Once his ship had stopped Captain Lord had his vessel’s position ascertained. As previously mentioned it was a moonless clear night and the stars were clearly visible - perfect conditions for taking a star sight and working out exactly where they were. Captain Lord, it will be remembered, had a well-deserved reputation as a first-class navigator, so we can be fairly sure that the position he worked out was reasonably accurate. He knew exactly where he was and had done throughout the voyage, as had Captain Smith on the Titanic, thanks to Mr Boxhall.
Once he had ascertained his vessel’s precise position Lord ordered his wireless operator, Cyril Evans, to alert other vessels in the vicinity that Californian was drifting and to give their position. Evans, as the ship’s only wireless operator, had been on duty all day long and was looking forward to calling it a day at about 11.30pm. Nevertheless, although he would normally have switched off his equipment at about 11 o’clock, he set about carrying out the captain’s instructions. At 10.55pm he called Titanic and, without waiting for a reply from the White Star liner, began to send his message. Harold Bride, Titanic’s second operator, according to the evidence he gave later, was off duty despite the fact that earlier in the day the wireless equipment had broken down and consequently there was a large backlog of passenger traffic to deal with. Jack Phillips was dealing with the backlog on his own. As we know, Mr Bride’s evidence is demonstrably inaccurate, so anything he said must be treated with suspicion. In this instance, judging by his later performance, it is entirely possible that the operator on duty aboard Titanic was none other that Bride himself.
In any event, Cyril Evans never managed to complete his message to Titanic. At the time the two ships were less than 30 miles apart, so Californian’s signal came in so strongly that it almost deafened Titanic’s operator, or so Bride said later. (How he would have known this unless it was him on the wireless at the time was not queried at either of the two major inquiries that came later.) Evans got as far as, ‘We are stopped and surrounded by ice,’ when Titanic’s operator cut in with, ‘Keep out! Shut up! You’re jamming my signal. I’m working Cape Race.’ Evans gave up and instead of passing on his warning he sat and listened to the signals being sent from Titanic to the powerful shore station at Cape Race. If anything, Titanic’s wireless installation was more powerful than that on Californian, so how did Evans manage to listen in to the traffic without suffering the same sort of problems that had supposedly caused Titanic’s operator to cut him off so abruptly? Evans listened in to Titanic until shortly before 11.30, when he decided to turn in for the night. He switched off his equipment and prepared for bed.
Although Evans had received no indication of it, events had been spiralling out of control aboard Titanic while he had been eavesdropping on the private passenger traffic coming from the liner. Describing conditions later, Fred Fleet said, ‘It was the beautifullest night I ever seen. The stars were like lamps.’ Lee also described conditions, saying it was a ‘clear, starry night with haze extending more or less round the horizon, very cold.’ At the inquiries to come, in an attempt to discredit the lookouts, Second Officer Charles Lightoller was adamant that there was no mist or haze that night, although he never explained how he knew that. He had left the bridge very shortly after 10 o’clock and had spent the better part of the time since then in the warmth of his cabin.
At about 11.15pm the senior lookout in Titanic’s crow’s-nest spotted an iceberg on the horizon, more than 10 miles ahead of the ship. Fred Fleet rang the crow’s-nest bell to alert the officers on the bridge, then tried to telephone them, to tell what he had seen. Although the telephone appeared to be working normally, there was no reply from the bridge. Over the next few minutes he tried repeatedly to raise some sort of response from the officers on the bridge, without success. The lookouts tried to peer round the foremast and attract the officers’ attention, but they could not see anyone on the bridge. Fleet began to suspect that there were no officers on the bridge at all and that the ship was charging blindly towards the berg. Realising that he had to get a message through somehow, and that if the ship struck a berg head-on the mast supporting the crow’s-nest would in all probability go over the side of the ship into the sea, he made a decision. Although it was against orders, he instructed the junior lookout, Reginald Lee, to leave the crow’s-nest and make his way to the bridge and report the ice in person. Lee had descended the mast before he realised that Fleet had sent him down as much for his own safety as anything else. Without further ado, and without carrying his message to the bridge, Lee went back to the crow’s-nest. While this had been going on Fleet had continued trying to alert the bridge by ringing the crow’s-nest bell and trying the telephone. In the forecastle crew-quarters fireman John Podesta was lying in his bunk. He heard the repeated ringing of the crow’s-nest bell and several cries from the lookouts, ‘Ice ahead, sir.’ Only after Lee had returned to the crow’s-nest did Fred Fleet have any luck. He rang the bell again and gave the telephone another try. This time Sixth Officer Moody answered the phone: ‘Yes. What did you see?’
