by Senan Molony
7587. Were they reported to the Captain? — I reported them to the Second Officer.
7588. Did he report them to the Captain? — No.
7589. Why not? — I do not know.
7590. If they were really there, why were not they reported to the Captain? — I do not know, Sir.
7591. Are you quite sure that these three rockets were ever seen by you at all? — Yes, Sir. I saw the first one, and I reported it to the Second Officer, and we looked out for more to see if we could see any more — and we saw two more.
7592. [The Solicitor General] You say you saw the first one? — Yes.
7593. Do you mean you saw it with your naked eye? — Yes.
[The Commissioner] Did any of the [life]boats of the Titanic fire Roman candles?
7594. [The Solicitor General] Yes, my Lord, Roman candles. [To the Witness] If it was twenty minutes to four it was not very far off the beginning of dawn, was it? — No, dawn was just breaking.
7595. Had it got any lighter? — Yes.
7596. Could you see when you saw this flash at all how far away you thought it was? — It was right on the horizon.
7597. What sort of a light was it? You called it a rocket? Was it a flash; did you see it go up into the sky? — Yes.
7598. What colour was it? — White.
All this is highly significant. We can see how the Commissioner, who will later create an equation between the number of rockets fired by the Titanic and those seen by the Californian, initially does not want Gibson to have seen any rockets after the Titanic is known to have sunk (see question 7591).
When Gibson persists, the Commissioner gradually realises he could turn the unwanted sightings to his advantage by suggesting the lights came from Titanic lifeboats. But only green flares were ever displayed from a lifeboat, and Gibson says these were white.
Gibson says the white flash was right on the horizon, and it must be presumed these were rockets fired by the Carpathia that the lifeboats could both see and, crucially, hear from at least 7 miles away.
Finally, notice how questioning proceeds with no suggestion that these new white rockets mean a ship in distress, as the court had been strenuously trying to show during the earlier timeframe:
7599. And you called Mr Stone’s attention to it, did you, and then there were two more seen? — Yes.
7600. I understand that is after Mr. Stone had spoken on the tube [at 2.40 a.m.] to the Captain? —Yes.
7601. Do you say he did not report these three further lights to the Captain at all? — No.
7602. When you saw these three further lights did you get your glasses on to the place? — Yes.
7603. Could you see any sign of a ship? — No.
7604. No sign of a masthead light? — No.
7605. No sign of a side-light? — No.
7606. Nothing except these flashes? — That is all.
7607. Is that right? —Yes.
7608. Then I think you went off your watch at four o’clock? —A quarter to [four].
We can see that three further rockets play no part in Commissioner Mersey’s pre-formed idea of what happened. He suggests to the witness twice that they were not really there. Finally he concludes for himself they were lights displayed by the Titanic’s lifeboats.
Only one of the Titanic lifeboats had flares, boat No.2, commanded by Officer Boxhall. He stated that no other lifeboat showed such lights. And the flares he displayed were green, not white. They were not rockets.
Mersey will simply discard this troubling evidence, even though the explanation is readily to hand. Captain Rostron of the Carpathia ordered his company’s rockets to be fired at 2.45 a.m. and at every quarter of an hour thereafter to reassure the Titanic that help was on the way. Stone and Gibson would see them much the same time as Lawrence Beesley – whose fellow occupants of boat No.13 also heard them – at 3.30 a.m. At what was judged by the British Inquiry to have been 3.15 a.m. Titanic time (had she remained on the surface of the ocean), the Mount Temple heard the Carpathia’s wireless operator send a transmission intended for the vanished Titanic: ‘If you are there we are firing rockets’ (9570).
