The Night Lives On (17 page)

In support of the “wrong-position” theory, the
Californian’s
defenders produce endless mathematical calculations, but her own reported position is always accepted as gospel. The finders of the
Titanic
have not seen fit to reveal her exact location, but they stress that she was definitely on course. As for the
Californian,
we will never know for certain her position that night.

Estimates of distances at sea, the timing of incidents, the position and bearings of ships to one another are by their very nature imprecise—and never more so than the night the
Titanic
went down. There wasn’t even a clock on the upper bridge of the
Californian,
and the startling clarity of the atmosphere made it, as Captain Lord himself later said, “a very deceiving night.” Arguments about such variables can go on endlessly,
reducing the search for the truth to a sort of
Titanic
version of “Trivial Pursuit.”

The one element that lifts the night of April 14-15 out of the realm of the imponderable is the hard, incontrovertible fact of the rockets—what they were like, what they meant, and what people did about them. And it is here, I think, where the arguments of the
Californian’s
defenders really break down. They can say what they like, but they can’t get away from those rockets.

Distress signals at night, as defined by regulations at the time, were “rockets or shells, throwing stars of any color or description, fired one at a time, at short intervals.” The
Californian
saw eight such rockets at approximately the same time the
Titanic
was firing a similar number. Over the years the
Californian’s
defenders have often sought to defuse these rockets by calling them “flares.” But nobody called them flares that night. They were called “rockets”—projectiles that shot up into the sky, and burst, sending down a shower of white stars. Once, when Gibson happened to raise his binoculars at the right moment, he even saw the thin trail of the rocket as it soared upward.

Every officer on the
Californian
, including Captain Lord, agreed that these rockets—as seen or as described—resembled distress signals. Later it was generously suggested that the watch thought they might be company signals of some sort, but nobody thought so that night.

The two men on the bridge both suspected something was wrong. Second Officer Stone conceded he said, “A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing.” Apprentice Gibson said both he and Stone felt the ship was in “trouble of some sort”; and again, “There must
be something the matter with her.” Gibson himself decided it was a case of “some kind of distress.”

Chief Officer Stewart thought the rockets “might be distress signals” when he relieved Stone at 4
A.M.
and Stone told him what he had seen. At the British Inquiry, Stewart admitted he thought “something had happened.”

The
Californian
saw and ignored still more rockets fired from yet another ship that night. These rockets were seen at the very time the
Carpathia
was firing rockets as she neared the scene, and also came from her direction.

Both Stone and Gibson immediately connected the rockets with the
Titanic
while the
Californian
was en route to the scene the following morning—before there was any time for second-guessing or wishful thinking.

Captain Lord was informed. Later he said he was told of only one rocket, but he is contradicted by all three of the other men on the bridge that night.

Feeling as he did, the Captain claimed there was no need to worry. But he and Stewart were worried enough to wake up the wireless operator at 5:20
A.M.
and ask him then to check. The tragedy is that this wasn’t done sooner.

Some apologists argue that it would have made no difference anyhow: the
Californian
was, they say, too far away to help. They point out that neither Stone nor Gibson heard the rockets, which (we are assured) went off with a tremendous bang, easily audible for upward of ten miles. Actually, nobody knows how far the
Titanic’s
rockets could be heard. A professional ballistics expert I have consulted says maybe two or three miles. In any case, the signals were
seen
and ignored.

In the face of all this, the
Californian’s
defenders offer two distinct theories. The first is that there were
two separate pairs of ships out there: the
Titanic
and an unknown stranger, and the
Californian
and an unknown stranger. Neither pair was in sight of the other. In each pair, one of the ships came up from the east, stopped some time between 11:30 and midnight, and later began firing rockets. In each pair, about eight rockets were fired. In each pair, the rocket-firing ship gradually disappeared, finally vanishing about 2½ hours after she first stopped. In the case of each pair, another hour passed, and then a third ship appeared firing rockets on the southern horizon. Even on this incredible night, such a string of coincidences seems too far-fetched to accept.