‘Iceberg right ahead,’ reported Fleet.
‘Thank you,’ replied the Sixth Officer and hung up.
Even as he was talking to Moody, Fleet noticed the ship’s bows starting to swing to port, which made him believe that the berg had been seen from the bridge before his warning had got there. This would make perfect sense as by that time the berg, which had first been sighted more than 10 miles ahead of the ship, was now less than half a mile away.
On the bridge Mr Murdoch had supposedly been spending his time out on the open wing where he could see ahead more clearly than from inside. Perhaps that is why he never heard the telephone ring, but it does not explain why he failed to respond to the repeated ringing of the crow’s-nest bell. If Podesta, inside the forecastle of the ship, could hear the bell and the lookouts’ warning cries, then so should have Mr Murdoch on the open bridge wing. By far the most likely explanation for Fleet’s inability to contact the bridge must be that he was right and that there was nobody there. It was a very cold night and it is quite possible that the officers had retired to the warmth of the chartroom for a spell. If that was indeed the case, then what happened immediately after their return makes sense as well. Had Murdoch really been on the open wing of the bridge he should have seen the berg, silhouetted against the stars, in plenty of time to take avoiding action. Instead, immediately on his return to the bridge and seeing the berg ahead, Murdoch ordered the helm, ‘Hard a-starboard’ and the engines put full astern.
A more lethal combination of orders is difficult to imagine. However, Murdoch’s orders would not have taken effect immediately. Down in the engine room the steam to the engines would first have to be shut off. The engines would have to be stopped and the changeover valves operated to send the exhaust steam directly to the condensers instead of the turbine engine. Then the main engines could be restarted in reverse. This would all have taken only a matter of seconds rather that minutes, but they were seconds that the ship did not have. With her engines at full ahead, Titanic, running at 20 knots, could turn through 90 degrees in about 800 feet. Mr Murdoch had at least three times that distance, even at this late stage, to avoid a collision. However, with the ship’s engines either stopped or going astern the thrust from the central propeller was no longer magnifying the effect of the rudder, and the vessel’s manoeuvrability was drastically reduced. Clearly Mr Murdoch did not have time to think and had issued his orders in panic.
Even so, the ship almost managed to miss the ice as she swung away to the south and, if later evidence is to be believed, might actually have done so. In any event the White Star liner was not badly damaged and was still quite capable of manoeuvring under her own power. At the very worst a couple of seams in the hull plating had been sprung open to create what amounted to a 300-foot-long slit, just half an inch wide, along the vessel’s starboard side. In effect, Titanic had a 12-square-foot hole in her hull below the waterline. In the Hawke incident a hole a
t last five times that size had been torn in the side of Olympic without even threatening to sink her. The ‘Olympic’ class ships were fitted with no fewer than 83 high-pressure pumps for clearing water from within the hull, but above the double bottom, ranging in size from 3 to 18 inches in diameter. With the 215lb per square inch of steam pressure at which the ship’s boilers operated to drive them, the pumps should have been easily able to deal with a 12-square-foot hole in the outer plating - that is providing that the majority of the pumps could have been brought into play.
