by Senan Molony
This is what the Californian says she observed. Boxhall’s direct opposite number on the Californian was Second Officer Herbert Stone. He spent the longest time observing his vessel’s own nearby ship and was the only one to witness all the rockets seen by the Californian (although whether Californian saw all the rockets fired by the Titanic is another story, as we shall see). The Californian’s very own ‘Boxhall’ then, Second Officer Herbert Stone, testified that the rockets he saw ‘did not go very high’, rising about halfway up to the masthead light of the Californian’s unknown ship. Stone was quite specific in his evidence:
7921. Tell me what you said to the Chief Officer? — I have remarked at different times that these rockets did not appear to go very high; they were very low lying; they were only about half the height of the steamer’s masthead light and I thought rockets would go higher than that.
Only accepting Boxhall and other Titanic witnesses as creditworthy makes sense of what Stone says he saw. Only if the Titanic lies over the horizon from the Californian and a considerable distance away will those rockets rise halfway to the masthead light. And let it be said that halfway to the masthead light does not mean ‘halfway up the mast’. The masthead light could be located typically about two-thirds distance up the mast. Either way, the rockets he saw rose less than halfway up the mast of the nearby ship – ‘very low lying’ indeed.
Now think about this sheer absurdity: if that near ship in plain view of the Californian was actually the monster Titanic, then it is ridiculous for her rockets to rise only a small distance up her own masts! And when we look at the Titanic evidence we find no record of such damp squibs. There follows a quick sample of what the Titanic officers said about their own rockets. Here is the evidence of Fourth Officer Boxhall:
15397. Can you describe what the effect of those rockets is in the sky; what do they do? — You see a luminous tail behind them and then they explode in the air and burst into stars.
And in the US Inquiry (p.237), Boxhall states: ‘They go right up into the air and they throw stars’.
Second Officer Lightoller provides similar reponses:
14153. What sort of light do they show? — A shell bursts at a great height in the air, throwing out a great number of stars.
14155. How are they discharged; are they discharged from a socket? — …the pulling of this wire… fires the charge at the base of the cartridge. That, exploding, throws the shell to a height of several hundred feet, which is nothing more or less than a time shell, and explodes by time in the air.
Great height is simply inconsistent with Stone’s description of what he saw. Several hundred feet? Titanic’s masts rose to a maximum of 130ft above the boat deck (although 205ft above the waterline). Therefore, if Stone’s nearby steamer was indeed the Titanic, firing rockets that rose to only half the height of a mast, let alone half the height of a masthead light, then the Titanic’s rockets would travel not ‘several hundred feet’, but less than seventy. The height of the Titanic’s foremast light, meanwhile, was 85ft from the boat deck, or just a little above the 72ft funnels (the masts themselves ran on for another 45ft).
If Stone’s description of the rockets reaching only ‘half the height of the masthead light’ is correct, this would mean the Titanic rockets rose only 42½ft from where they were fired. Barely over the roof of the average suburban house! Such a miserable performance would surely be remarked upon with dismay by Titanic survivors. It would be widely criticised and made a prime focus for investigation at any subsequent inquiry – if only their distress rockets could have gone higher!
But the Titanic seems to have had no such problem with rockets. Clearly Mrs Mahala Douglas is speaking for all the passengers when she describes how ‘We watched the distress rockets sent off – they rose high in the air and burst…’ (US Inquiry, p.1101). In other words, Titanic’s rockets performed as they were intended to do. They did rise several hundred feet, as one would expect. Senator Smith specifically asked about rockets at the US Inquiry (p.237). Did they work satisfactorily? ‘Oh, yes’, Boxhall readily confirmed, ‘they were quite satisfactory’.
And it was spelt out clearly once more:
Sen. Smith: The failure to arouse the attention of this ship was not due to any impaired or partial success of these signals [the rockets]?
Boxhall: Not at all, sir.
