by Senan Molony
Overall then, she travelled over a minimum distance of 29 miles (3 plus 13 plus 13) to a maximum of 30 miles (3 plus 13½ plus 13½), depending on whether you prefer Lord’s estimate of speed or that of his Chief Engineer (question 7261). The Chief Engineer (William Mahon) was not called to give evidence at either the British or US Inquiries, although we can assume he said nothing controversial since all Californian crew gave depositions on their return to Liverpool, with the British Inquiry summoning just a few.
COURSE AND LATITUDE
It is possible to use these new considerations of course, time and speed to arrive at a calculation as to the mileage separating the Californian from the Titanic at 11.40 p.m. (Titanic time) when the latter collided. As we have seen, the Californian steamed 3 miles south-west through the ice from 6 to 6.30 a.m. at a rough 45 degree angle. The Californian has therefore come down 1½ miles in latitude (the north–south axis), because half the time she was going west and half the time south.
From 6.30 to 7.30 a.m., she was steering directly south at top speed, and made a minimum distance of 13 miles south. This is a total of 14½ miles in latitudinal descent since 6 a.m. And we know that the 7.30 SOS point represents the baseline along which the Titanic was travelling, because she had been on a straight-line westerly course – until she struck her iceberg a considerable distance further east along that baseline.
To our running total we must add drift by the Californian from the time she stopped (10.21 p.m.) until she started moving (6 a.m.). This is seven hours and thirty-nine minutes. But we must also subtract from this the two hours twenty minutes when Titanic was similarly drifting south, after coming to a halt, before she sank. This leaves five hours nineteen minutes of southerly drift by Californian. The current, as has been seen, is of the order of half a knot, giving 2½ miles in southerly drift over the five hours, and another sixth of a mile for the nineteen minutes. It may be prudent to adopt a deliberately conservative estimate of the Californian’s drift southward before she started her engines and say that it amounted to no more than 2 miles in latitude.
It has already been determined that the Californian descended 14½ miles on the north–south axis until she reached the SOS position, which was on the Titanic’s baseline track. Adding the 2 miles of drift now gives a total of 16½ miles of latitude, representing the vertical upright on an ‘L’ shape, where the baseline on the ‘L’ indicates the distance east to be travelled to arrive at the Titanic’s actual collision location. We have seen that the Titanic was at least 8 miles further east than the Californian at the time of the crash. Closing this triangle therefore, will give us another check on the mileage separation between the two ships, Californian and Titanic, when the iceberg was struck. At a ‘height’ of 16½ miles and a ‘length’ of 8 miles, the ‘width’ works out in quick measurement at 18½ nautical miles.
Nothing is ever exact when dealing with estimations, but every time the calculation is re-checked using different parameters in testimony, the result is broadly the same. The Californian could not, therefore, have been the Titanic’s mystery ship at an average estimated distance of only 5 miles!
The bottom line in all of this is that the Californian’s course and speed, and known times at landmarks the following morning, are all entirely consistent with her reported stop position of the night before. This is further evidence that she was where she said she was.
14
POSITIONAL PROOFS
The Carpathia eventually came to the rescue of Titanic survivors, as the world knows. Less commonly grasped is the importance of the course line that she plotted to the SOS position sent out by the Titanic. Captain Rostron gave evidence in America that the Carpathia’s course was north 52 degrees west (modern 308 degrees). This line is as true today as it was then, and is simply drawn from the distress position to his ship’s location an estimated 58 miles away – a nice diagonal. Rostron declared:
25394. …At twenty 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.
Because we know his course, we can plot 20 miles to the south-east along the diagonal line from the SOS position. The important point to grasp is that the flare incident was directly on the Carpathia’s course. It is Rostron who says this:
25401. …At twenty minutes to three I saw a night signal, as I was saying, and it was just about half a point on the port bow, practically right ahead.
