Titanic and the Mystery Ship

by Senan Molony

  This is a man whose pseudo-science has so impressed Senator Smith into accepting his theories as fact. Meanwhile he will reveal more gaps in his understanding in the manner in which he dismisses the ‘Third Ship’ possibility.

  AN INTERVENING SHIP?

  Senator Smith asks (US Inquiry, p.1120):

  Captain, are you able to state to the committee whether there was any vessel between the position of the Titanic just preceding and following the accident and the position of the Californian at that time?

  Let’s just look at the question for a moment. Knapp was at home in Washington – dry, and probably in bed at the time of the sinking. He was not in any position to state whether there was another vessel between the Californian and the Titanic and should have said so. Instead he again far exceeds his powers (US Inquiry, p.1120):

  From being present at hearings before your committee, and from reading the printed testimony of witnesses examined by the committee, I am led to the conclusion that if there was any vessel between the Californian and the Titanic at the time referred to she does not seem to have been seen by any of the ships near there on the following morning, nor have there been any reports submitted to the Hydrographic Office which would indicate that there was any such steamer in that locality.

  This answer is equivalent to saying: ‘Not from what I read in the newspapers’. They might as well have asked the shoe-shine boy outside the Inquiry hall. Clearly Knapp did not read the evidence well enough; several other unknown vessels were indeed seen by the Mount Temple, Californian and Carpathia the following morning. They included:

  1. A small two-mast steamer – seen by Californian, Carpathia and Mount Temple.

  2. A schooner that raced across the path of Captain Moore and the Mount Temple.

  3. A pink-funnel steamer heading north or north-west, seen by Californian on the west side of the ice barrier.

  4. A steamer showing a red side light which crossed the Carpathia’s path at 3.15 a.m.

  5. Californian’s yellow-funnel steamer seen to southward, east of the ice barrier, 4 a.m.–6 a.m.

  Five ships, just for starters, that eluded investigation and certainly eluded Captain Knapp. Such a pity they did not forward reports about themselves to the Hydrographic Office.

  Part of the problem was that the US Inquiry simply did not bother seeking evidence from a sufficient number of witnesses to make any kind of finding about the Titanic’s mystery ship. The senators did not call Stewart and Stone, who, like Lord, clearly saw a (yellow-funnel) ship in an arguable ‘Third Ship’ position from 4 a.m.–6 a.m. that morning. We have touched on some of these other unidentified ships before in this assessment. Two we have not yet mentioned, Captain Moore’s schooner and Captain Rostron’s 3.15 a.m. steamer, should now perhaps be looked at briefly:

  CAPTAIN MOORE’S MYSTERY SCHOONER

  Moore gave the following evidence (US p.761/2):

  Moore: I stopped the ship. Before that I want to say that I met a schooner or some small craft, [’I reckon it was shortly after 3 o’clock’] and I had to get out of the way of that vessel, and the light of that vessel seemed to go out.

  Senator Smith: The schooner was between you and the Titanic’s position? — Yes, sir.

  Sen. Smith: Was this schooner coming toward you? — I was steering east and this green light was opening to me.

  Sen. Smith: Was he evidently coming from the direction in which the Titanic lay? — Somewhere from there, sir. Of course, had he been coming straight he would have shown me his two lights, sir… I should say this light could not have been more than a mile or a mile and a half away, because I immediately put my helm hard a-starboard, and I ordered full speed astern and took the way off the boat.

  Sen. Smith: You think the schooner was within a short distance of the Titanic? — I thought she was within a short distance of us, because I put the engines full astern to avoid her.

  Meanwhile Captain Rostron’s 3.15 a.m. steamer, in a similar close encounter, was coming from a direction in which we now know the Titanic sank, and she sank just an hour earlier than Carpathia’s sighting, making her most interesting. This vessel was ignored in 1912 because she seemed to be steaming from the east towards the SOS location, whereas it was entrenched in the official mind that the mystery ship was located further west of the SOS location.

