by Senan Molony
Gibson said in evidence that the last he heard was his captain asking the time, which he gave:
7567. Did he ask you anything further? — No.
7568. Or tell you anything further? — No.
7569. And did you go away? — Yes.
7570. [The Commissioner] Was he awake? — Yes, Sir.
But if the captain was awake, why did Gibson not re-enter? Would he really walk away while something further was being said, casually ignoring the imparting of a potential order? Why would Gibson, being merely an apprentice officer, turn on his heel and risk the wrath of the Old Man? Was it perhaps because Gibson actually knew the exhausted captain was not alive to what he was being told? Did he know the captain, half-roused, was talking rubbish and that therefore there was no point in attempting to decipher the latest rambling? Was that why he walked away?
If we allow the possibility of this being the case, then some of Lord’s evidence begins to make sense. He asks ‘what is it?’ because he hears the door banging. The door banged closed after Gibson said his piece, and Lord rambled. Lord only begins to come out of his subconscious when the door bangs shut: ‘I heard Gibson open and close the door and said, “What is it?” He did not say anything. I had been asleep. I was wakened up by the opening of the door – the banging of the door’ (composite of responses to British Inquiry questions 6950–54). Lord’s somnolence, backed by Stone’s evidence, would explain in a very ordinary way the Commissioner’s earlier acid opinion of matters. Lord Mersey observed tartly (7180–81):
The boy came in and shut the door, [and Captain Lord] then said to the boy, ‘What is it?’ and the boy behaved in a most extraordinary manner by shutting the door and going away.
CREDIBILITY
Lord’s failure to recollect anything said to him by the apprentice is hardly calculated to impress a court. Yet it is easy to suggest he must be lying, as the Attorney General of the British Inquiry did, with remarks such as: ‘Do really try and do yourself justice?’ (7292). Yet why would Lord lie in this way? What possible benefit is there? On the other hand, to simply accept the apprentice officer’s evidence and assert that one was fully awake and cognisant would be a much better approach for any determined liar. Lord could have said he was indeed told the ship which was firing rockets had disappeared, just as he had previously been told she was steaming away.
So what? The steamer has departed. That is the only impression he need form. It is also an impression that, apart from argument about what the number of rockets might have meant, is entirely blame-free. But Captain Lord, as on most issues in the case, took a route in evidence that was very difficult for himself.
He may have innocently believed that a court could easily accept that a man spoken to, but not shaken awake, and in the bottom of the trough of his mere four-hour slumber, could respond with inanities and thereafter in the morning forget having uttered anything (it is also a curious fact, as we shall see, that, on the very same night, an officer of the Titanic did not hear a colleague come into his room to tell him his ship had struck an iceberg!).
At the end of the day, there has been a failure of communication. Yet Lord was the one who was ‘dead to the world’. Where, exactly, is the fault here? And if there is any, whose is it?
ROCKETS UNSEEN
We are now beyond the time of the sinking of the Titanic. The Californian has seen eight rockets by this time. But how many rockets were fired by the Titanic? Eight! At least, this is one of the received wisdoms of Titanic lore. But the notion of just eight rockets being fired from the White Star vessel begins to crumble upon closer investigation. It is a tribute to the British Inquiry that the idea of eight rockets and eight alone was so assiduously implanted into public consciousness, where it has remained in the decades since. Lord Mersey first espoused this dogma in his final report, published at the end of July 1912 (British Report, p.45):
In all, Mr Boxhall fired about eight rockets. There appears to be no doubt that the vessel whose lights he saw was the Californian. The evidence from the Californian speaks of eight rockets having been seen between 12.30 and 1.40. The number sent up by the Titanic was about eight. The Californian saw eight.
