Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  Had she done so, she would have gone further west than the Californian, which was to the north. The lower line of the ‘=’ would have run on, to the left of the parallel, Californian being stopped to the north (bound for Boston), and Titanic (to the south of her) streaking further west (bound for New York).

  Yet if the Titanic’s SOS position were correct, it would have meant the Californian witnesses should not have seen Titanic’s rockets in the way they did. That’s what was wrong! The Californian saw the rockets to the south and east. In other words, behind their own limit of westward progress. But if the Titanic had been in the SOS position, then they should have seen them to the south and west. Because the Titanic would have gone on further west.

  The fact that Californian witnesses did not see rockets where they ‘should’ have seen them means that the relative positions reported by the Titanic and Californian (represented by the symbol ‘_–’), indicating where each finally stopped, could not both be correct!

  Californian saw rockets that indicated the progress of the two ships was akin to ‘–_’, the Titanic being to the south and east of themselves, in other words not at the SOS position at all. Commissioner Mersey was thus presented with a choice. He chose to believe the Californian position false. It is sadly true that he should have believed the opposite.

  The Titanic’s SOS position was simply wrong, and this is now put beyond all dispute by the wreck lying on the sea bed. The Californian’s 1912 reported stop position and the Titanic’s actual stop position (as determined in 1985 from the discovery of the wreckage) place the Californian to the north and west of the Titanic. The crew of the Californian would have seen the Titanic rockets to the south and east, just as they did indeed report in 1912. The 1985 discovery of the wreck site has validated their testimony. They are not telling lies.

  This means that not only is there no automatic suggestion that the Californian must be lying about her stop position, but that her 1912 reported overnight stop location seems rather more likely to be true. It is surely not reasonable to expect the Californian to have been anticipating the fortuitous discovery of the Titanic wreck, 2 miles down, when they needed it. It was only found by an exploration team some three-quarters of a century later. So the Californian could not have been, and was not, ‘tailoring’ her position in 1912 to avoid blame! The stop position she reported for herself caused her own case considerable difficulties in 1912 – whereas the purpose of an invention by any accused person is always to get out of, not into, difficulty.

  The hard bit is over.

  Now we shall have to try to establish the actual distance as the crow flies between the Californian and Titanic at the time the latter hit the berg, making allowances for the drift of both before the RMS Titanic slumped in two pieces to her final resting place. One can hear the objection already: ‘Alright, we know the location of the Titanic wreck, but why should we trust the Californian’s claimed stop location? She could have been anywhere! She could have been close to the Titanic! The Californian could still be lying!’

  We shall first have to deal with this objection. It is an obstacle to further progress.

  SHE COULD HAVE BEEN ANYWHERE

  Those convinced that the Californian had to be the Titanic’s mystery ship do not really require a position for her at all. Although stationary all night, it is preferred if she could be a ‘movable feast’, popping up in a series of alternative locations if others can be shown to be impossible. We must hold firm to the certainty that Californian did not move. The evidence has been patiently adduced earlier in this book. Furthermore, if she did move – to come closer to the Titanic and go away again – then it requires a mass conspiracy of denial by the Californian’s complement. Such a conspiracy might have extended to mass denial of seeing any rockets, or at least not giving the ‘wrong’ position for those rockets (so that the Californian’s claimed stop position should not be thrown into doubt). Indeed, a ‘standard’ version of events would have prevented Californian witnesses saying, as they did, a bewildering variety of very different things.

  The conclusion must be that the Californian witnesses were attempting to tell the truth as best they could, which is the courtesy extended to Titanic witnesses. Meanwhile all are agreed that their vessel did not move. But let us not rely merely on their word…

  What can we tell independently about the Californian’s stop position, without relying on anything that those aboard her might say? We know the rockets were seen to the south and east. That means the Californian must be located somewhere on the curve of a quadrant between the positions of 9 and 12 o’clock on a clock-face, where the lower right-hand corner of the quadrant (the ‘centre of the clock’) is the location of the firing vessel – Titanic. The ultimate question is how far the Californian was from the rocket-firing Titanic. The challenge then, is to tell her longitude (how far west she was) and her latitude (how far north she was), since longitude plus latitude is position.