  Yet since the wreck discovery in 1985, this steamer seen by Carpathia must be at least a candidate for the mystery ship because she was actually coming from the place where the Titanic is now proven to have sunk.

  She was on a similar vector, in broad terms, to that of the Parisian, illustrated on Knapp’s chart.

  CAPTAIN ROSTRON’S MYSTERY STEAMER

  25552. [The Attorney General] Does that state all the vessels that you saw? I think [you] stated two steamers [being Mount Temple and the two-master]? — No; I saw one more, but it was during the night previous to getting out [to] the Titanic’s position. We saw masthead lights quite distinctly of another steamer between us and the Titanic. That was about quarter-past three.

  25553. The masthead lights? — Yes, of another steamer, and one of the officers swore he also saw one of the side lights.

  25554. Which one? — The port side light.

  25555. Do you know of any identification of that steamer at all? — No; we saw nothing but the lights. I did not see the side lights: I merely saw the masthead lights.

  25556. [The Commissioner] You did not see the additional lights yourself, the side light? — I saw the masthead lights.

  25557. Did you see the lights your officer spoke of? — I saw the masthead lights myself but not the side light.

  25558. What time was it? — About a quarter past three.

  25559. And how was the light bearing? — About two points on the starboard bow.

  25560. On your starboard bow? — On my starboard bow; that would be about N 30, W true.

  But our dear Captain Knapp of the Hydrographic Office, convinced that because no nearby steamers had come to his blinkered attention in Washington then none could possibly exist, finally blundered to his conclusion – one that excluded all ships from the equation but Titanic and Californian: ‘The evidence does not indicate to me that there was any such third steamer in those waters’ (US Inquiry, p.1120).

  THE ICE BARRIER

  It is immensely obvious that Knapp’s chart also deliberately fudged the facts on where the Titanic had gone down in relation to the ice barrier. He declared to the senators: ‘The ice barrier, from all reports… was impassable to a vessel proceeding to the westward’ (US Inquiry, p.1120). He accordingly located the Titanic on the east side of the barrier, having run right into it. But in fact the Titanic hit a lone berg far short of the ice barrier and no such barrier could be seen by anyone aboard her at the time. Knapp therefore engineered his ice barrier representation to run from north-east to south-west so the Titanic could be shown to have reached the far westerly SOS position and sunk there. In other words, he has forcibly pulled one section of the ice barrier to the west, in order to allow the Titanic to arrive at the SOS position.

  But this neat solution to the ‘impassable’ solution, achieved by Knapp simply holding back the curtain of ice to allow the Titanic to get to where she was supposed to have sunk, actually flew in the face of all the evidence given to the US Inquiry. And in the face of all the ice-barrier reports sent to his own Hydrographic Office! The hydrographer was again depending on Gill, the donkeyman with the ‘open sesame’ icefield.

  Knapp’s chart and evidence was given on 18 May. Three weeks earlier two British newspapers had carried a very different chart from his, being that provided by Captain Ludwig Stulping of the SS Birma, who produced a detailed sketch of the icefield as he and his crew had found it. Stulping wrote:

  About 7.30 a.m. we were on the [SOS] scene of the wreck. There we saw some immense icebergs to the East, beginning from NE to S; and as far as the eye could reach, there lay pack-ice with icebergs, so that it was out of the question to proceed
through the ice, and it was quite clear that the Titanic could not have been at that spot [that is, have passed through the ice to the western side].