Thus we have eight. And eight has been ingrained ever since. The Californian certainly saw only eight rockets. But did the Titanic really only fire eight? Just eight? Why would they limit their distress rockets to such a small number? The Titanic had no fewer than forty-eight rockets aboard, not to mention a variety of other flares and signals, as listed in the ‘Description of the Ship’ in the British Report (p.19):
Distress signals: These were supplied of a number and pattern approved by the Board of Trade – i.e., 36 socket signals in lieu of guns, 12 ordinary rockets, 2 [boxes] Manwell Holmes deck flares, 12 blue lights, and 6 lifebuoy lights.
Why then fire such a sparse amount? Why economise so much on rockets when a $10 million vessel is sinking? If we ignore Lord Mersey and examine what the Titanic witnesses who gave evidence actually said, it is suddenly revealed that there was no agreement that eight and only eight were fired. Third Officer Herbert Pitman says: ‘It may have been a dozen or it may have been more, sir’. (US Inquiry, p.293). Second Officer Charles Lightoller, in response to question 14160, states: ‘I should roughly estimate somewhere about eight’ (but he is referring to the starboard side only). Quartermaster Arthur Bright claims (US Inquiry, p.832): ‘Six were fired in all, I think’ (but he refers only to those fired by himself and Quartermaster Rowe). Fourth Officer Joseph Groves Boxhall (question 15395) states: ‘How many rockets did you send up, about? — I could not say, between half a dozen and a dozen, I should say, as near as I could tell’. And Steward Alfred Crawford states (question 17973): ‘I should say I saw about a dozen go up – probably more’.
The only agreement above is between Crawford and Pitman, who both believe it could have been the case that more than a dozen rockets were fired. If we imagine this means a minimum of thirteen, then it is at least five more than Lord Mersey would have us believe. The average number from the crew accounts given above is ten rockets. And even this does not allow for ‘more’ rockets over a dozen, nor add any rockets to the totals of those who speak about only one side. From the evidence, it looks more like a dozen rockets fired. Lord Mersey is hardly entitled to state as a found fact that ‘the number sent up by the Titanic was about eight’. And despite Mersey’s pronouncements, Joseph Boxhall did not say that he fired eight rockets. He says instead that he personally could have fired up to twelve. And it is crucial to state clearly that Boxhall was not the only one firing! The indications we have are that there were two firing positions on either side of the bridge. This is an important concept, bearing in mind the evidence from Apprentice Officer James Gibson aboard the Californian that he saw only three rockets in the hour from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Californian time.
Yet the evidence from the Titanic is of Boxhall firing alone for a time, followed by forty minutes of extra firings from the time when Quartermaster George Rowe was called up from the stern to assist, lasting until 1.45 a.m. Surely the Titanic could not have fired only three rockets in that latter period?
When we compare the experiences of the Titanic and Californian, we do not see Mersey’s ‘coincidence’ of only eight rockets fired and seen. Instead we see the possibility that the Californian did not see all of Titanic’s rockets but instead saw only some. This in turn suggests that the Californian’s own nearby ship – stubbornly unresponsive some 5 miles away – was not the one firing rockets, but that the rockets were being fired by a distant and unseen vessel over the horizon, as Second Officer Herbert Stone suspected at the time may have been the case.
In the original statement for his captain, Stone had this to say: ‘I observed no flash on the deck or any indication that it [a rocket] had come from that steamer, in fact, it appeared to come from a good distance beyond her’.
It is now worth looking at the Titanic evidence in a little more detail. Here is Third Officer Pitman (US Inquiry, p.29
3):
…I should say about a dozen rockets were fired.
Senator Smith: What did you see? What did they do?
Pitman: They were fired from the rail. They make a report while leaving the rail, and also an explosion in the air, and they throw stars, of course, in the air.
Senator Smith: And you saw about a dozen or so of them?
Pitman: It may have been a dozen or it may have been more, sir.
And George Symons gives the following evidence:
11468. Before you left the boat deck had you noticed any rockets being fired from the bridge? — Yes, the rockets were going up simultaneously, every minute, minute intervals, and that steamer’s light was in sight about a point and a half on the port bow, roughly between five and ten miles away when they fired the rockets, and they were also working the starboard and port Morse lights.
