On receiving the distress call, Mr Cottam, only half dressed, went directly to the bridge of the Carpathia and reported to the senior officer there, First Officer H. V. Dean. At first Dean did not believe the wireless man and made him repeat the message. Finally convinced, Dean propelled Cottam before him all the way below to the Captain’s cabin. Without knocking, Dean and Cottam barged into the room where Captain Rostron slept. Initially the Captain was less than pleased by the conduct of his First Officer and wireless operator in bursting in unannounced. Regardless of the master’s obvious displeasure at being disturbed, Cottam and Dean proceeded to tell him about the distress signal and the White Star liner’s given position. Captain Rostron’s attitude changed completely as soon as he took in what the wireless operator was telling him. From that moment onwards Rostron did not make a single mistake. It was almost as if he had been waiting for just this situation to arise and had been practising exactly what he should do.
First he ordered his wireless operator to check Titanic’s position, then he started for Carpathia’s chartroom. Captain Rostron quickly worked out that his ship was about 58 miles from the sinking liner and immediately ordered a new course. Carpathia’s head swung northward onto North 52° West (308 degrees). All 18 of the lifeboats were swung out ready for immediate launching. Off-duty crew members were woken and all of the crew were given hot drinks, ready to stave off the chill night air. Orders were given that the crew were to prepare the ship to receive survivors. Barrels of machine oil were to be taken to the lavatories so that it could easily be flushed overboard to calm the sea, if necessary. Then Captain Rostron sent for his Chief Engineer, Johnson, and ordered him to squeeze every ounce of power possible out of the reciprocating engines. All unnecessary steam-powered systems, including the heating to passenger cabins and public rooms, was to be shut down so that all available steam pressure could go to the engines. It appears that Johnson’s crew of engineers and stokers did all that was asked of them, and more, performing a minor miracle. Carpathia headed to the rescue at an incredible 17½ knots, about 25% faster than her design speed. The whole ship shuddered as she raced to the rescue, so much so that passengers were awakened by the massive amount of vibration coming from the overworked engines, and possibly by the bitter cold that began to creep into their cabins. While some of the crew collected blankets and prepared hot drinks for the survivors, others prepared public rooms as makeshift dormitories and hospitals. Passengers, although under strict instructions to keep out of the way, gave up their accommodation so that the survivors would have somewhere to sleep after they were brought aboard. Still Captain Rostron was issuing orders: extra lookouts were posted on the bridge, in the crow’s-nest, and two in the eyes of the ship, right in the bows. All obstructions on deck were cleared and gangway doors in the sides of the ship were opened and hooked back. Nets and rope ladders were prepared to help the fittest of the survivors scramble aboard Carpathia. Sacks were tied to ropes so that children could be hoisted aboard and bosun’s chairs were improvised to lift those that could not manage the nets and rope ladders. Lights were prepared to hang over the ship’s sides. Captain Rostron thought of everything, with the possible exception of his own passengers.
It was a dark moonless night where even something as large as an iceberg could not necessarily be seen in time to avoid it, as Captain Rostron must have been all too aware from the messages relayed to him by his wireless operator. Nevertheless he took his ship into an area he knew abounded with icebergs, at better than her highest possible speed. The captain must have believed from what Cottam had told him that there were no other vessels close enough to come to his assistance should he strike a berg, so he was taking a tremendous risk with the lives of his passengers and crew. On the other hand he also doubtless thought that his was the only ship with any chance of reaching the stricken White Star giant in time to do any good. Rostron had made his decision. The lives of those aboard Titanic, which were certainly in danger, outweighed the risks to his own people, who might shortly be facing the same perils, or so we have been led to believe.
There was also the fact that by saving the lives of those on the Titanic Captain Rostron would also save his own flagging career; he had a lot to gain and little to lose. As mentioned in Chapter 10, a few years earlier he had seen what he believed to have been a sea monster. Instead of keeping quiet about the sighting he had the incident put in the ship’s log, from where it became public knowledge. In just the same way that modern-day airline pilots are discouraged from reporting strange aerial phenomena, ships’ officers were discouraged from reporting marine monsters. The incident came close to ending Rostron’s career and played a large part in why he had only risen to command a second-rate liner like Carpathia. Although he was a first-rate master mariner, Captain Rostron was clearly seen as unreliable by his superiors. His career desperately needed a shot in the arm, which begs another question or two.
Could Captain Rostron and the Carpathia really have been as far from Titanic when the distress call was received as the usually accepted 58 miles? Could the Carpathia really have exceeded her design speed by as much as 25%? Could the Captain have picked his way through an area studded with hundreds of giant icebergs at high speed and in total darkness? Is it likely that Captain Rostron could have issued the string of concise and incisive orders detailed above if he had only recently been awoken and was unprepared for what he had to do? The answer to any one of these questions is more likely to be no rather than yes. What are the chances of being able to answer yes to them all?