  And Captain Moore of the Mount Temple specifically testified that the SOS position was to the west of the barrier, and that in his opinion the Titanic sank farther east. Captain Lord made the same point, and both men were correct, as we know today, because the real wreck site is more than 13 miles further to the east and south. The ice barrier was impassable: it blocked off access to the SOS position to vessels coming from the east. Knapp has ‘moved the goalposts’. Here is what Moore said about the ice field or barrier: ‘Of course it extended as far as the eye could reach, north and south, sir’ (US Inquiry, p.765). No mention of any ‘slant’ in a barrier of the type created by Knapp. Moore further proves the ‘north to south’ nature of the field as against Knapp’s ‘north-east to south-west’ with these comments (US Inquiry, p.767):

  I searched for a passage to get through this pack, because I realised that the Titanic could not have been through that pack of ice, sir. I steered away to the south-south-east true. [Such a course would have taken him straight into Knapp’s imaginary barrier. But Knapp was not there that night or morning]

  Captain Lord’s limited comments to the US Inquiry on the nature of the icefield supported Moore’s assessment. Lord referred to going through the barrier to reach the west side and then going south to the SOS position (‘the position she was supposed to have been in’), finding nothing and then having to cross the barrier a second time to reach the east side once more before noticing wreckage. But he was absolutely categorical in his British evidence:

  6773. Did the ice extend at all to the eastward or westward of you? — It seemed to me to be running more north and south…

  6774. From north to south was the field? —Yes.

  Yet there is something more. If Knapp put a ‘large steamer’ into Lord’s mouth, he also managed to mislocate the Russian Asiatic steamer Birma by a whole degree of longitude. This makes for a further gross error, but one that has other implications.

  The Birma, eastbound, changed course after hearing the SOS before she had reached 52° W. The chart offered by Knapp showed her close to 51° W… and significantly does not follow through on her bee-line to the SOS position. Why not?

  When Birma’s north-east course is imposed on to the chart offered by Knapp to the US Inquiry, it shows her smashing into Knapp’s depicted ice barrier on its western side – and having to drive through it for at least 15 miles for it to reach the SOS position. But the Birma, steaming from the west, reached the SOS position through open seas with no ice. She only saw the ice barrier later, and further east. Her on-the-spot account is further evidence that Knapp’s ice barrier portrayal is wrong, along with everything else. However Knapp’s ‘mistake’ in placing the Birma one full degree closer to the SOS position might barely allow the steamer to skirt his icefield to the east. So is this indeed an error, or is it an intentional distortion? In any case, Knapp has ignored the eyewitness accounts of Captain Stulping (in British newspapers) and Captains Moore and Rostron of the Mount Temple and Carpathia (both in evidence at the US Inquiry), not to mention the strong insistence of Captain Lord, in order to arrive at his own magic solution from an office in Washington.

  Taken in by Knapp’s specious reasoning (should we call it the hypnosis of hypothesis?) and encouraged by Gill’s extraordinary tale, Senator William Alden Smith, chairman of the US Inquiry, now equally felt fully qualified to write a damning indictment of the Californian in his final report (author comments bracketed):

  Titanic fired distress rockets… the officers of the Californian admit seeing rockets in the general direction of the Titanic [they actually saw them SSE, Titanic was supposedly SW)… while several of the crew of the Californian testify [several? The US Inquiry heard only from Gill, Lord and Evans] that the side lights of a large vessel going at full speed [only Gill – one man, not several – said he saw a large steamer going at full speed. He did not say he could see side lights] were plainly visible from the lower deck of the Californian at 11.30 p.m. ship’s time [Gill claims to have seen a full-speed steamer only at 11.56] just before the accident…

  The above paragraph, laden with amazing and reckless distortions of the truth, immediately preceded this conclusion:

  The Steamship Californian’s Responsibility

  The committee is forced to the inevitable conclusion that the Californian, controlled by the same company, was nearer the Titanic than the 19 miles reported by her Captain, and that her officers and crew saw the distress signals of the Titanic and failed to respond to them in accordance with the dictates of humanity, international usage, and the requirements of law.

  The only reply to the distress signals was a counter signal from a large white light, which was flashed for nearly two hours from the mast of the Californian. In our opinion, such conduct, whether arising from indifference or gross carelessness, is most reprehensible, and places upon the commander of the Californian a grave responsibility.