Symons’ use of the word ‘simultaneously’ strongly implies two firing positions. Rockets were going up simultaneously, he says. It appears that that there were two firing sockets either side of the bridge, as indicated by Pitman (and elsewhere by Boxhall). Indeed, the Titanic was designed so that rockets could be fired from a rail socket on both the starboard and port sides (if they were sent up ‘simultaneously’, it broke the distress regulations of ‘one at a time’).
In a moment we shall see that Quartermasters Rowe and Bright were indeed firing separately to actions carried out by their senior officer, Boxhall. The evidence is that rockets were fired on the port side (where the mystery ship was seen) and also on the starboard side, where Titanic witnesses saw the flash of rockets going off and where Officer Lowe was ‘nearly deafened’ by the detonations taking place beside him at boat No.1. Symons says above that they were ‘also’ working the starboard and port lights, which suggests that other work was being done on the starboard and port sides, perhaps involving the firing of those simultaneous rockets. Meanwhile his description of rockets going up – sometimes together, or ‘every minute, at minute intervals’ (11468) – is totally at odds with Boxhall’s telling the British Inquiry that he himself was firing rockets at intervals of ‘probably five minutes’ (15399). If Symons is right and Boxhall is equally right, then only having two firing parties can explain the contradiction. And two firing parties are also suggested in a remark by John Hardy: ‘He [Captain Smith] was superintending the rockets, calling out to the Quartermaster about the rockets’ (US Inquiry, p.601). The quartermaster is either QM Rowe or QM Bright. Captain Smith was giving orders to a quartermaster because no officer was present in charge of rockets at that location – it will be argued that this was on the port side, since officer Boxhall was operating to starboard.
Second Officer Lightoller, meanwhile, says that eight rockets were fired from the starboard side:
14160: Did you notice at all how many were sent up, or at what intervals? — I should roughly estimate somewhere about eight [rockets] at intervals of a few minutes, five or six minutes, or something like that. [This agrees with Boxhall’s intervals]
14161. One at a time? — Yes, all fired from the starboard side, as far as I know.
Below is further evidence of two separate firing stations, operating independently on both the port side and the starboard side. Here is Rowe (US Inquiry, p.525):
Senator Burton: When did you first see her [the mystery ship]?
Rowe: When I was on the bridge firing the rockets. I saw it myself, and I worked the Morse lamp at the port side of the ship to draw her attention.
This evidence of Rowe suggests he was on the port side of the bridge, firing the rockets. Obviously he could not fire rockets in the middle of the bridge area, because it was covered. If he was firing on the starboard side, where there was both a firing socket and a Morse lamp (located on top of the wing cab), why go all the way to port to work the lamp there? Either lamp could be seen by the mystery ship, since they were deliberately located high on the Titanic superstructure. Rowe’s evidence also agrees with Hardy’s remark about the captain speaking to a quartermaster about the rockets.
Rowe said in his American evidence that he was firing rockets until 1.25 a.m. But it is interesting that he remarked in the course of his British testimony (questions 17694–5) that he was not present on the starboard side when the emergency boat was lowered at 1.10 a.m. Since he was still firing rockets at 1.10 a.m., it surely follows that he was on the port side. Rowe said in his US evidence (p.519):
…I assisted the Officer to fire them, and was firing the distress signals until about five and twenty minutes after 1. At that time they were getting out the starboard collapsible boats. The Chief Officer, Wilde, wanted a sailor. I asked Captain Smith if I should fire any more, and he said, ‘No, get into that boat [collapsible ‘C’].’
This may support Hardy in relation to the captain supervising Quartermaster Rowe’s rocket firings on the port side. If he heard a request from the chief officer to the captain on the ‘middle’ bridge and took his opportunity, who can blame him?
The following extract from Boxhall would seem to confirm that Rowe (named only as a quartermaster) was firing rockets and then Morsing on the port side (US Inquiry, p.934):
Senator Burton: And you kept firing up those rockets?