This evidence seems to contradict Stone’s account quite clearly. But why would Stone lie about the height of rockets? Once he has seen a rocket at all the fact of seeing it is the major concession. If a lie is to be attempted, it would be surely far better to deny seeing any rockets!
To summarise for the moment: for the Californian to be the mystery ship, not only must Titanic’s prime witness, Joseph Groves Boxhall, be mistaken; but his direct counterpart Herbert Stone, Californian’s prime nearby ship witness, must also be mistaken.
The unlikelihoods may be mounting to ‘titanic’ proportions, but we will return from that experimental walk on the side of Boxhall (and Stone) being correct, and go down the road that says they must be wrong. Of course, if they are wrong, Californian is potentially the mystery ship.
6
CALIFORNIAN’S OWN MYSTERY SHIP
The first one aboard the Leyland liner to discern a possible ship approaching was her Captain, Stanley Lord:
6715. Now close upon 11 o’clock [Californian time] did you see a steamer’s light? — I did.
6716–19. …After we had stopped. It was approaching me from the eastward [thus heading west]. I did not get the bearings of it; I was just noticing it casually from the deck. It was on the starboard side.
6720. What did you see, what light? — I just saw a white light to commence with.
6721. Did you then ask your wireless operator what ships he had? — Yes I went to his room and I asked him what ships he had.
6723. What did he say? — ‘Nothing, only the Titanic.’
6724. Did you think that the vessel approaching you was the Titanic? — No, I remarked at the time that [she] was not the Titanic.
6725. How could you tell that? — You can never mistake those ships – by the blaze of light.
6726. I am not quite sure that I understand you – you told us you had seen one light? — First.
6727. Then as she was approaching you, did you see more? — I saw more lights.
6728. Did you see any side lights? — I saw a green light [on her starboard side, consistent with a ship heading from east to west, seen from the north].
6725. And did you see any deck lights? — A few.
6730. It was sufficiently close for that? — Oh, yes, she was getting closer all the time.
6731. About what distance approximately did you consider she was from you? — At 11 o’clock? I suppose she was six or seven miles away. That is only approximately.
6733. Will you tell us what lights you saw at the time you had this conversation with the Marconi operator? — I saw one masthead light and a few other white lights, but I do not say I noticed the green light then, I was not paying a great deal of attention.
6734. [The Commissioner] Were the white lights bearing from east on your starboard side? — Coming from the eastward on our starboard side, my Lord.
6735. And you saw some other lights. What were they? — They might have been anything – lights from the portholes, doorways, or anything.
6736. But no coloured light? — I did not notice any then.
6737. [Attorney General] You said it was not the Titanic. Did you give him any directions?
Did you tell him to let the Titanic know? — I said, ‘Let the Titanic know that we are stopped, surrounded by ice’.
6738. Do you remember at what time that message was sent? — About 11 o’clock.
6739. About 11 o’clock that night, ship’s time? — Ship’s time [Californian time].
The importance of this, quite apart from Lord seeing a ship that had no blaze of light like a big passenger ship but only ‘a few other white lights’, is that
Lord’s own vessel, the Californian, would have been visible at ‘six or seven miles away’ to the lookouts on the other vessel. This is substantially before Titanic’s collision.
Titanic’s lookouts, we know, did not report the light of any other vessel either before or for over three-quarters of an hour after their collision. Lord’s sighting of the light is the earliest recognition of a ship by the Californian, and is verified by the timing of the message sent by Cyril Evans, the Californian’s wireless operator. Below is the information given by Evans:
8975. There is nothing more, as I follow you, until your ship stops? — No.
8976. Which we know she did, about 10.25 – your ship’s time? — Yes.
8977. Did you go on deck when you found the ship had stopped? — Yes.
8978. I think you found the Captain and the Chief Engineer discussing the matter? — Yes.
8979. And then did the Captain make a communication to you and ask you to do something? — Well, Sir, he was talking about the ice then, he was talking to the Chief Officer [it may be that Evans means the Chief Engineer]… I asked him [captain] if anything was the matter, and if he wanted me. A little after that, he came along to my cabin to talk to me.