What perhaps deserves some emphasis however is the qualitative difference in distance in Gibson’s perception of the early and later rockets. Gibson’s nearby ship had previously been very close (he repeatedly estimated 4 to 7 miles) until she steamed away. But these rockets are showing ‘right on the horizon’ (7596), which is rather in-keeping with Stone’s suggestion that the earlier rockets could have been coming from an unknown ship over the horizon from the one at which they were looking. If this was the case, then the Titanic’s mystery ship could not have been the Californian as the White Star liner and its visitor were closely in sight of each other, with side lights showing. Meanwhile the great distance of these later rockets may have been a factor in deciding not to inform the captain. Possibly, also, these new rockets were just too much for Stone and Gibson on a very unusual night. They may have thought their departed steamer was somewhere trying to illuminate her way through the ice. Yet it is noticeable that they were not pressed about these later rockets by counsel, nor repeatedly invited to say they believed they might have signified a post-Titanic vessel in distress. Quite the contrary! The British Inquiry, great seekers after truth, simply did not want to know about them.
Nonetheless, the Carpathia’s attested firing of rockets gives the lie to that other myth – that only Titanic fired rockets that night. And if Stone and Gibson finally shrugged their shoulders after all they had been through, it is noteworthy that no other vessels rushed to the rocket-firing Carpathia’s side, believing her to be in distress! This is what Stone had to say in evidence about these last-of-all lights on the horizon:
8007. After this conversation with the Captain through the tube, did you later see anything more? — Yes.
8008. What did you do? — At about 3.20, just, before half-past three, as near as I can approximate, Gibson reported to me he had seen a white light in the sky to the southward of us, just about on the port beam We were heading about west at that time. I crossed over to the port wing of the bridge and watched its direction with my binoculars. Shortly after, I saw a white light in the sky right dead on the beam.
8009. [The Commissioner] How far away? — At a very great distance I should judge.
8010. What do you mean by a very great distance? — Such a distance that if it had been much further I should have seen no light at all, merely a faint flash.
8011. [Mr Butler Aspinall] Was it the same character of light as the rockets, or something quite different? — It was so far away that it was impossible to judge.
8012. Did you think it could have come from the steamer you had been looking at before? — No.
8013. It was something different, you think? — Yes, because it was not on the same bearing, unless the steamer had turned round.
[The Commissioner] And were these lights rockets? — I think not.
8014. [Mr Butler Aspinall] Did anything further happen between that time and the end of your watch? — Nothing further.
The Carpathia stopped at 4 a.m. Her rockets from 3.20 a.m. to 3.40 a.m. were tiny points of light ‘at a very great distance’. A very great distance ‘southward of us’. Stone was not asked to quantify his ‘very great distance’ separating Californian and what we might take to be the Carpathia. However it is known that the Carpathia stopped south and east of the Titanic’s SOS position, the SOS position being 19½ to 20 miles as the crow flies from the Californian’s reported stop position. Captain Lord said (questions 6984–5): ‘I thought we might have seen [Titanic’s distress rockets] at 19 miles’. They certainly did see them, although admittedly very low-lying, as Stone said. But Stone barely saw those of Carpathia. If they had been any further away he would have missed them altogether, he suggested. This evidence should further indicate that the Titanic, when she hit her berg, was similarly ‘a very great distance’ from the Californian!
13
TH
E WRONG STEAMER
The Chief Officer, Mr Stewart, came on the bridge at 4am and I gave him a full report of what I had seen and my reports and replies from you [Captain Lord], and pointed out where I thought I had observed these faint lights at 3.20.
He picked up the binoculars and said after a few moments: ‘There she is then, she’s all right, she is a four-master’. I said: ‘Then that isn’t the steamer I saw first’, took up the glasses and just made out a four-master steamer with two masthead lights a little abaft our port beam, and bearing about S, we were heading about WNW. Mr Stewart then took over the watch and I went off the bridge.