This establishes that the lifeboat was on the Carpathia’s course line (the flare being seen on the port bow); in other words, the lifeboat had gone to the south. The Titanic’s course, established by the wreck site and complying with the latitude of the SOS position, was along the line of 41° 46’ N. That is the northern co-ordinate. The lifeboat encounter by the Carpathia, 20 miles to the south and east, along the diagonal, thus appears to be several miles south of the line on which the Titanic struck her iceberg. The Carpathia could not have come across those lifeboats so quickly (or at all) if those lifeboats had gone to the north – where it is claimed the mystery ship lay (by those wanting her to be the Californian).
Since the Titanic lifeboats did not go to the north, it means they were in fact pursuing the mystery ship in another direction. Which means that vessel was not the Californian. The point is independently established by Captain Rostron.
There is yet another proof of this contention, which hardly needs to be made. If Rostron had in fact chased north-going lifeboats as far as the point of impact (latitude 41° 46’ N) then his vessel would have been seen by the Mount Temple, which reached the SOS position shortly after daylight. Mount Temple was thus on the line of 41° 46’ N, albeit much further to the west. Her captain had lookouts on high who could not have failed to see the Carpathia. We shall see what the evidence from Mount Temple is about the Carpathia location in a moment. But Mount Temple’s captain said his vessel did not see flares or ‘night signals’ from the lifeboats, nor any lights at all, which further indicates the lifeboats did not go north.
Meanwhile it is unfortunately necessary to prove some of the positions and timings cited in the last chapter because of lazy claims that the Californian arrived early at the Carpathia’s side and therefore must have been closer to the Titanic than Lord’s overnight stop position would indicate.
This ‘early-arrival’ claim is based on timings for the morning-after given by Californian’s third officer, Charles Victor Groves. The claim also uses the supporting crutch of an account by an officer of the Carpathia, James Bisset, that he could see the Californian lying stopped at 6 a.m. while the Carpathia was working at the rescue scene.
We shall deal with Bisset first, and leave Groves’ timings for later. Bisset’s account was published (and ghost-written at that) in 1959, nearly half a century after the disaster. It was also coloured by the conventional wisdom of the British and American Inquiries, which both condemned the Californian as being the ship nearby which could have helped the Titanic but did not. In fact, James Bisset likely saw the Mount Temple – as a glance at the locational argument in the previous chapter will demonstrate. Remember that Captain Moore of the Mount Temple said: ‘This pack of ice between us and the Carpathia, it was between 5 and 6 miles. She did not communicate with me at all. When we sighted her, she must have sighted us’ (US Inquiry, p.778).
This next extract from Moore establishes that Mount Temple was originally north- west of the Carpathia, and the Carpathia therefore south-east of the SOS position (US Inquiry, p.778):
Of course, it proved afterwards when, after coming southward and trying to find some place I could get through, on the way back again – I suppose about 6 o’clock in the morning – that I sighted the Carpathia on the other side [east] of this great ice pack, and there is where I understand he picked up the boats.
The point here is that the Mount Temple saw the Carpathia at 6 a.m. But the Mount Temple did not see the Californian until nearly 7.30 a.m., when the
y passed, according to Lord. So how could Bisset, aboard the Carpathia, many more miles and a whole icefield away, have seen the Californian ninety minutes earlier than the Mount Temple did? The available evidence of Captain Moore of the Mount Temple is sketchy on this point, but essentially agrees with Lord:
9244. And I think shortly before 8 a.m. you came in sight of the Carpathia and the Californian? — Yes.
This is Moore’s only timed reference to the Californian in the whole of his British evidence. Moore agrees that the Mount Temple saw the Californian within that timeframe of ‘shortly before 8 a.m’. It is obviously open to him to disagree if he had seen the Californian earlier – but he does not disagree (US Inquiry, p.778):
Moore: …I saw the Californian myself cruising around there, sir.
Senator Smith: She was there when you were there?
Moore: She was there [at the SOS position] shortly after me…
Moore continues (p.779):
The Californian was to the north, sir. She was to the north of the Carpathia and steaming to the westward, because, after… giving up my attempt to get through that pack [to the south], I came back again and steered back [north], thinking I might pick up some soft place to the north. As I was going to the north the Californian was passing from east to west.
