Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  Between 2.45 and 4 o’clock, the time I stopped my engines, we were passing icebergs on every side and making them ahead and having to alter our course several times to clear the bergs.

  At 4 o’clock I stopped.

  At 4.10 I got the first boat alongside.

  Passenger C.E.H. Stengel suggested in his evidence that the green flares had indeed been seen at a distance of some miles (US Inquiry, p.973):

  After the green lights began to burn I suggested it was better to turn around [our lifeboat] and go toward the green lights, because I presumed there was an officer of the ship in that boat, and he evidently knew his business.

  Senator Smith: That was evidently from another lifeboat?

  Stengel: Yes, sir; it was from another lifeboat… We did not reach its side. It was toward morning that we turned, and by that time another man and myself thought we saw rockets – one rocket; that is, a rocket explode – and I said, ‘I think I saw a rocket’, and another one said, ‘I think I saw a rocket’, and one of the stokers, I think it was, said, ‘I see two lights. I believe that is a vessel’. Then, after that, when another green light was burned, there was a flash light from a boat, and I said, ‘Now, I am pretty positive that is a boat, because that is an answer to the green signal’…

  The Carpathia had been firing rockets to reassure the Titanic survivors that help was on the way. In her affidavit to the US Inquiry, passenger Mrs Mahala Douglas claimed the green flares could be seen from the Carpathia from ‘ten miles away’ (US Inquiry, p.1101):

  Mr Boxhall had charge of the signal lights on the Titanic, had put in the emergency boat a tin of green lights, like rockets. These he commenced to send off at intervals, and very quickly we saw the lights of the Carpathia, the Captain of which stated he saw our green lights 10 miles away, and, of course, steered directly to us, so we were the first boat to arrive at the Carpathia.

  Meanwhile, it should incidentally be noted that it was also claimed that the ship Mount Temple could see ‘green lights’ appearing to be flares or signals from Titanic survivors when she was arriving that night. W.H. Baker, replacement fourth officer in the Mount Temple on its next journey, wrote to Captain Lord in August, describing how the ship’s officers told him ‘they not only saw her deck lights but several green lights between them and what they thought was the Titanic’. But her captain, James Moore, had previously testified: ‘I simply saw the green light of a sailing vessel… shortly after 3 o’clock’:

  9250. You saw a green light? — Yes, of a sailing vessel.

  9251. Did you see the ship herself? — Not at all; it was dark.

  The evidence indicates that the green flares displayed by Officer Boxhall could be seen for some miles. But the Californian saw no green flares or green lights whatsoever.

  ROCKETS UNHEARD

  Here are the International Signals of Distress in force in 1912, prescribed for emergencies at night:

  1. A gun or other explosive signal fired at intervals of about a minute.

  2. Flames from the vessel as from a burning tar barrel.

  3. Rockets or shells, throwing stars, of any colour or description, fired one at a time at short intervals.

  4. A continuous sounding with any fog signalling apparatus.

  We have already seen the significance of No.3. Clearly, besides visibility, audibility was of prime importance (signals No.1 & No.4). Here, again, is what the Titanic carried: ‘Distress signals. These were supplied of number and pattern approved by the Board of Trade – i.e., 36 socket signals in lieu of guns, 12 ordinary rockets…’ (British Report, p.19). The socket signals, or detonators, were in the two boxes carried to the bridge by Rowe and Bright. Boxhall was asked: ‘What sort of rockets were they?’ and replied ‘the socket distress signal’ (15396). The socket signals were ‘in lieu of guns’. They were intended to make an ear-splitting bang to help attract attention. Second Officer Lightoller described what socket signals were like:

  14155. How are they discharged; are they discharged from a socket? — In the first place, the charge is no more and no less than what you would use in a 12-pounder [cannon] or something like that.

  In the rail is a gunmetal socket. In the base of this [rocket] cartridge, you may call it, is a black powder charge. 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.

  Lightoller in his 1935 book (Titanic and Other Ships) said the rockets burst a couple of hundred feet in the air with a ‘loud report’ (p.161). Fifth Officer Lowe tells what the sound was like of Lightoller’s 12lb charge exploding (US Inquiry, p.401):

  Lowe: [Ismay] was there, and I distinctly remember seeing him alongside of me… when the first detonator went off… the flash of the detonator lit up the whole deck…

  Senator Smith: Did you hear any such thing?