This is from the original statement of Herbert Stone. Chief Officer George Stewart saw a four-masted steamer with his binoculars after dawn. But Stone insists it is not the steamer he had been watching all night, the one that had steamed away. The four masts mentioned by Stewart immediately disqualify her. Yet Boxhall, having separately studied the Titanic’s mystery ship – the key vessel in the whole conundrum – had this to say about her: ‘The only description of the ship that I could give is that she was, or I judged her to be, a four-masted steamer’ (15401). Here then is clear evidence from the prime witnesses from both the Titanic and the Californian that they were looking at two different strangers that night. Boxhall, on Titanic, was looking at a four-masted steamer. Stone, on Californian, was certain that he had not been looking at a four-mast steamer. He may not have been able to see the number of masts on the previous stranger during the hours of darkness, but Stone could see only one masthead light. This is inconsistent with a grand total of four masts, which would have required the display of two sets of masthead lights. The evidence of Lord, Stone and Gibson all goes to imply a two-masted original stranger, although no witness is specific on the point. The absence of four masts on the ship the Californian observers had been studying further weakens the ship-in-between theory, since Boxhall was looking at a four-masted steamer. It thus conversely strengthens the contention that there were two separate pairs of ships involved – Titanic plus mystery ship, and Californian plus the earlier nearby stranger. Stone further emphasises the masthead-light difference in his testimony:
8017. …Just after 4 o’clock… the Chief Officer… remarked to me, ‘There she is, there is that steamer, she is all right’. I looked at the steamer through the glasses, and I remarked to him ‘That is not the same steamer, she has two masthead lights’. I saw a steamer then just abaft the port beam showing two masthead lights, apparently heading much in the same direction as ourselves.
8018. Do you know what that steamer was? — No.
8019. That could not have been the steamer you have been telling us about I suppose? — I should say not.
8020. I want you to consider this. You gave a full report, full information to the Chief Officer, and then he looks over the side and he says ‘There is that steamer, she is all right’. According to the story you have told us, when you saw this other steamer’s stern light disappear you thought she was all right. What was there in your story to the Chief Officer which led him to make this observation ‘There is the steamer, she is all right’? — I do not know what led him to make that observation.
8021. Why should he have said it, in view of the evidence you have given us here today? Don’t you think you told the Chief Officer that you were fearful the steamer you had seen had gone down? — No I told him the steamer had steamed away from us in a south westerly direction.
We can see from the above extract that counsel for the Board of Trade (Butler Aspinall) was not at all anxious to dwell on the difference in masthead lights – instead he moved with indecent haste to suggest that Stone had secretly confided fears of the nearby ship having gone down. This is completely at odds with Stone and Gibson’s position all along.
Yet the earliest vouchsafed reality is that Stone’s four-master in the gathering daylight had two masthead lights, whereas his steamer of the darkness had only one.
8097. Had the steamer which you have referred to, whose lights you saw, one masthead light or two? — The first steamer I saw had one masthead light.
8098–9. If she had had a second masthead light could you have failed to see it? — I think not; I was bound to have seen it.
Yet Fourth Officer Boxhall on the Titanic saw two masthead lights on the mystery ship close by:
15388. What sort of light was it? — It was two masthead lights of a steamer.
15392. And then you saw this light, which you say looked like a masthead light? — Yes, it was two masthead lights of a steamer.
15393. …I found it was the two masthead lights of a vessel.
Boxhall and Stone had not been looking at the same vessel. It is important to state at this point that the four-masted vessel Californian now saw in the early dawn was not the Carpathia, which came to the rescue of the Titanic lifeboats. The Cunard liner Carpathia was a four-masted red-funnel vessel. She had fired rockets as she steamed towards the Titanic’s SOS position which were barely distinguished at ‘a very great distance’ by Stone and Gibson. The only detailed description of this other four-master seen by Californian to the southward at 4 a.m. (when Chief Officer George Stewart relieved Second Officer Stone) comes from Chief Officer Stewart himself:
8905. Is it in your mind at all that it was the Carpathia you saw? — No, I thought it was a yellow funnel boat when the sun was up.