Moore’s Mount Temple had left the Carpathia to the south-east, and had gone back north towards the SOS position. Moore knew from wireless reports – he does not say visuals – that the Californian was coming through the ice to the west and then steering down to meet him. He does not say he saw the Californian at this point, and the next extract will show he was merely supposing where she might have been. The two vessels had been in wireless contact, as to where they were and what they were doing, ever since Evans first heard from Mount Temple Wireless Operator John Durrant about the sinking. Moore recalls more about the situation (US Inquiry, p.779):
Senator Smith: And you were also cut off from the Carpathia by this ice pack?
Moore: Yes, sir; by this ice pack. He [Californian] was then north of the Carpathia, and he must have been, I suppose, about the same distance to the north of the Carpathia as I was to the westward of her.
The immediately preceding enquiry was: ‘On which side of the ice pack was the Californian?’, and Moore had replied: ‘the Californian was to the north, sir… north… and steaming to the westward’, meaning that the Californian was simply not on the same side of the ice pack as the Carpathia, as the subsequent reply might suggest. Moore may, at a stretch of the imagination, be suggesting he first saw the Californian when she was 6 miles to the north of his vessel (he estimated his distance from the Carpathia at his closest to be 5–6 miles and ‘at least five miles’). He does not however give a time for this encounter, if this is what he means. The timing of the first visual contact between Mount Temple and Californian is clearly implied in an entry in the wireless record of Moore’s vessel: ‘5.20 NY time [7.06 a.m. Mount Temple time, 7.10 a.m. Californian time]: Signal Californian. Wants my position. Send it. We are very close’ (US Inquiry, p.782). The time is 7.06 a.m. on the Mount Temple at the time of this message. Mount Temple notes that the Californian is ‘very close’ to her. Seen or unseen, the Californian has been steaming to meet them for over an hour. Moore explains (US Inquiry, p.782):
This is my ship and Californian, sir. When I get him to confirm my position, I ask him if he can give me his position. I understand he is cruising, because after we go up toward him he goes to the south and misses us, passes about a mile off, and then he gets to where we came from. Then we go over the ground, and we have not seen anything of the ship [Titanic], and we think we must cruise on farther.
The net result: Mount Temple sees the rescuing Carpathia at ‘about 6 in the morning’, but then does not see the approaching Californian until somewhere between 7.06 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. her time. Therefore Californian and Carpathia could not have been in sight of each other at or before 6 a.m. Bisset, who did not give evidence in 1912, is wrong in his forty-seven-year-old recollections (his account of the Titanic sinking is littered with other factual mistakes, but this is by the by). Bisset did not give evidence, yet he did accompany his captain, Arthur Rostron, to the US Inquiry – a relatively open forum at which unsolicited contributions were common during the evidence. He could obviously have intervened at any stage if he really believed he could see the Californian from the rescuing Carpathia at 6 a.m. He did not do so.
We have seen in a previous chapter how the Californian only noticed a yellow-funnel vessel and no other ship to the southward before getting underway at 6 a.m. The Carpathia had a red funnel. Bisset does not mention seeing any yellow-funnel ship.
We know Californian went south-west at 6 a.m. through the ice. We also know, from Moore of the Mount Temple: ‘after coming southward… about 6 o’clock… we spotted the Carpathia’. This is what Bisset of the Carpathia offered in his ghost-written 1959 memoirs, entitled Tramps and Ladies:
While we had been picking up the survivors, in the slowly increasing daylight after 4.30 a.m., we had sighted the smoke of a steamer on the fringe of the pack ice, ten miles away from us to the northwards. She was making no signals, and we paid little attention to her, for we were preoccupied with more urgent matters; but at 6 a.m. we had noticed that she was under way and slowly coming towards us.
