred to wait until any problems had been ironed out before booking passage. However, that does not explain the singular lack of people prepared to sail on Titanic, particularly when there were so few alternative vessels available. Perhaps they too had heard the rumours circulating in Southampton that all was not right with the ship. In any event, they stayed away in droves.
While Titanic was making her way to Southampton, then preparing for sea, other preparations were also under way. In New York the 13,603-ton second-rate Cunard liner Carpathia was undergoing a few minor alterations at the United States Navy’s Brooklyn yard. Public rooms were being rearranged so that they could easily be used as emergency hospital wards and extra oil tanks were installed, even though the vessel was not oil-fired. While these alterations were still ongoing extra doctors were signed on. Normally only one doctor would be carried - sometimes, under exceptional circumstances, two. For the coming voyage, which was supposedly only a routine cruise from the US to the Mediterranean, no fewer than seven doctors would be aboard. These medical practitioners were Dr Frank Edward McGee, who would receive an illuminated certificate of thanks from the Liverpool Shipwreck & Humane Society for the part he would play in coming events; Dr Arpad Lengyer, who would also receive an illuminated certificate from the Liverpool Shipwreck & Humane Society; Dr Frank H. Blackmarr, from Chicago, who was supposedly travelling as a passenger but who somehow acquired a life jacket from a survivor of the Titanic disaster (marked Fosberry & Co, Rich Street, Limehouse, London, it was donated by Dr Blackmarr in 1935 to the Chicago Historical Society, which passed it on to the Smithsonian Institute in 1982); and Dr Vittoria Rosicto, an Italian physician whose identity was unknown until 2004. Little or nothing is known about the other three doctors aboard Carpathia except their names: Dr Henry F. Bauenthal, Dr Gottlieb Rencher and Dr J. E. Kemp. Quite clearly the owners and senior officers of the Carpathia were expecting trouble on this particular voyage.
Even though Carpathia herself was only a second-rate liner, she did have a few properties that would make her very useful in the event that she was obliged to take on large numbers of people in the middle of a voyage. The Cunard vessel was no midget, being 540 feet long and 64.5 feet wide. She was by no manner of means a fast ship, with a top speed of only 14 knots, but she was steady and reliable. More importantly, the vessel could carry more than 2,500 passengers, almost as many as the gigantic new White Star vessels. Granted, more than 2,000 of these passenger berths were in third class, but what would that matter in an emergency? Third-class sailing beats first-class drowning every time.
The captain of the Carpathia is also of interest. Arthur Henry Rostron was born at Bolton in Lancashire in 1869 and joined the Cunard line in 1895 after initially training as a cadet officer aboard HMS Conway and serving as a junior officer with other companies aboard both steamers and sailing ships. Captain Rostron was undoubtedly a first-class navigator and mariner who should have been in command of a far better vessel in the Cunard fleet. Unfortunately he had once displayed what the owners would have regarded as a serious flaw in his character; he had not kept his mouth shut when perhaps he should have done. While serving as Chief Officer on Cunard’s Campania in 1906 he saw what he believed to be a sea serpent, off Queenstown in Southern Ireland (now Cobh). Excitedly he drew a sketch of what he had seen on the bridge scrap log, but was unable to draw the creature’s features. Had the matter rested there, all would have been well, but the junior officers who were with Rostron on the bridge at the time reported the incident to the ship’s master, Captain Hains RNR, who later asked his Chief Officer if he had seen anything. Unfortunately for himself, Rostron replied in the affirmative, prompting the captain to ask him if he had been drinking. Rostron then showed the captain his sketch in the log.
As soon as the vessel reached port the Chief Officer was packed off for a week’s leave. On his return to the ship Captain Hains did his best to give Rostron another chance to deny seeing anything unusual. ‘Did you see it?’ he asked. Again Rostron said, ‘Yes.’ Shortly afterwards Arthur Rostron was dismissed from his post on Campania, Captain Hains writing ‘unstable’ on his record. Cunard then placed him aboard the brand new Lusitania as Chief Officer for the short run from Glasgow to Liverpool prior to the liner’s maiden voyage. Lusitania’s master thought this new Chief Officer unsuitable and he was discharged again before the new super-liner began her first transatlantic crossing.
Rostron had become something of an embarrassment to the Cunard Line, so the company promoted him sideways, away from the eyes of fare-paying passengers. He was given command of the small cargo vessel Brescia in 1907. He would not make the same mistake again, even though he did stand by his assertion that he had seen a sea serpent. In the future he would not say anything that might embarrass his owners, but he would not lie for them either. He would tell as much of the truth as he
was able and beyond that he would say nothing at all. The strategy seems to have worked because over the next few years he steadily gained ground, being given command of ever larger ships in the Cunard cargo-passenger fleet. From Brescia he moved to Veria, then Pavia and Panonia. Then, in February 1912 he was given command of the eight-year-old passenger vessel Carpathia. The Cunard vessel was scheduled to leave New York exactly 24 hours after the ship we know as Titanic departed from Southampton on her maiden voyage. The two ships should pass one another somewhere south of the Grand Banks, a shallower area of sea south of Newfoundland that in those days abounded with fish.
Nor was Carpathia the only other vessel getting ready for sea under anything but her usual matter-of-fact routine. In the Port of London the Leyland Line passenger cargo ship Californian, under the command of Captain Stanley Lord, was also hurriedly preparing to head out into the North Atlantic. Like Carpathia, Californian was an unremarkable vessel that would not under normal circumstances rate a second glance. She was not a large ship for the time, being just 447ft 6in long and 53ft 6in wide. The ten-year-old, 6,223grt ship had been designed with huge cargo holds for the transportation of cotton, but these, at a pinch, would hold a lot of people. While this may not have been the best accommodation afloat, as with Carpathia’s dormitories it was infinitely preferable to swimming. As well as her cargo-carrying capacity, the vessel actually had passenger berths for 47 people, who would normally travel in considerable comfort, albeit relatively slowly. Again like Carpathia, the Californian had a top speed of around 12 knots, and, like so many other vessels, as a result of the coal shortage she had been laying idle for some time.
The Great Titanic Conspiracy Page 12