8980. What did he want to know? — He asked me what ships I had got.
8982. What did you say? — I said, ‘I think the Titanic is near us. I have got her’.
8983. Did you say, ‘I think the Titanic is ‘near us’ or ‘is nearest’? — Near us.
8984. [The Commissioner] ‘Nearer’ is it you are saying? — She was ‘near us’.
8985. [The Solicitor General] As far as you know, was there any ship with Marconi apparatus that was nearer you at this time than the Titanic? — Not as far as I know. I hadn’t the Titanic’s position.
8986. [The Commissioner] What time was this; about what time? — Five minutes to eleven.
8987. [The Solicitor General] Ship’s time? — Yes.
8988. What did the Captain say when you said that? — He said, ‘You had better advise the Titanic we are stopped and surrounded by ice’.
8989–91. Did you call up the Titanic? — Yes, 11 o’clock ship’s time.
8992. What did you say? — I said, ‘We are stopped and surrounded by ice’.
8993. Did you get an answer from the Titanic? — They said, ‘Keep out’.
8994. Just explain to us, will you, what that means? — Well, Sir, he was working to Cape Race at the time. Cape Race was sending messages to him, and when I started to send he could not hear what Cape Race was sending.
8995. Does that mean that you would sound louder than Cape Race to him? — Yes, and he did not want me to interfere.
If Wireless Operator Cyril Evans had the Californian’s stop position to hand, he did not initially offer it, nor did he have the chance to transmit it once the conversation was closed (the Californian’s ice warning was not the only one ignored by Titanic’s senior operator, Jack Phillips, that night; one from the Mesaba, specifying ice directly in the Titanic’s path, never made it to the bridge).
The Californian’s Third Officer, Charles Victor Groves, who was on duty until midnight, had also noticed the light of a ship drawing closer, although he appears to have noticed it later than his Captain. Here is what Third Officer Groves has to say:
8135. Now, what did you see, and when? — As I said before, the stars were showing right down to the horizon. It was very difficult at first to distinguish between the stars and a light, they were so low down. About 11.10 ship’s time, I made out a steamer coming up a little bit abaft our starboard beam.
8141. When had you last looked at the clock? — Ten twenty-six – well, I had looked at my watch; we had no clock on the upper bridge.
8142. You saw a steamer? — Yes.
8143. What lights did you see? — At first I just saw what I took to be one light, one white light, but, of course, when I saw her first I did not pay particular attention to her, because I thought it might have been a star rising.
8144. When do you think you began to pay particular attention to her? — About 11.15.
8145. About five minutes after you first saw her? — About five minutes after I first saw her.
8146. Did you then see more lights than one? — About 11.25, I made out two lights – two white lights.
8148. Did you make out any other lights then? — Not at the time, no.
8149. You said that she was a little abaft your starboard beam? — Yes.
8150. How were you heading? — At that time we would be heading NE when I saw that steamer first, but we were swinging all the time because when we stopped the order was given for the helm to be put hard-a-port, and we were swinging, but very, very slowly [which is why the Californian could not have shown her red side light on the port side to a vessel to the south]…
8160. Could you form any judgment how far off she was? — When I saw her first light I should think she would be about 10 or 12 miles.
8161. Judging by the look of the light? — By the look of the light and the clearness of the night.
8162. …When you saw the one light? — Yes, when I say she was 10 to 12 miles away.
8163. Did she appear to get nearer? — Yes.
8164. The lights clearer? — Yes, all the time.
8167. Did you report… to the Captain? — Yes, because, as I said before, he left orders to let him know if I saw any steamers approaching.