  Lowe: Yes; they [the rockets] were incessantly going off; they were nearly deafening me.

  Lady Duff Gordon was just getting into boat No.1 at Officer Lowe’s location. In her 1932 book Discretions and Indiscretions, she wrote: ‘Just beside us was a man setting off rockets and the ear-splitting noise added to the horror…’ (p.171). Third Officer Herbert Pitman also described the noise (US Inquiry, p.294):

  Senator Smith: Did the firing of the rockets make any noise, like the report of a pistol?

  Pitman: Like the report of a gun. [He means like artillery, rather than a handgun]

  And indeed they were designed to be ‘in lieu of guns’ to agree with Section 1 of the International Signals of Distress (‘a gun or other explosive signal fired at intervals’). It is noteworthy that counsel at the British Inquiry used a precise phrase from Section 1 – ‘explosive signal’ – when asking Gibson about the rockets seen by the Californian:

  7757. I should like to ask one question. Did you hear any explosive signal? — No.

  7758. Were those rockets, which you saw go up, explosives? Did you hear any explosion? — I did not hear any report at all.

  Captain Lord stated:

  6957. At the distance we were away from that steamer, if it had been a distress signal we would have heard the report [explosion].

  6958. I do not understand. From what you had been telling us just now, you did not know that this rocket which you saw was not a distress signal? — Well, I am under the impression it was not.

  6959. Why? — Because we did not hear the report, we were close enough to hear the report of any distress signal.

  6960. How many miles off were you? — About four or five – four to five miles.

  Captain Lord did not see any rockets himself. But it must be that he questioned his crew about audibility. The only time in his career that Captain Lord had fired a distress rocket – and then only as a greeting – he described it as ‘loud enough to be heard ten miles away’. Second Officer Stone meanwhile did not touch on the subject of audibility in his evidence. It is perhaps safe to presume he also heard nothing, which is implicit in Lord’s account. So, should high-charge socket signals be heard at a distance of 5 miles as Lord believes? Titanic’s Third Officer, Herbert Pitman, might be able to throw some light on the subject. Which is likely to be louder – the Titanic blowing off steam, or the Titanic firing socket signals in lieu of guns (US Inquiry, p.315)?

  Senator Fletcher: If there had been a vessel that night within five miles of the Titanic, could not her [Titanic’s] whistle have been heard that distance?

  Pitman: No; but you could have heard her blowing off steam at a far greater distance than you could hear the steam whistle. She [Titanic] was blowing off steam for three-quarters of an hour, I think, and you could hear that much farther than you could hear any steam whistle.

  Sen. Fletcher: Then it would stand to reason that if there was a ship or vessel of any kind within a distance of five miles it ought to have heard the blowing off of the steam?

  Pitman: She could have heard t
hat 10 miles that night.

  That’s 10 miles. Steam. And Titanic Fourth Officer Boxhall told the US Inquiry that he could even hear that his lifeboat was in the presence of icebergs during the blackness of the night (US Inquiry, p.256):

  Of course, sound travels quite a long way on the water, and being so close to the water and it being such a calm night, you would hear the water lapping on those bergs for quite a long, long way.

  Lapping. Yet there is no estimate of how many miles sockets signals ought to have been audible except Lord’s belief that they would have heard it at 4 to 5 miles. And of course the inherent need is for such rockets to be highly audible. The Carpathia fired rockets and displayed pyrotechnic ‘company signals’ that night as she headed for the SOS site specified by the Titanic. Boxhall says in his US evidence (p.911): ‘I saw rockets on the Carpathia’. Senator Fletcher asks: ‘What sort of a rocket was that?’, to which Boxhall replies: ‘An ordinary rocket. I think it was, so far as I could see; a distress rocket in answer to ours’. Whatever type they were, whether socket signals in lieu of guns or ‘ordinary rockets’, these projectiles were audible from miles away.