The supposed slit in the ship’s side was something in the order of at least 300 feet long, so it must have extended through at least five compartments, more likely six. With six compartments open to the sea, the vessel could not remain afloat without relying on the pumps. Under those circumstances the watertight doors would be left open to allow the incoming water to spread throughout the full length of the ship, allowing all of the pumps to be used. Allowing the water to flood the whole of the ship rather than remain trapped in just the forward five or six compartments would also mean that the bows of the vessel did not fill so quickly and drag the ship down. In the received version of events the watertight doors were not opened and the ships bows were dragged under by the weight of the water trapped in them. Mr Murdoch, the senior officer on the bridge at the time of the encounter with the iceberg, closed the watertight doors throughout the ship immediately after giving his disastrous ‘Hard a-starboard’ order. Now we must assume that Mr Murdoch, as a professional seaman holding all of the necessary qualifications to act as commander, and having previously served aboard another of the ‘Olympic’ class ships, would be familiar with their specifications and capabilities. As we already know, the manager of Harland & Wolff, Thomas Andrews, was also aboard the ship. Andrews had overseen the design of the vessel and would certainly have known what to do to increase the time that the ship could stay afloat, no matter how seriously she was damaged. Closing the watertight doors immediately before or after a collision is the natural thing to do, even though in this case it was the wrong action. The question is, why were the watertight doors not opened again as soon as it was discovered that so many compartments had been opened to the sea, even though the hole in the ship’s hull was not large enough to admit massive quantities of water immediately, particularly when Andrews was made aware of the extent and nature of the damage sustained? No matter how seriously damaged the ship was, as long as the damage extended over more than four or five compartments, it could always survive for longer with all of the pumps operating than without them. This is simple common sense. It therefore follows that the ship, if more than four or five compartments (depending on where they were located) were open to the sea, could remain afloat longer with her watertight doors open than if they were closed.
There is, and has long been, a standard procedure for carrying out the planned scuttling of a ship. Simply opening the sea cocks does not guarantee that a vessel will founder, and if it does then the sinking will be uncontrolled after the sea cocks are submerged. The accepted method is usually to open the sea cocks but to also reverse the non-return valves in the ship’s pumps so that instead of pumping water out they pump it in. This was the method used by the captured German High Seas fleet when its crews scuttled their ships in Scapa Flow after the Great War. Using this method the sinking is at least under some sort of control and can be accelerated or slowed by turning the pumps off or on. If some of Titanic’s pumps had been set to scuttle the ship, that might account for Captain Smith’s reluctance to have them started when a real catastrophe overtook his vessel, as we shall see.
To return to events immediately after the collision - if there really was a collision - for a few moments the engines seem to have been stopped, but then they were run forwards and backwards for some little time, at low and relatively high speed. The engines were first put astern by Murdoch in his attempt to avoid the iceberg. This on its own is quite enough to have created the illusion of a collision as the ship was moving forward at high speed at the time. It would have caused the propellers to lose their grip on the water and to ‘cavitate’, as it is known, setting up an enormous vibration felt throughout the vessel. This massive vibration is exactly what was reported by nearly all of those aboard who later gave evidence. They did not mention any sort of crash or massive shock running through the ship. In fact, the collision was hardly felt by most of the people on the liner; all they felt was the vibration that would automatically have occurred when the engines were suddenly put full astern. We will examine the so-called collision and its effects in some detail in the next chapter.
Immediately after the alarm and Mr Murdoch’s avoiding action, Captain Smith seems to have reappeared on the bridge. He asked Murdoch what was going on and the First Officer told him that they had struck an iceberg. There is no eye-witness evidence as to what orders Captain Smith gave at this juncture, although the helmsman, Quartermaster Robert Hitchens, and Quartermaster Alfred Olliver, who were on hand to take over the wheel or act as messenger should either be required, both survived. However, we do know that a series of orders from the bridge reached the engine room via the engine room telegraph, hardly something that could have happened without everyone on the bridge knowing about it.
After the ship had been stationary for a few minutes the engine room telegraph rang for ‘Half Ahead’. Then, a short while later the engines were stopped again. Next came the order for ‘Slow Astern’, which lasted for about 2 minutes before the vessel was again halted. According to Greaser Frederick Scott, who was on duty in the engine room, this was really the time that the watertight doors were closed, about 3 minutes after the seemingly insignificant collision. About a quarter of an hour later the engines were put ‘Slow Ahead’ yet again for a while before stopping, then going astern for another 5 minutes. Eventually the engines were finally stopped according to Trimmer Robert Patrick (Paddy) Dillon, who was also on duty in the engine room. However, there is some evidence to show that after Dillon’s departure from the engine room the vessel was again run ‘Slow Ahead’ for some time. There has never been a satisfactory reason given for this running of the main engines to and fro following the accident, but we should remember that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the ship’s propulsion system. If another vessel was to be seen, there was nothing to stop the liner from moving towards it. Obviously, if the Titanic was seriously damaged, another vessel close by would reassure passengers and offer sanctuary should the worst happen. Perhaps those controlling the liner’s movements in the period immediately after the accident believed they were doing just that.
