Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  Sen. Fletcher: But you could have gone to the Titanic?

  Lord: The engines were ready. I gave instructions to the chief engineer and told him I had decided to stay there all night. I did not think it safe to go ahead. I said, ‘We will keep handy in case some of those big fellows come crunching along and get into it’.

  So Lord’s self-described attitude was to be ready at all times to help anyone else who might get into difficulties. Very different from Gill’s affidavit about a ‘Captain who refuses or neglects to give aid to a vessel in distress’.

  Remarkably, Captain Lord was almost uniquely equipped to render just the type of assistance the Titanic’s people needed. He had taken part in one of the first seaborne military landings of the twentieth century. In 1904, Lord was a chief officer when 4,000 men were put ashore by ship’s boats from a flotilla that lay off the Essex coast in a major exercise, the first such joint operation between the British Army and the Royal Navy since the Crimean War. Lord had also picked up troops in small boats during the withdrawal. An interesting piece of trivia, perhaps.

  However, returning to 1912, by far the most extraordinary thing about Lord’s US testimony, in this writer’s experience, is that Gill’s allegations were simply never put to Captain Lord for his comments. Lord was never given an opportunity to comment on Gill’s statement in an official setting. An Inquiry may indeed be different to a criminal trial, but this Inquiry chairman would nonetheless produce a report that went beyond its remit of establishing facts, and instead made a finding tantamount to the guilt of the Californian and the vindication of Gill. Quite how Smith was able to level such an accusation on so little evidence, with no testing of Gill, may puzzle the dispassionate student of the US Inquiry. Yet there was to be one rabbit pulled from a hat at the conclusion of the Senate Subcommittee’s hearings which did much to establish the climate for a distinctly adverse verdict on Lord and the Californian. It came from one who should have known better.

  Captain John J. Knapp, US Navy hydrographer at the Hydrographic Office in Washington DC, was in charge of a surveying and charting body, one primarily concerned with gathering and disseminating information on hazards to navigation. He plotted the iceberg reports for the US Inquiry, showing the ice barrier and its estimated extent. And he illustrated where the Titanic had gone down – using the incorrect SOS position. But then Knapp went further. He ventured into an area of supposition that would never have been allowed in a criminal trial. For not only did he mark on his chart the reported overnight position of the Californian as given by her captain, officers and logbook, but he also marked her hypothetical position if she were to have been the vessel seen by the Titanic. His hypothetical position was doubly ridiculous and utterly invalid because the Titanic was not ever in the SOS location. And it was triple idiocy because Knapp placed his Californian to the north-east of the SOS position, whereas a cursory glance at the available facts would have prompted him to impose her to the north-north-west. Californian saw rockets to the south-south-east, not to the south-west, as Knapp would have it.

  Knapp, deskbound, with no credentials to offer an opinion on where any vessels were that night, was not only venturing a flawed opinion, but presenting it as if it were scientific fact. He might as well have drawn a ‘hypothetical position’ for the Flying Dutchman.

  It is noteworthy that he did not plot ‘notional’ positions for any of the other vessels in the locality that night, in which Senator Smith had previously shown interest and asked questions about – the Hellig Olav, the Frankfurt, and the Amerika, for instance. Knapp had simply taken it upon himself to directly equate the Titanic’s mystery ship with the Californian. The audacity of such a construct beggars belief, quite apart from its grotesque unfairness and cast-iron certain inadmissibility in any legal setting because of its glaringly prejudicial nature. This is what Knapp had to say (US Inquiry, p.1118–9):

  Knapp’s chart No.2, which is full of inaccuracies.

  A further reference to the chart will show, midway between the plotted positions of the Californian and Titanic, a plotted ‘hypothetical position of the Californian’. With the hypothesis that the Californian was in this plotted position, a dotted line is drawn on a bearing SSE given by the Master of the Californian as the bearing in which he sighted a large steamer. This dotted line is drawn to intersect the track of the Titanic.

  A line parallel thereto is drawn to also intersect the track of the Titanic at a point at which the Titanic appears to have been at 10.06 p.m., New York time, 14 April – at 11.56 p.m. of that date by the Californian’s time – at which time the large steamer is testified to have been seen by Ernest Gill of the Californian.