  Lawrence Beesley (a second class passenger) wrote a book called The Loss of the SS Titanic (1912), and he states (p.131):

  About 3.30 a.m., as nearly as I can judge, someone in the bow called our attention to a faint faraway gleam in the southeast. We all turned quickly to look and there it was certainly: streaming up from behind the horizon like a distant flash of a warship’s searchlight; then a faint boom like guns afar off, and the light died away again. The stoker who had lain all night under the tiller sat up suddenly as if from a dream… I can see him now, staring out across the sea to where the sound had come from, and hear him shout ‘That was a cannon!’ But it was not. It was the Carpathia’s rocket, though we did not know it until later… She stopped at 4 a.m… We rowed up to her about 4.30.

  Beesley in lifeboat No.13 could see a ‘gleam’, probably 8 to 10 miles off, yet he could also hear a ‘faint boom’.

  The Carpathia claimed to have been running at 17½ knots; Rostron claimed that they would usually travel at ‘about 14’ but that ‘We worked up to about 17-and-a-half that night’ (25390). The distance to the SOS position was 58 miles when she turned around, but the Carpathia met the lifeboats in three and a half hours. The real distance was much shorter, because the SOS position was wrong, and it appears the Carpathia actually averaged 14–15 knots. After half an hour’s travel therefore – from the faint boom at 3.30 to the stop at 4 a.m. – Carpathia would have travelled in any case a minimum of 7 miles. The ‘boom’ of the rocket was heard over that distance and more, because it still took Beesley half an hour to reach the side of the rescuer. Lifeboat No.13’s occupants therefore could hear a rocket boom that night from at least 7 miles away. Californian observers, looking at a vessel at an average of 5 miles away (Lord said four to five, Groves said five, Stone said five, Gibson four to seven), heard nothing.

  Then there is the non-audibility of other explosions that came from the Titanic as she was in her last throes – thought to be boiler explosions, refrigeration blasts, trapped-air implosions, or simply the process of her breaking in two. Most witnesses say they heard up to four explosions or booms.

  TITANIC EXPLOSIONS

  There are numerous accounts of explosions and other sounds travelling through the night. Third Officer Herbert Pitman states:

  15240. Did you hear anything in the nature of explosions before she went down? — Yes, I heard four reports.

  15241. What do you estimate they were? — Boilers leaving the bedplates and crashing through bulkheads.

  Fifth Officer Harold Lowe claims (US Inquiry, p.411): ‘I heard explosions, yes; I should say about four’. QM George Rowe differs slightly in his description (US Inquiry, p.525): ‘Not an explosion; a sort of a rumbling… more like distant thunder’. QM Alfred Olliver says (US Inquiry, p.531): ‘I heard several little explosions’. QM Arthur Bright suggests a slightly differing sound (US Inquiry, p.841): ‘I would not call it an explosion. It was like a rattling of chain’. Lookout Archie Jewell states: ‘We heard some explosions’ (175), and goes on to say: ‘I heard two or three’ (181). AB Joseph Scarrott: ‘Then followed four explosions’ (426). Fireman George Beauchamp claims:

  758. I could hear a roaring just like thunder.

  758A. …explosions? — Yes.

  AB William Lucas states: ‘[I was at a distance of] about 100 yards before the first explosion went. It was a very loud report’ (1549). Lookout Reginald Lee describes ‘Underwater explosions, like a gun-cotton explosion under water at a distance off. I suppose it was the boilers’ (2563). AB John Poingdexter was asked ‘Did you hear any explosions?’, and replied: ‘A slight one’ (3096). Steward Edward Brown describes: ‘What I took to be an explosion, Sir – a great noise, a great report’ (10551). AB George Symons heard ‘two sharp explosions in the ship’ (11510). AB Albert Horswill cannot describe what he heard in any detail: ‘I only know that I heard explosions’ (12447). Steward Alfred Crawford is asked ‘What character of explosion?’ he heard, and he says it was ‘sort of sharp, like as if there were things being blown up’ (US Inquiry, p.116). Major Arthur Peuchen suggests: ‘It seemed to be one, two, or three rumbling sounds’ (US Inquiry, p.338). AB Frank Osman is quite precise: ‘She exploded, broke in halves… red-hot boilers caused the explosions’ (US Inquiry, p.541). AB George Moore claims he ‘can remember two explosions’ (US Inquiry, p.563). Chief Second Class Steward John Hardy agrees: ‘There were two reports or explosions’ (US Inquiry, p.595). Steward William Ward similarly recalls hearing ‘a couple of reports, more like a volley of musketry than anything else. You would not exactly call them a heavy explosion’ (US Inquiry, p.599).