  Let us deal with longitude (westing). We know, roughly, how far west Californian got. At 11 p.m., having stopped, the Californian sent a message to the Titanic: ‘Say Old Man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice’, before the Titanic told her to keep out as they were transmitting private cables to a land station at Cape Race (8992/3).

  Stopped. And surrounded by ice. This is true, because it was transmitted a very substantial time before the Titanic collided with her iceberg. But the Titanic hit a stray. She did not find herself to have impacted field ice. She was not ‘surrounded by ice’. The Californian was.

  Here is the evidence of Captain Stanley Lord:

  6701. Later on did you have to stop on account of ice? — I had to stop and reverse engines.

  6702. Would you tell us what time that was? — 10.21 p.m.

  6703. That also was ship’s time? — Yes, ship’s time for that same longitude.

  6704. Where were you then? — Forty-two deg, five min N, and 50 deg, 7 min W.

  [The Attorney General] … We make it the spot is just under the fringe marked as ‘the FIELD OF ICE between March and July’.

  That’s the British Attorney General telling the court that Commissioner Mersey’s own assessors have marked Californian’s testified stop position on a chart they have prepared themselves, showing the location of the ice barrier reported by a variety of ships at the relevant time that year. In other words the field ice location is independently known and verified. And the ice barrier is where Lord said it was. His ship is stopped on the fringe. So Lord is telling the truth about the location of the field ice. He might have got it wrong if he had invented the stop position! But it is not wrong – the icefield is entirely consistent with where he said he stopped.

  6706. Where was it? — [Lord] Right ahead of me.

  6707. Did it stretch far? — As far as I could see to the northward and southward.

  6712. Did you then stop? — We stopped.

  6713. Until? — 6 o’clock next morning…

  6773. Did the ice extend at all to the eastward or westward of you? — It seemed to me to be running more north and south, but whilst we were stopped we were surrounded by loose ice.

  6774. From north to south was the field? — Yes.

  All the Californian witnesses who commented on that ship’s surroundings spoke of the field ice. Chief Officer Stewart: ‘It was thick field ice’ (8875); Second Officer Stone: ‘Did you find the ship stopped and surrounded by ice? — Yes’ (7809), and ‘She was in a sea covered with ice? — Yes’ (7964); Third Officer Groves: ‘What did you find when you got there? — Ice all round us, and icebergs’ (8314), and ‘Your Captain stopped because of the ice field? — Yes’ (8390).

  The Titanic’s SOS position – her claimed location at the height of emergency – was to the south and west of the Californian’s claimed stopping place, as we have seen. This would put the Titanic just to the west of the ice barrier – an ice barrier the Titanic could not possibly have penetrated, since it was solid. And of course her SOS position was wrong.<
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  There was independent evidence, even in 1912, for the Titanic’s SOS position being incorrect. Californian in the morning pushed through field ice to get from the eastern edge of the field to the western edge and clear water, then went south to where the Titanic had said (by SOS) she was sinking. There was no wreckage there. The Canadian Pacific vessel Mount Temple had also arrived at the SOS location, and her Captain, James Moore, could see the ice barrier ahead. He knew in 1912 that the Titanic had not made it through (US Inquiry, p.777):

  Of course, I reckoned I was somewhere near, if not at, the Titanic’s position that he gave me, which afterwards proved correct, when I got observations in the morning, sir. I searched for a passage to get through this pack, because I realized that the Titanic could not have been through that pack of ice, sir… I had not seen anything of the Titanic and did not know exactly where she was; because I think, after all, the Titanic was farther east than she gave her position, or, in fact, I am certain she was.

  Senator Smith: How much farther away?

  Moore: I should think at least 8 miles, sir, of longitude… the Titanic must have been on the other side of that field of ice, and then her position was not right which she gave.

  Moore was right. So too was Captain Ludwig Stulping of the Russian–Amerika Co.’s SS Birma, who wrote in an official report to his owners in April that:

  At 7.30 a.m. we arrived on the scene of the wreck. There we saw some immense icebergs to the east, beginning from NE to S, and as far as the eye could reach there lay pack ice with icebergs, so that it was out of the question to proceed through the ice, and it was quite clear that the Titanic could not have been at that spot.