  It thus appears that the bearings of the steamer given by the Master of the Californian and the testimony of Ernest Gill of that ship will fix the Californian’s position near or about the hypothetical position shown on the chart, if the lights seen on that ship were those of the Titanic.

  The thrust of Knapp’s ‘evidence’ is to shamelessly force the Californian into an imaginary circle drawn between 7 and 16 miles from the Titanic. Seven miles, he believed, was the distance a ship’s light could be seen by someone in a lifeboat. But he also believed, it seems incredible to relate, that the Californian could have seen the Titanic’s side lights – side lights, mind you – at a distance of 16 miles. Far-fetched indeed.

  SIDE LIGHTS AT 16 MILES?

  Knapp says (US Inquiry, p.1118):

  …16 miles [is] approximately the farthest distance at which… the side lights of the Titanic [could] be seen by a person at the height of the side lights of the Californian, or at which the side lights of the Californian could have been seen by a person at the height of the side lights of the Titanic.

  This is complete claptrap, if we look at the stated evidence of Titanic’s prime surviving witness. Not even those on the Titanic’s bridge that night, high above the waterline, could see anything like such a distance. Fourth Officer Boxhall was recalled to the US Inquiry, having previously given evidence, and was questioned closely about a theory that the Californian was 14 miles away – a figure plucked from the air, and suspicious in itself (p.914):

  Senator Smith: We have been figuring the distance the Californian was away from the Titanic, and from the positions given we have concluded – that is, we have evidence to support the theory – [the Senators were now sitting in Washington DC, where Knapp was based; had he already conveyed his theory?] that the Californian was but 14 miles distant from the Titanic. Do you think that under those circumstances you could have seen the Californian?

  Boxhall: I do not know, sir. I should not think so. [Not the answer they wanted!]

  Sen. Smith: You should not?

  Boxhall: No. Five miles is the distance the British Board of Trade requires masthead lights to show – that is, the white steaming lights of the steamer – but we know that they can be seen farther on such a clear night as that. [Masthead lights, being the highest and brightest, could obviously be seen much further away than side lights]

  Boxhall had now given evidence twice. But at the conclusion of this public session, he was questioned yet again – the same evening – in separate evidence taken by Senator Burton. Here is how that brief third session concluded (US Inquiry, p.934):

  Boxhall: …I have already stated, in answer to a question, how far this ship was away from us, that I thought she was about 5 miles, and I arrived at it in this way. The masthead lights of a steamer are required by the board of trade regulations to show for 5 miles, and the [side lights] are required to show for 2 miles… I could see quite clearly.

  Sen. Burton: You are very sure you are not deceived about seeing these lights?

  Boxhall: Not at all.

  Sen. Burton: You saw not only the mast light but the side lights?

  Boxhall: I saw the side lights. Whatever ship she was, she had beautiful lights. I think we could see her lights more than the regulation distance, but I do not think we could see them 14 miles. [Adjourned]
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  Why did the US Inquiry, at its last gasp with Boxhall, suggest that he could be deceived, especially in relation to the distance of side lights specifically, as suggested by the final question so forcefully pressed? The suspicion must be that they already had Knapp’s briefing claiming that side lights could be seen for a giant distance, even though Knapp would not give evidence for some days yet. But on all the evidence (rather than theory), it appears clear that Knapp is utterly out of touch when he expects side lights to be visible at up to 16 miles.

  Meanwhile, where did this mysterious ‘14 mile’ figure come from? Who provided what Senator Smith called the ‘evidence’ of this? The truth emerges from geometry. Although the distance between his ‘hypothetical position’ of the Californian and the SOS position of the Titanic was never explicitly mentioned by Knapp, when his chart is scaled up with all its intersecting arcs and radii, the distance is precisely measurable. The hypothetical distance on his chart is exactly 14 miles. That this concoction was taken as scientific fact by Senator Smith long before he retired to write his report is confirmed by what he confidently told witness Jack Binns – the wireless hero of the 1909 Republic rescue, who appeared after Boxhall, but before Knapp (US Inquiry, p.1035):

  Senator Smith: Let me call your attention to the fact that the Californian was but 14 miles from the Titanic when it sank…

  Fact? Boxhall of the Titanic had repeatedly rained on this theory just three sitting days previously. Boxhall saw the side lights – he knew how close she was. Nonetheless Knapp located his hypothetical Californian towards the outer limit of his 7 to 16 mile ‘radius of visibility’, implicitly estimating her to be ‘fourteen’ miles from the Titanic, since he confidently opined (US Inquiry, p.1119):

  The Californian, if located in the hypothetical position shown on the chart, certainly could have reached the Titanic in a little over an hour.