Chapter 15
‘A slight jar’
In the received version of events surrounding the loss of the Titanic it is usually believed that in a freak accident the vessel struck an iceberg and sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later with the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Unfortunately that scenario does not fit in with the known facts or the eyewitness evidence of the disaster.
As Titanic swung to port in answer to Mr Murdoch’s order she supposedly scraped along a ledge of ice protruding from the berg, below the waterline, springing rivets and opening seams along something like 500 feet of her hull. Although Titanic was a big ship, even by modern standards, she was nothing like the size and weight of a large iceberg.
The iceberg seen by the ship’s lookouts, Fred Fleet and Reginald Lee, was large enough to tower over the foredeck of the ship. As that deck was about 50 feet above the water, we can safely assume that the iceberg was considerably taller than that, say 60 to 65 feet high at least. One witness, Colonel Archibald Gracie, described the iceberg as towering more than 100 feet above Titanic’s A Deck, which would make the berg more than 160 feet high. Quartermaster Rowe, on duty on the liner’s poop deck, also saw the iceberg and described it as being 100 feet tall. The iceberg was later described as looking something like the Rock of Gibraltar, so even the most conservative of estimates must put its weight at somewhere around half a million tons or more, ten
times the weight of the ship. Even at better than 20 knots Titanic was not going to push this iceberg out of the way. She would just bounce off it, like a tennis ball off a wall. The change in direction of the ship’s travel would necessarily have been violent and practically instant.
Any almost instantaneous change in the ship’s course would have been noticed by all aboard. Most of those in the forward part of the ship, closest to the point of impact and therefore closest to the point of greatest deflection, would have felt a severe shock to the extent that they would have been thrown off their feet. Articles on tables would have fallen off as they tried to continue along the vessel’s previous heading. Newton’s first law of motion states:
‘A body resists changes in its state of motion - a body at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force, and a body in motion tends to remain in motion at the same velocity unless acted upon by an external force. This property is known as INERTIA.’
Newton’s laws do not change to suit the Titanic or anything else; they are constant throughout the universe. Practically all so-called studies of the disaster that befell the vessel we know as the Titanic ignore these immutable laws of nature because they do not happen to fit in with the theories being put forward. As the very much larger body in motion, the iceberg would automatically have been less disturbed by the collision, if it really happened, than the smaller ship. The iceberg was moving in a roughly southerly direction at something like 2 knots, under the influence of the Labrador current. Titanic was heading roughly westwards at about 22 knots, so one would expect any collision to be more than just noticeable to anybody on the ship.
Fred Fleet and Reginald Lee, the lookouts in the crow’s-nest who had seen and tried so desperately to warn the officers on the bridge of the presence of the iceberg, watched closely as the ship reached it. They thought that the ship had just missed the ice. Fred Fleet noticed no impact at all, just a slight grinding noise lasting ‘a matter of a few seconds’. The lookout said later, ‘I thought it was a narrow shave.’ The lookouts, the two witnesses in the best position to see what was going on, were so unimpressed by the event that they settled down to continue their watch. They continued to peer into the darkness around the ship but could see nothing at all. The iceberg had passed astern and was no longer visible. Even though we now know that there were other ships in the immediate vicinity, they could not be seen from Titanic. So intent had they been on watching the iceberg as the ship passed close alongside it that they didn’t notice tons of ice cascade from it onto the liner’s forward well deck, which is what the received version of the collision would have us believe. The lookouts didn’t see the ice fall from the berg onto the ship for the simple reason that it did not happen.
The Great Titanic Conspiracy Page 17