8168. You went down to him? — I went down to the lower bridge, which is part of the saloon deck.
8169. [The Commissioner] Would this be something after 11 o’clock? — Yes, my Lord, when I went down to him it would be as near as I could judge about 11.30.
Groves would go on to testify that the nearby steamer seemed to put her lights out at 11.40 p.m. Californian time. The Titanic struck an iceberg at 11.40 p.m., but 11.40 p.m. Titanic time.
It has been suggested that the apparent loss of light by Groves’ nearby ship – if she were the Titanic – could be explained by her turning suddenly (to avoid the berg), ending up facing the Californian bow-on, instead of broadside. This is a hypothesis that will be examined in detail later. But at this stage it is important to say that Californian and Titanic ship times were not identical. How they related to each other is not known. The issue is a quagmire, and there are many theories, all of which have inconsistencies. The British Inquiry used the simple expedient of regarding the times of the two ships as identical — which arguably suited the purpose of treating the Californian as the Titanic’s mystery ship. But the truth is that no-one knows for sure how the time on one ship differed from that on the other. Perhaps they could have differed by up to half an hour, but it is no solution to regard them as indistinguishable.
TIME ON A SHIP
Time on a ship is set each day at local noon. Clocks are corrected to noon (whatever their time) when observations confirm that the sun is at its zenith. Local noon depends on longitude. London is further to the east, where the sun rises, and will therefore see noon five hours earlier than New York. Ships on the Atlantic in 1912 daily corrected their noon depending on where they were. One belief (and an erroneous one) is that the Californian’s clock was twelve minutes behind the time kept on the RMS Titanic. So the argument runs that when it was noon on the Titanic, it was only 11.48 on the Californian.
Twelve minutes later, when it was noon on the Californian, time had also run on for the Titanic, where it was now 12.12. Hence the Californian, while located ‘ahead’ of the faster ship that would catch her up, was apparently behind her pursuer in time, although she could more properly be said to be ahead of her in the westward race for ‘earliness’.
It was stated by Captain Lord in his US evidence that Californian time was one hour and fifty minutes ahead of New York time at his local noon of 14 April. He gave his longitude at noon as 47° 25’ W, which confirms the following calculation: each hour of time west from Greenwich is 15 degrees (since twenty-four hours multiplied by 15 degrees equals 360 degrees, a day being
the time the earth takes to make one complete rotation). Meanwhile, 45 degrees from Greenwich is three hours. Two further degrees (to 47 degrees) is eight minutes of time, since there are four minutes per degree as the earth rotates (360 degrees multiplied by four minutes equals 1,440 minutes, which, when divided by sixty equals twenty-four hours in a day).
A further twenty-five minutes of longitude makes 100 seconds of time, being twenty-five sixtieths of one four-minute period. So a longitude of 47° 25’ is three hours, nine minutes, forty seconds, which Captain Lord has rounded to three hours ten minutes behind Greenwich time. New York is five hours behind Greenwich. So Californian time after noon on 14 April was one hour and fifty minutes ahead of New York.
The ‘twelve-minute theory’ would therefore have the Titanic two hours and two minutes ahead of New York Time, by comparison with the Californian time. The problem here is that the Titanic’s last transmission was heard by the Virginian at 12.27 a.m. NY time. Adding two hours and two minutes to this (to obtain the Titanic’s time) produces a last message sent at 2.29 a.m., even though that ship foundered nine minutes earlier at what was 2.20 a.m. her time!
The US Inquiry heard from officers Boxhall and Lightoller of a New York/Titanic time difference of one hour thirty-three minutes. It also noted a wireless message from the rescue ship Carpathia to the White Star liner Olympic: ‘Titanic foundered 2.20 a.m., 5.47 GMT…’
We can calculate that 5.47 in Greenwich Mean Time equals 0.47 NY time. Between 0.47 NY and 2.20 a.m. there is one hour and thirty-three minutes. This, it is suggested, is the margin by which Titanic time was ahead of New York.