  This nonsense (let us remember, it could have been any ship whimsically placed anywhere on Knapp’s chart) was loosely erected on the evidence of Gill, as seen above. Thus we have a ‘castle in the air’ and one paradoxically built on sand, for Gill’s evidence is assuredly unreliable in the extreme. Not only this, but Knapp, like everyone else in officialdom in 1912, succumbs to the conviction that the Titanic really was where she said she was. In fact she sank many miles further to the east of the SOS position. But as can be seen above, Knapp accepted her invalid SOS position and tracked the Californian to where she hypothetically may have been in order to agree with a sighting by Gill that may not have taken place! The result is that it might agree with Gill, but it conflicts with every other sighting.

  The hydrographer’s confident testimony may have seemed impressive to the senators, but his brazenly unsupported speculation is destroyed when one examines his sole ‘factual’ reference in his foregoing musings. Knapp asserts that the master of the Californian saw a ‘large steamer’. Nowhere does Lord say he saw a large steamer; in fact he testifies repeatedly to the exact opposite. She was instead ‘something like ourselves’ (6752).

  Knapp’s confabulations could fall on any one of a number of fronts. But they collapse from the moment of conception – which lay in desiring a particular outcome and then producing a theory to make it fit. And since the 1985 discovery of the Titanic’s wreck we know for sure that it does not fit.

  ONE MAN’S TIME OF IMPACT

  Meanwhile another fatal blow is dealt to Knapp’s chart by an inscription he has placed upon it, which proclaims: ‘Titanic struck ice at 10.07’. This is a reduction to New York time, based on the US Inquiry’s belief that Titanic time was one hour and thirty-three minutes ahead of New York. This stems from evidence given by Lightoller and Boxhall, and a Marconigram from the Carpathia. Here is the fourth officer (US Inquiry, p 918):

  Senator Smith: Mr Boxhall, you seem to be the one upon whom we must rely to give the difference between ship’s time and New York time; or, rather, to give ship’s time and give the New York time when this accident occurred?

  Boxhall: At 11.46 p.m., ship’s time, it was 10.13 Washington time, or New York time [Titanic – plus one hour thirty-three minutes]

  This shows why Knapp has quoted a New York time of 10.07. It is deemed to be the same as 11.40 p.m. Titanic time, when most witnesses said their ship collided with the berg. Titanic Second Officer Charles Lightoller claims: ‘I am only going by what I have heard. I do not know. About 20 minutes to 12, I believe’ (US Inquiry, p.432); Steward George Crowe says: ‘About 11.40 there was a kind of shaking of the ship and a little impact…’ (US Inquiry, p.614); passenger James McGough states: ‘I was awakened at 11.40 p.m., ship time’ (US Inquiry, p.1143); Wireless Operator Harold Bride says: ‘Twenty minutes to 12’ (US Inquiry, p.905). Senator Smith concludes: ‘At 11.40; everybody seems to be agreed on that’ (US Inquiry, p.905).

  We know from Captain Lord that Californian time was one hour fifty minutes ahead of New York time. This does not mean we know categorically how Californian time related to that on Titanic – we do not, although Boxhall and Lightoller spoke of their ship sinking at 5.47 GMT, which converts to one hour thirty-three minutes ahead of New York time. There is little corroboration and it is a fraught point.

  Yet the decision of the US Inquiry to accept this Titanic conversion means that Californian time is, by Lord, seventeen minutes ahead (and by his wireless operator, Evans, twenty-two minutes ahead) of Titanic time in every comparison. The British got out of this trap by deciding both ships had the same time, when we know at least that they did not. Knapp worked from Captain Lord’s noon calculation, meaning a seventeen minute time difference with Boxhall’s time (Californian’s wireless operator gave a NYT difference of one hour fifty-five minutes, but we have seen that this is longitudinally inappropriate).