  Steward George Crowe (US p.620/1):

  …There were several explosions.

  [Next question] …loud, like a cannon? — Not so loud as that, sir. A kind of muffled explosion. It seemed to be an explosion at a very great distance, although we were not very far away… about a mile.

  Steward Charles Andrews similarly emphasises that the sounds were not especially loud: ‘I heard just a small sound, sir; it was not very loud’ (US Inquiry, p.626). AB Fred Clench states: ‘I heard two explosions, sir’ (US Inquiry, p.637). AB Ernest Archer is in agreement: ‘I heard a couple of explosions. I heard two’ (US Inquiry, p.646). AB Walter Brice states that he ‘heard two rumbling noises’ (US, p.653). Passenger Hugh Woolner recalls ‘a sort of rumbling roar, it sounded to me, as she slid under’ (US Inquiry, p.889).

  Passenger C.E. Henry Stengel heard ‘four sharp explosions… quite hard explosions’ (US Inquiry, p.980). Passenger Mrs J. Stuart White states: ‘I heard four distinct explosions, which we supposed were the boilers’. When asked how loud the explosions were, she replied: ‘They were tremendous’ (US Inquiry, p.1008).

  Passenger Olaus Abelseth heard ‘A kind of an explosion. We could hear the popping and cracking’ (US Inquiry, p.1038). Barber Gus Weikman ‘heard a second explosion. There was a great number of people killed by the explosion’ (US Inquiry, p.1099). Fireman Fred Barrett heard ‘a knocking noise, but no explosion’ (US Inquiry, p.1141). Passenger Catherine Crosby states: ‘I heard repeated explosions. The cries of the people and the explosions were terrible’ (US Inquiry, p.1145). Mrs Imanita Shelley claims: ‘On reaching a distance of about 100 yards from the Titanic a loud explosion or noise was heard, followed closely by another’ (US p.1148).

  A number of witnesses, including two surviving officers, specifically stated four explosions. It does not seem as if they made as loud a noise as the socket distress detonations. But whatever their strength of sound, these too went unheard by the Californian. And what of the cries of the drowning, hundreds of voices in unison, carrying over the freezing water on a calm and starry night?

  Steward Alfred Crawford claims that he was ‘a mile and a half’ from the Titanic when he heard cries (18058). Crawford says his boat was the furthest away from the ship, row
ing in the direction of the light. Could the cries have carried 5 miles to the Titanic’s mystery vessel? The answer is almost certainly ‘no’. But she should have heard the socket distress booms! The rockets that went unheard are of a piece with the ‘low-lying’ flashes seen from the Californian – they indicate many miles of distance between her and the rocket-firer.

  A THIRD NOTIFICATION

  After Gibson’s sleep-disturbing conversation with the captain at 2.05 a.m. when he told the master the nearby steamer had ‘disappeared’ to the south-west, Gibson returned to the bridge. He was not asked, and did not say, whether he saw anything further of the ‘disappeared’ ship. Stone, however, the officer again joined by the apprentice, continued to see the departing steamer for twenty minutes more, as we have seen. Here is Stone:

  7957. What did you see of her, which disappeared? — A gradual disappearing of all her lights, which would be perfectly natural with a ship steaming away from us.

  7958. …The masthead light would be shut in except for a slight flickering, the glare of it, and the red side light would be shut in altogether. The lights I would see would be the lights at the end of the alleyway or engine-room skylight, and the stern light. [Suggesting a small vessel]

  7959. Did the stern light that you speak of as disappearing, suddenly become black [suggesting a sinking] or gradually fade away as if it was going away? — It gradually faded as if the steamer was steaming away from us.

  7960. Did it have the appearance of being a light on a ship which had suddenly foundered?