  Birma’s report was received in translation by the Board of Trade of 4 June 1912. The Inquiry sat for another month until 3 July, but this statement was never read into the record or otherwise entered at all. Yet the Daily Telegraph and Daily Sketch, on successive days as early as 25 and 26 April 1912, had both printed the Birma’s account, together with a rude chart or map of the icefield as she had seen it. The captain, his first officer, purser, and two wireless operators all put their names to the assertion that it was ‘obvious that the [SOS] position given must be wrong’. Titanic could not have got through a dense icefield 69 miles long and 3 to 12 miles wide, they said. The chart – the only drawing of the icefield made by independent witnesses on the scene – was likewise received by the Board of Trade. But it was never considered by the British Inquiry. Thus the Birma joined the Mount Temple in disputing the claims of where the Titanic had gone down. And it was not until the closing years of the twentieth century that this truth was finally established. The vaunted Titanic of the White Star Line had got her sinking position wrong when transmitting her distress messages.

  A sketch made by the SS Birma of the SOS position and icefield location was published in the Daily Sketch on 26 April 1912. The sketch showed the Birma’s original course to the East, from 53° W towards 49° W. It also showed ‘the course taken after distress signal was heard’, sharply north-east towards the given SOS position, which turned out to be to the west of an icefield said to be 69 miles long and from 3 to 12 miles wide. But the British Inquiry ignored this evidence and decided that the Titanic sank at the incorrect SOS location that she had been transmitting to all shipping in her distress messages.

  The same newspaper issue quoted an American journalist, Charles Edward Walters, who happened to be on board the Birma at the time. Walters was reported as stating: ‘the ice-floe lay between [the Birma] and the course of the Titanic. He added: ‘Hence it is obvious that one of the bergs photographed on the easterly side must have caused the disaster’. He was right.

  The rescue ship Carpathia provided further independent evidence that the Titanic had got it wrong. The Carpathia’s arrival at lifeboats dotted across the ocean to the east of the ice barrier further proves that the Titanic’s SOS position was wrong. The Cunarder picked up the distress signal at 12.35 a.m. (ship’s time), her captain telling the US Inquiry: ‘I was dressing, and I picked up our position on my chart, and set a course to pick up the Titanic. The course was north 52 degrees, west true, 58 miles from my position’ (US Inquiry, p.20). At 58 miles, her skipper, Captain Arthur Rostron, expected it to take fully four hours to reach the SOS site. He expected only a 4.35 a.m. arrival at best, and told his wireless operator to tell this to the Titanic. Rostron said (US Inquiry, p.25): ‘From the very first I sent a message to the Titanic – telling them: ‘Coming immediately to your assistance. Expect to arrive half past four’. No; it was: ‘Expect to arrive in four hours’, because I had not then got up full speed’. Four hours at full speed. But it turned out he could not maintain full speed throughout. Despite this, he later testified (US Inquiry, p.21): ‘…it was 58 miles, and it took us three and a half hours… I stopped my engines at 4 o’clock, and I was then close to the first boat’. So Rostron encountered lifeboats more than half an hour earlier than expected. And he had first seen a lifeboat flare after just two hours of steaming: ‘At 20 minutes to three, I saw the green flare, which is the White Star Company’s night signal, and naturally, knowing I must be at least 20 miles away, I thought it was the ship herself still. It was showing just for a few seconds and I passed the remark that she [Titanic] must still be afloat’ (25394).

  The green flare was in Boxhall’s No.2 boat, launched around 1.45 a.m. Put very simply, this lifeboat from the Titanic could not have pulled ‘at least twenty miles away’ from the transmitted SOS position in roughly one hour (launch of Boxhall’s lifeboat from the Titanic at 1.45 a.m. and flare seen by Carpathia 2.40 a.m. This holds good despite a difference between Titanic and Carpathia ship times).