Carpathia had a top speed of about 14 knots, and as she reached the site of the sinking in a little less than 3½ hours she was probably no more than 46 miles from Titanic, if she could actually steam at her top speed. However, Captain Rostron knew that the area he was steaming through was thick with icebergs, growlers and floating field ice, so it would have made good sense to have moved his ship at a speed that would allow his lookouts to see a berg in time to avoid it. It was a very dark, moonless night and the area around the Newfoundland Grand Banks is notorious for fog; even a slight mist would further hamper the lookouts. Captain Rostron was taking a terrible chance by entering the area at all, and unless he was totally irresponsible it seems unlikely that Carpathia would have steamed at anything more than 7 or 8 knots. If this is what did happen, Carpathia can have been no more than about 25 miles from Titanic when the distress signals were first received. (As we shall see, even in daylight Captain Lord of the Californian could not negotiate the icefield at anything better than an average speed of less than 8 knots without putting his ship and passengers at risk, and for at least some of the time Californian was in open water and able to move at top speed.)
Captain Rostron’s string of seemingly efficient orders gives the impression that he had rehearsed them. At first glance it appears that he did not make a single mistake and, in my experience, nobody is that good. In fact, Captain Rostron seems to have prepared for all eventualities, even one in particular that was not likely to occur that night. He had barrels of machine oil standing by to pour overboard to calm rough seas. It was a flat calm night with no wind; there was no chance whatsoever that Carpathia would encounter rough seas. The presence of so many large icebergs, all acting as floating breakwaters, would have also tended to keep the waters smooth. Captain Rostron had his list of things to do and he stuck rigidly to it. It apparently had come as no surprise to the Cunard master that he would have to take people aboard from small boats at some time on that voyage.
As described earlier, before setting out from New York on this voyage Carpathia had spent some time in Brooklyn Navy Yard having her public rooms prepared so that they could easily be converted for use as hospital wards and dormitories. She had taken on board extra blankets, and no fewer than seven doctors. It would seem that as the Cunard liner left New York only one day after Titanic left Southampton, Captain Rostron and his superiors were either clairvoyant or had been forewarned. Carpathia was, with her ability to accommodate mo
re than 2,000 passengers and with her master’s pre-eminence as a navigator, in many respects the ideal choice of rescue ship.
As Carpathia hurried to the rescue Captain Rostron ordered rockets to be fired so that those either still aboard Titanic or in her lifeboats would be reassured that deliverance was on the way. Indeed, these rockets were seen from survivors in Titanic’s lifeboats. It has also been suggested that they were seen from the bridge of the Californian as she lay drifting with the ice, far to the north. This is of course nonsense. If the distress signals from Titanic could not have been seen from Californian, it stands to reason that rockets fired from a ship even further away could not have been seen either. However, rockets were seen from Californian at about this time, but if they did not come from Carpathia they must have been sent up by some other vessel. As it happens, as Titanic was slowly sinking, another ship, possibly two other ships, was seen from her bridge. One of these was seen so clearly that the liner’s Morse lamp was used in an attempt to attract her attention, without success. Titanic’s Second Officer, Charles Lightoller, had been so annoyed by the stranger’s lack of response that he said at the time how he wished he had a 6-inch gun so that he could put a shot into the mystery vessel and wake her up. Others on the liner had seen what they believed was the masthead lights of yet another mystery ship, which was also studiously ignoring their distress signals.
There can be absolutely no doubt that there was another steamer within 5 miles of Titanic as she was sinking. Captain Smith even went so far as to instruct a couple of lifeboat crews to row to the ship they had in sight, offload the passengers, and come back to collect another load. As the Captain had already been informed by Thomas Andrews, who had played a major part in designing the ship, that the liner could only remain afloat for a couple of hours, he must have believed that the mystery ship was very close indeed. Four men rowing a 30-foot lifeboat with 30 or 40 people in it could not have been expected to move at much more then a couple of miles an hour. Allowing half an hour to get the people from the lifeboat on to the mysterious steamer, we are left with little more than an hour for a lifeboat to complete the round trip. Smith must have thought that the ship he had instructed his crewmen to go to was no more than a mile or so away, or he believed that this vessel would come closer. Knowing, as he must have done, that the unidentified vessel had not seen or was ignoring their signals, Captain Smith could only have expected her to approach if there was already some arrangement for her to do so. In that case Captain Smith must have thought that the stranger was one of the rescue ships put in place to take off his passengers and crew when the plan to scuttle the liner was put into practice. He was expecting there to be a vessel close by. Once again we see the possible plan to dispose of the ship getting in the way of Captain Smith and his officers putting into practice any new plan to ensure the safety of those aboard. If Smith and his officers believed that the mystery ship was there to rescue them all, it would make sense of their allowing the few lifeboats available to leave Titanic only partly full of people. They would be easier to manage by the few crew members aboard who knew how to row, and much faster in making the round trip to the stranger and back. In the event the mysterious stranger, instead of coming closer, moved away from the sinking liner.