Neither Stone nor Stewart (who had just come on duty) knew where this four-master had come from. Yet despite Stone’s insistence that it was not the vessel he had previously seen, Stewart personally considered that the steamer seen during the night could indeed have gone off to the south-west but, finding the ice impassable there, might have steamed back some distance, unnoticed by Stone. In other words, that it might have been the same vessel Stone and Gibson watched earlier. It appears that, wherever she came from, the yellow-funnel four-master was now, at 4 a.m., between the Californian to the north and the Carpathia to the south, and all three vessels were still to the east of the ice barrier. Meanwhile, the Mount Temple, a Canadian Pacific vessel, had arrived at the Titanic’s SOS position on the western side of the ice barrier. She was indeed a four-masted yellow-funnel steamer, but her captain testified that he arrived at the SOS position only at 4.30 a.m., having steamed diagonally north-east from far to the south and west of the barrier, closer to North America. By her evidence, the Mount Temple was certainly out of sight of the Californian at 4 a.m. and could not have been the yellow-funnel steamer seen by Stewart. Ships on the far side of the barrier could not be seen. This new one was to the south, on the eastern side.
There have been persistent, but unsustainable, attempts to suggest that the four-mast steamer was the red-funnel Carpathia – and that therefore she and the Californian were in sight of each other in the morning. This would mean that they were much closer than the ‘very great distance’ suggested by Stone. The first sly attempt came at the British Inquiry when Stewart was being examined:
[Mr Clement Edwards] May I suggest that your Lordship asks this witness this question: How many funnels the Carpathia has?
8902. [The Commissioner] Can you tell us how many funnels the Carpathia has? — One funnel, my Lord.
And when examined by Mr Cotter:
8903–4. How many masts has the Carpathia got? — Four masts.
8905. Is it in your mind at all that it was the Carpathia you saw? — No, I thought it was a yellow funnel boat when the sun was up.
Captain Lord in his US Inquiry evidence agreed with his chief officer (p.733):
Lord: …At daylight we saw a yellow-funnel steamer on the southwest of us, beyond where this man had left, about 8 miles away.
Senator Fletcher: Do you suppose that was the same one?
Lord: I should not like to say. I don’t think so, because this one had only one masthead light that we saw at half past eleven [the previous night].
So this four-master with a yellow funnel is only 8 miles away from the stopped Californian at 4.30 a.m. whe
n Lord comes on the bridge. It is further away than where the nearby stranger had been stopped, and is not the earlier ship. Neither is it the Carpathia (Carpathia’s captain testified that he did not see the Californian, rushing to assist, until 8 a.m.). There is a difference in the bearing of the yellow-funnel ship, Stewart seeing her to the southward, and Lord mentioning south-west. It may or may not be important. Stewart says the yellow-funnel vessel was to the southward, and repeats it several times: ‘Did you see anything?—Yes, I saw a steamer to the southward’ (8596). He later indicated the direction to Lord: ‘Yes, after he [Captain Lord] had spoken about proceeding on the voyage I asked him if he was going to the southward to see what that ship was’ (8623). And Stewart later went to rouse Evans, Californian’s wireless operator:
8758. …I told him to get out and see what the ship was to the southward…
8766. …I told him to call up and see what that ship was to the southward.
He also declared it in his statement to the Receiver of Wrecks on Californian’s subsequent arrival in Liverpool: ‘I looked to the southward…’ (8612). Stone, of course, says this ship was ‘about south’ and ‘just abaft the port beam’ when the Californian was heading west-north-west (halfway between west and north-west), which is the same thing. Lord further states the presence of this ship to the British Inquiry:
6962. Did you then (4.30am) go on the bridge? — [Lord] Yes.
6963. Do you remember just before 5 o’clock a conversation with your Chief Officer [Stewart]? — I do.
6964. About the steamer? — About this, which he said was a yellow-funnelled steamer.
One could speculate on the identity of this yellow-funnel vessel. But she was certainly not the vessel previously seen by the Californian. It is arguable, however, whether she might, merely might, have been the four-master seen by the Titanic. Four-mast yellow-funnel steamers are in short supply when it comes to attempting to identify this new vessel seen by the Californian. It is an area that needs further research.