  Rostron knew at this time that he was at least 20 miles from the SOS position given! Rostron’s answer to question 25394 should have given the British Inquiry pause for serious thought as to whether the Titanic’s SOS position was reliable. But it was simply another missed clue.

  Captain Lord of the Californian, like these others, asserted strongly in 1912 that the Titanic’s SOS position was wrong. But Lord was not believed because he was a suspect. He had a ‘motive’ for casting doubt on the Titanic’s transmitted location. Here is Lord:

  6821. [Referring to the SOS position] That particular spot? The spot mentioned here as 19 miles away is not, in my opinion, where the Titanic hit the berg.

  6822. Within a radius of 20 miles of you? — No, 30 miles.

  6823. Do you mean she was further from you? — She was 32 miles from where I left the wreckage.

  The wreckage had drifted west and a little south since the Titanic sank, over more than six hours prior to Californian’s arrival at the wreckage in its new position – not the position where it was originally generated by the sinking.

  Let us say again: the Titanic never met the field ice. She was felled by a lone iceberg in open sea. Far to the east. How far east? The wreck location on the sea bed is over 13 nautical miles from the SOS position. The SOS position is just to the west of the ice barrier that Titanic could not have passed through. Lord’s ice barrier was 3 miles thick at its narrow point, as he saw it. All things being equal, Titanic would have hit the ice barrier itself at least 3½ miles short of the SOS position. That is if she had not been felled by a stray berg many miles further east. By subtracting the rough width of the icefield from the distance east and west between the known wreck site on the sea bed and the Titanic’s SOS position, we are left with an indication – an indication merely – that the Titanic was 10 miles short of the Californian in westerly progress. In other words, the Californian was 10 miles further west than the Titanic. Let us test the longitude (Westing) of both ships another way. Lord gave a stop longitude without benefit of knowing where the wreck would eventually be found. His stop position is eleven minutes of longitude further west than the Titanic on her sea bed wreck site (50° 07’ W, Lord’s claimed stop longitude, minus 49° 56’ W, Titanic wreck longitude, equals eleven minutes, there being sixty minutes in a full degree). The
re are 1,500 yards in a minute of longitude at this location (longitude varies, latitude remains the same), meaning that the westerly separation between Lord’s reported stop for the Californian and the Titanic wreck is just over 8¼ nautical miles (one nautical mile being 2026.66 yards). Now we need the northerly axis to give us an ‘L’ shape, where the baseline horizon is longitude and the vertical represents latitude. Drawing the diagonal line to complete the ‘triangle’ will thereafter give us the distance between the Californian and the Titanic as the crow flies.

  As for latitude (Northing), we know the Californian reported being in latitude 42° 03’ N (intending 42° 05’ N) at 6.30 p.m., which was some five hours before the Titanic collided (questions 8941–3). An hour later, at 7.30 p.m., Chief Officer Stewart took a new observation, using the Pole Star. It confirmed they were in latitude 42° 05’ N. Stewart would later state (question 8706) that he again got the Pole Star at half-past ten just after his vessel stopped. Stewart’s reference to getting the Pole Star at 10.30 p.m. must be one of the most overlooked answers in the whole of the British Inquiry:

  8706. [The Solicitor General] What I want to know is how they arrived at the latitude, which is put down, I presume by dead reckoning, at 10.20 p.m. If I am right, it would be by dead reckoning you would get it? — [Stewart] Not only that. I had the Pole Star at half-past ten.

  The Pole Star is the brightest star of the Little Bear constellation and is also known as Ursa Minor, Polaris, Stella Maris, and the Seaman’s Star. Its importance has been known to mariners since at least Phoenician times, since it gives effectively exact latitude. As it says in the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (edited by Peter Kemp, OUP, 1976): ‘By describing a circle of only two degrees 25 minutes daily about the North pole, it is of great service to navigators since it points, within a degree or two, to the true north. The altitude of Polaris is also virtually equal to the latitude of the observer’. Thus Stewart’s 10.30 p.m. sighting that night – it is often wrongly suggested he only checked the location the next morning, but he could not have got the Pole Star in daylight! – in addition to ordinary dead reckoning, verified the Californian’s stop position that night.