  But for now be aware that Knapp has built his ideas solely on Ernest Gill. The hydrographer testified this about his hypothetical position for the Californian (US Inquiry, p.1118):

  A line… is drawn to… intersect the track of the Titanic at a point at which the Titanic appears to have been at 10.06 p.m., New York time, April 14 – at 11.56 p.m. of that date by the Californian’s time – at which time the large steamer is testified to have been seen by Ernest Gill…

  Knapp thus accepts that Californian time was one hour fifty ahead of New York. But in accepting Boxhall’s time-conversion for Titanic to New York, Knapp has built a time-bomb for his own argument… only he is too stupid to realise it, as we are about to see. Knapp – naturally – swallowed Gill’s evidence in its entirety. He accepts that the Titanic was the steamer conjured up by the donkeyman.

  Now let us recap Gill’s sworn affidavit with its precise times (p.152):

  At 11.56 I came on deck… I looked over the rail and saw the lights of a very large steamer… I watched her for fully a minute. It was now 12 o’clock and I went to my cabin [and told my mate] I saw a big vessel going along full speed.

  How interesting; Gill came on deck at a time that the US Navy hydrographer insists is 11.39 p.m. Titanic time, because Knapp himself has accepted a conversion that puts the Californian seventeen minutes ahead of the White Star’s brand new maiden voyager (one hour fifty less one hour thirty-three). Gill comes on deck at 11.56 Californian time (supposedly 10.06 New York), which is seventeen minutes ahead of Titanic, such that Titanic time is actually 11.39 p.m. (or 10.06 plus one hour thirty-three).

  That is fine. Except that the Titanic collides at 11.40 her time, or 11.57 Californian time, by Knapp’s reasoning.

  This is the precise period when Gill looks over the rail. For ‘fully a minute’ between 11.56 and midnight (three minutes after Titanic collision, according to Knapp) Gill says he looked at a very large steamer charging at ‘full speed’, moving very rapidly when the Titanic was doing no such thing. This is the problem for Knapp in trusting Gill’s precisely-timed affidavit. Gill also said his large liner was moving rapidly some 10 miles away from his ship, while Groves and Lord saw a ship some 5 miles away which had stopped at 11.30 (Lor
d) 11.40 (Groves) – or twenty minutes to half an hour before a full-speed and very large steamer streaks across the background unseen by anyone except Gill.

  It is no good abandoning Gill to save Knapp’s theory, because it is built on Gill. Knapp draws a line to intersect the Titanic track, leading to a place where Californian ‘must have been’ (hypothetical) in order to have seen her… except of course for the bitter truth, revealed in 1985, that the Titanic never reached the SOS position, never passed that way at all, and yes, concrete proof again, that Gill just didn’t see her.

  Nor is it any good trying to re-work the times – Knapp’s quagmire gets even worse. If the British ‘solution’ is attempted, that of regarding Titanic and Californian times as identical, Gill is still seeing a runaway steamer when the Titanic has long been battered to a standstill by the power of nature.

  Another theory, erroneous as we have seen, is that Californian time was twelve minutes behind Titanic. This would have Gill’s goliath zooming about at up to 12.12 a.m., instead of sending out an SOS.

  Perhaps it is no wonder that the US hydrographer hides behind New York times in his chart. Because his chart means that Titanic struck and began sinking one minute after Gill walked on deck. It would mean that Gill would then return to the deck for a smoke forty minutes after his first vision and not see a ‘very large steamer’ that should be sinking where she stopped in front of him. He instead sees rockets ‘far away’ – suggesting the ship kept steaming at full speed for much of those forty minutes – when Knapp himself, at the top of his very own chart, tells us the Titanic has been blocked and stopped.

  Did Knapp know this in 1912? He had the evidence before him which showed that his chart was contradictory. He accepted Titanic evidence as true (Boxhall) which proved Gill to be a liar. Either he did not comprehend it – in which case he is merely an imbecile – or he realised all too well and villainously chose to hide it through reductions to New York time.