An affidavit was sent to the American Inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic by a Dr Quitzrau, a passenger on the Canadian Pacific liner Mount Temple, which details events aboard that vessel at about the relevant time (see Appendix 4). In that affidavit Dr Quitzrau tells how Mount Temple approached the site of the sinking, with her lights out. She came close enough for Quitzrau to look down into some of Titanic’s lifeboats before moving off without making any attempt to pick up survivors. Dr Quitzrau does not mention actually seeing Titanic, and it is therefore possible that Mount Temple did not reach the scene until after the White Star vessel had foundered, but his story does have more than a passing similarity to that told by survivors. The affidavit was not presented in evidence although it does remain on file. No matter what ship it was, there was certainly a vessel close enough to Titanic as she was sinking to have helped. There was no apparent reason for her failing to do so. It is inconceivable that the mystery ship’s lookouts could have failed to see the liner or her distress signals. Titanic’s mortar-type signals could have been seen and heard by any vessel close enough to have been in sight from the liner’s bridge, especially on such a calm, clear night.
There has to be some very compelling reason why this mysterious vessel did nothing. All sailors have a built-in predisposition to help others in peril on the sea. Even in wartime, seamen go to extraordinary lengths to rescue people from enemy vessels with which they have shortly before been doing battle. Usually, the only time this rule of the sea is waived is when to go to the assistance of others would seriously endanger the lives of those aboard the would-be rescuer. In the case of the Titanic there was no apparent physical danger to a would-be rescuer if it was already close by, so perhaps the danger was not physical. If the captain of the mystery ship was already party to the plan to scuttle the Titanic but could see for himself that the plan had gone awry, he might well have considered it prudent to keep away. If he became involved and the original scheme came to light he would have found himself in hot water, but if he kept out of the way he could later deny all knowledge of the affair, in the unlikely event that his ship was identified. He might even have moved his ship out of the way for a while, then, prompted by conscience or the fact that he could then say that he had not previously been close by, returned to affect a rescue.
Chapter 19
Boats away
Even as Carpathia hurried towards her, conditions aboard Titanic descended into chaos. The officers overseeing the loading of the lifeboats seem to have had no idea that they could be fully loaded before they were lowered. The first boats away from the liner were ridiculously underfilled. The excuse given later for this incompetence was that the officers were afraid that the boats would buckle in the middle if they attempted to lower them properly filled. That this was an excuse is demonstrated by the fact that the last boats lowered were filled to capacity and survived lowering without any serious problems.
The wooden lifeboats were carried on the boat deck and arranged in two batches of eight, one batch at the forward end of the deck and the other at the aft end, with four boats on each side. In total the ship carried 16 wooden lifeboats, two of them at the very forward end, which were kept swung out ready for instant use all the time the ship was at sea; they were 25 feet long and capable of carrying 40 persons each, and were known as emergency boats. Aft from the emergency boats were 14 full-sized lifeboats, 30 feet long and capable of carrying 65 people each. In addition to the wooden boats the vessel carried four Engelhardt collapsible lifeboats, each just over 27 feet long and able to carry 47 persons. If the boats were fully loaded they could carry between them a grand total of 1,178 people. However, while two of the collapsible boats were stored on the boat deck just inboard of the emergency boats, the other two were stowed upside down on top of the officers’ quarters. As the rigging wires for the forward funnel came over the top of these collapsibles, it would be extremely difficult to remove them from the roof where they were stowed and get them under any of the forward lifeboat davits in a hurry.
Once the order came to begin loading and lowering Titanic’s boats, First Officer Murdoch took charge of those on the starboard side and Second Officer Lightoller those to port. Although they were not to know it at the time, male passengers stood a far greater chance of survival if they stayed on the starboard side of the boat deck.
The first boat into the water at 12.45am was No 7 on the starboard side, with just 28 people in it. Starboard No 5 and port No 6 both went into the water just 10 minutes later; No 5 had 41 people and No 6 just 28. Boat 3 went in at 1.00am with 50 aboard, followed by No 8 about 10 minutes later, with a mere 28 persons. At the same time as boat 8, No 1 was lowered with just a dozen people in it, seven of them crew members. Murdoch
had been assisted in the loading of No 1 by Fifth Officer Lowe, who would distinguish himself later that night. Why these two experienced officers allowed a boat designed to take 40 people to leave the ship with just 12 was never satisfactorily explained, although at the inquiries following the disaster it did come out that Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon presented each of the seven crewmen with a cheque for £5. The passengers in No 1 were Sir Cosmo, his wife and her secretary, and two of their friends. The survivors from boat 1 later claimed that they were ordered into the lifeboat by First Officer Murdoch himself.
Because the ship was sinking by the bow it made sense to get the forward boats away first, but Mr Lightoller had encountered some problems with No 4 inasmuch as there was a wooden spar projecting from the ship’s hull directly below it, which had to be cut away before the boat could be lowered. Rather than wait for the spar to be removed, Lightoller moved to the batch of boats further aft, leaving No 4 and emergency boat 2 hanging from their davits. Meanwhile Mr Murdoch had sent all of the forward starboard-side wooden lifeboats away from the ship.
The Great Titanic Conspiracy Page 22