When I took over the watch on the bridge of the Carpathia at 8 a.m., the stranger was little more than a mile from us, and flying her signals of identification. She was the Leyland Line cargo steamer Californian…
It must be that the steamer first seen is the Mount Temple. The Californian likely did not significantly ‘show smoke’ at 4.30 a.m. because the engines were not engaged until 5.15 a.m., and she was not underway before 6 a.m.! Yet Mount Temple was steaming at this very time. Mount Temple was also clearly ‘on the fringe of the pack ice’ – Californian entered that pack ice at 6 a.m. Mount Temple also ‘came towards us’ to the southward, whereas the Californian was moving from 6 a.m.–6.30 a.m. at an oblique angle away from the Carpathia.
There is a further difficulty with Bisset’s account – he appears to put his steamer to the east side of the icefield, coming south, whereas the Mount Temple was west of the ice and the Californian went through that ice to the west at 6 a.m. – not merely moving south along the east side. Bisset’s account admits he ‘paid little attention’ since he was understandably ‘preoccupied’. There is a clear hiatus between the time when he sees a far-distant steamer and when he next notices a ship, just 1 mile off, which is indeed the Californian, which made her way to the Carpathia’s side after finding no wreckage at the SOS position. But it cannot be that the Californian is the far-distant steamer seen between 4.30 a.m. and 6 a.m., because she did not behave in the way Bisset describes.
Indeed it is possible that Bisset, if he did see smoke to the north after 4.30 a.m., was seeing Stewart’s yellow-funnel steamer on the east side of the icefield (this being the vessel that lay to Californian’s southward; and which seemed to come out of nowhere, if Stone is to be believed). It may have been her smoke that Bisset sighted initially, before his next sighting at 6 a.m. The second mention comes an hour and a half later. Who is to say it is the same vessel? If it is not the yellow-funnel, then the smoke could very well be from a two-master, as we shall see in a moment. But to recap – Mount Temple could see Carpathia about 6 a.m. She could not see Californian. Mount Temple believed Carpathia could see her. It must be most likely that Bisset’s casually-noticed 6 a.m. steamer is simply the Mount Temple. She was at the SOS position at 4.30 a.m. Rostron, captain of the Carpathia, Bisset’s commanding officer, told the British Inquiry in 1912 when he first saw the Californian:
25551. It was daylight at about 4.20 a.m. At 5 o’clock it was light enough to see all round the horizon. We then saw two steamships to the northwards, perhaps seven or eight miles distant. Neither of them was the Californian. One of them was a four-masted steamer with one funnel, and the other a two-masted steamer with one funnel.
I never saw the Mount Temple to identify her.
The first time that I saw the Californian was at about eight o’clock on the morning of 15th April. She was then about five to six miles distant, bearing WSW true, and steaming towards the Carpathia.
This agrees precisely with Captain Lord, who was then heading towards the Carpathia, which bore north-east of him, just as he was south-west or west-south-west of her.
This ought to be game, set and match against those who want to imagine that the Carpathia could see the Californian at 6 a.m. She simply could not. Her captain’s evidence, above, could not be more clear-cut. It is deserving of careful attention.
Meanwhile there is the case of one Mabel Fenwick, a honeymooning bride on the Carpathia, who dashed onto that vessel’s deck in the early morning light before a single Titanic lifeboat had been rescued. She took a remarkable series of photographs, some of which show an empty horizon. Others pick out various lifeboats as they are met by the Carpathia. Further pictures of approaching boats – and distant icebergs – were taken by Frank Blackmarr, a doctor on the Carpathia. Still more passengers, like Lawrence Stoudenmire, hurried to take snaps of the hungry ocean. One Carpathia passenger taking pictures – encouraged by Captain Rostron himself – was Louis Ogden, who had been on deck from the earliest. The first picture of the Californian is one taken from close-up, when that ship arrives at 8.30 a.m. from the south-west, ‘below’ the recovery site.
Had the Californian been approaching from the north, as Bisset claimed, Mrs Fenwick, Dr Blackmarr, Mr Stoudenmire or Mr Ogden might have been expected to photograph her while she was still far off. They did not! Similarly, the Titanic lifeboats, instead of coming south, could have been expected to go to Bisset’s ship which should have been seen at 4.30 a.m. or 6 a.m., if it was supposedly in sight on the east side of the barrier.