Boxhall: Then leaving off and firing rockets. There were a lot of stewards and men standing around the bridge and around the boat deck. Of course, there were quite a lot of them quite interested in this ship, looking from the bridge, and some said she had shown a light in reply, but I never saw it. I even got the Quartermaster who was working around with me – I do not know who he was – to fire off the distress signal, and I got him to also signal with the Morse lamp, that is just a series of dots with short intervals of light, whilst I watched with a pair of glasses to see whether this man did answer, as some people said he had replied.
And that steamer was off the port bow. It would be a natural human inclination to fire rockets on the side of the ship closest to the mystery vessel, even though rockets fired from any point on the Titanic would be seen just as well.
We know Lightoller says (question 14160) that his ‘rough estimate’ is that eight rockets were fired, ‘all on the starboard side as far as I know’. This is what Fourth Officer Boxhall adds:
15434. I know the starboard emergency boat had gone some time, and that they were working on the collapsible boats when I went, because I fired the distress signals from the socket in the rail just close to the bows of the emergency boat on the starboard side.
We have just seen Quartermaster Rowe deny that he was present on the starboard side at the lowering of the ‘emergency’ boat (boat No.1), even though he was firing rockets at the time. Now we see that Boxhall was firing rockets close to boat No.1 on the starboard side. This is very strongly indicative of two firing positions. Boxhall goes on (question 15434):
Every time I fired a signal I had to clear everybody away from the vicinity of this (starboard) socket, and then I remember the last one or two distress signals I sent off the boat had gone, and they were then working on the collapsible boat which was on the deck.
Boxhall suggests he is alone here at starboard all night, since he does the clearing away as well as the firing. The absence on the starboard side of Rowe and Bright (who were called up by Boxhall to help fire rockets) becomes an argument that they were instead busy on the port side. Yet another proof of this contention arises if we reduce the contrary argument to absurdity. It does not take three men to fire rockets from one socket position; Boxhall had been successfully firing rockets alone before the other two arrived (these rockets were sent off with a lanyard; but any rockets are simple for one man to fire – see photo section). Conversely, if the other two were there with Boxhall, why then did he have to shoo everyone away on his own when he wanted to fire? The indications in Boxhall’s evidence are that he personally fired six to twelve rockets:
15395. How many rockets did you send up about? — I could not say, between half a dozen and a dozen, I should say, as near as I could tel
l.
Now we shall see that Boxhall was already busy with firing rockets on his own when he unexpectedly got the opportunity to call up assistance. His evidence specifically states that he had already sent up rockets in the early part of the night when he got the sudden chance to order that even more rockets be brought up from the stern of the ship:
15593. I knew one of the boats had gone away, because I happened to be putting the firing lanyard inside the wheel house after sending off a rocket, and the telephone bell rang. Somebody telephoned to say that one of the starboard boats had left the ship, and I was rather surprised.
Quartermaster George Rowe told the US Inquiry that it was he who had rung the bridge. He was ringing, remember, after Boxhall has already begun firing off rockets (US Inquiry, p.519):
I telephoned to the fore bridge to know if they knew there was a boat lowered. They replied, asking me if I was the Third Officer. I replied, ‘No; I am the Quartermaster.’ They told me to bring over detonators, which are used in firing distress signals.
So Boxhall already had at least one box of rockets at his disposal and already in use, and he wanted more. Rockets were kept in two places on the Titanic, being stowed both on the bridge and in a locker all the way aft, as Rowe testified in America (US Inquiry, p.522):
Senator Burton: Were there any detonators or other signals kept aft?
Rowe: The detonators, such as the distress signal rockets, green lights, and blue lights.
Sen. Burton: Were there any kept forward?
Rowe: Yes; on the fore bridge.
Two places. And now there are at least three boxes of rockets brought to the bridge, because this is what Quartermaster Arthur Bright has to say (US Inquiry, p.832):