  The wireless operator of the Californian was not aroused until 3.30 a.m., New York time, on the morning of the 15th, after considerable conversation between officers and members of crew had taken place aboard that ship regarding these distress signals or rockets, and was directed by the Chief Officer to see if there was anything the matter, as a ship had been firing rockets during the night.

  The enquiry thus set on foot immediately disclosed the fact that the Titanic had sunk. Had assistance been promptly proffered, or had the wireless operator of the Californian remained a few minutes longer at his post on Sunday evening, that ship might have had the proud distinction of rescuing the lives of the passengers and crew of the Titanic…

  19

  THE BRITISH INQUIRY

  Captain Lord and the Californian were at sea when the US Inquiry reported. When they arrived in Liverpool they were drawn into new proceedings: Britain’s own formal investigation. The British Investigation was certainly more exhaustive than its US counterpart, but it seemed the offer of the Californian as scapegoat (seized on for sacrifice by their transatlantic cousins) was too tempting to turn down.

  Unlike the initial scattergun approach of the American sittings, the British investigation had little interest in any other ships but the Californian that night, apart from the subject at hand, of course. Senator Smith may have enquired about the whereabouts of a number of differing vessels, but his opposite number in London, Lord Mersey, had scant such interest. He was determined to run the Californian fox to ground. And while the evidence at the British Inquiry has already been extensively examined, it is perhaps instructive to just observe some of Lord Mersey’s interruptions during his own proceedings. They show a man with his mind made up from an early stage.

  The Californian issue was examined as early as Day 7 of the twenty-eight-day Inquiry, before any of the Titanic’s surviving officers had been called to the stand, nor anyone from the White Star Line! It seemed the Inquiry wanted to strike while the iron was hot. Captain Lord was the first Californian witness called. He was called strictly as a witness, not as defendant. He would have no opportunity to comment on the testimony of the other witnesses called thereafter. Yet less than one-quarter way through the evidence of Lord as the first Californian witness, we have this staggering exchange (British Inquiry, p.148, question 6804–5):

  [The Commissioner] What is in my brain at the present time is this, that what they [Californian] saw was the Titanic.

  [The Attorney General] I know.

  [The Commissioner] That is in my brain, and I want to see whether I am right or not.

  [The Attorney General] It certainly must have been very close.

  A brain already filled with a prefabricated hypothesis. And the Attorney General, whose role should be to keep the focus on the straight and narrow, not only loses this opportunity to nudge Mersey towards due process, but actually encourages what is prejudice in its purest sense (Mersey’s entry in the Dicti
onary of National Biography mentions a 1904 case in which counsel for the defendant was said to resent His Lordship’s ‘unjudicial hostility’ towards his client).

  Captain Lord’s testimony began its climb uphill in these circumstances and soon encountered further determination on the part of the court to slot home its readymade conclusion:

  6805. [The Attorney General to Captain Lord] Can you tell us whether you saw one or two masthead lights [on the unknown vessel that stopped nearby]? — I only saw one.

  6806. You only saw one? — The Third Officer said he saw two.

  [The Attorney General] Now that is important.

  [The Commissioner] That is very important, because the Titanic would have two.

  6807. [The Attorney General] Yes, that is it – two masthead lights.

  Actually there is an ongoing debate as to the number of masthead lights carried by the Titanic. Now look at this next breathtaking piece of reasoning by the Attorney General, Sir Rufus Isaacs:

  6807. [Attorney General to Lord] You only saw one, but the Third Officer [Groves] said he saw two? — And the Second Officer [Stone] said he saw one.

  6818. [The Attorney General] If he did see two lights it must have been the Titanic, must it not? — It does not follow. [Of course not!]

  By question 6847, Lord Mersey’s displeasure at resistance to his own favoured version of events was becoming evident. Here he is talking to Lord:

  [The Commissioner] You do not give answers that please me at present. You said just now as plainly as possible that you answered the Third Officer, I think it was, and said, ‘The only passenger steamer near us is the Titanic’. You now suggest that you do not remember whether you said that or not? — I do not recollect saying anything to him about it, my Lord.