The second theory concedes that the rockets probably came from the
Titanic
, but contends that there was a third, unknown ship lying between the sinking liner and the
Californian.
This was the ship Stone and Gibson were watching, the theory runs, and they mistakenly believed the rockets were coming from her. Since she looked all right, they had no need to worry.

But the ship they were watching did
not
look all right, and both Stone and Gibson were very worried indeed. Whatever was said later, that night both men suspected that she was in trouble. “We were talking about it all the time,” Gibson testified.

Moreover, the “ship in between” theory collides head on with Stone’s explanation of why the stranger’s lights “disappeared.” Stone said they disappeared not because the ship he was watching sank, but because she steamed away. If that was the case, the British Court asked, why didn’t the mysterious ship steam out from in front of the rockets, revealing where they were really coming from? Stone had no answer to that.

Nor has the “ship in between” ever been found. A
perennial candidate is the Norwegian sealer
Samson
, based on the typescript of a journal supposedly kept by one of her crew. According to the typescript (the original has vanished) the
Samson
lay near the
Titanic
, saw the rockets, but was engaged in illegal sealing operations and was afraid to show herself.

Unfortunately, the same document puts the
Samson
south of Cape Hatteras the previous afternoon. Not even the
Mauretania’s
mighty turbines could have propelled her to the icy waters off Newfoundland in time for the big show.

Further doubt is cast on the
Samson
by some remarkable research undertaken by Leslie Reade, a little-known British
Titanic
scholar who enjoys almost guru status among students of the disaster. Mr. Reade has developed information from official sources in Iceland placing the
Samson
in the fishing port of Isafjördhur on April 6 and again on April 20. This meant that the
Samson
had just 14 days to make the 3,000-mile journey down to the
Titanic
and back—absolutely impossible for a six-knot ship.

In any event, what difference does it make even if there was a third ship lying between the
Californian
and the
Titanic
? Rockets are rockets. These clearly resembled distress signals, and both Stone and Gibson suspected some ship was in trouble.

As an ameliorating factor, it has been suggested that they mistook the rockets for company signals—or signals between fishermen operating off the Banks of Newfoundland. Ships did occasionally use night signals to identify themselves in those days, but they were usually some combination of colored flares and Roman candles. They did not remotely resemble the white
rockets seen by Stone and Gibson…or the white rockets being fired at about that time by the
Titanic.
It didn’t occur to either man that the ship they were watching was merely trying to identify herself. Again, they suspected that she was trying to get help.

Finally, it has been suggested that the two men on the bridge thought the rockets were just a celebration of some sort. This theory grew out of a caustic remark made at the British Inquiry by Butler Aspinall, counsel for the Board of Trade, while he was examining Stone on the meaning of the rockets. Stone proved so evasive that finally, in exasperation, Aspinall remarked, “You knew they were not being sent up for fun?” Somehow this got twisted around in the retelling and has come down to us as an explanation by Stone, rather than a bit of sarcasm by Aspinall.

It’s a waste of time to linger any longer over the question of what Stone and Gibson thought the rockets meant. The real question is why, when they were reported to Captain Lord, he did nothing about them.

Certainly the Captain was not drunk—he was a teetotaler.

Nor does it seem likely that he was too deeply asleep to grasp the reports sent down to him. He was not tucked away in bed; he was resting fully clothed on the chart room settee. His rest was interrupted three different times between 12:40 and 2:40. Twice he had to get up and go to his own quarters to talk with Stone on the speaking tube; the other time he was visited by Gibson in person. All three times he seemed awake and perfectly rational. It had not been an especially difficult day; there was no reason to be exhausted.

In the end it’s hard not to be impressed by the
reasoning of Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General at the British Inquiry:

… I am unable to find any possible explanation of what happened, except it may be the Captain of the vessel was in ice for the first time, and would not take the risk of going to the rescue of another vessel which might have got into trouble, as he thought, from proceeding through the ice when he himself had stopped.

It must always be remembered that the
Titanic
hadn’t happened yet. When he made up his mind to stay put, Captain Lord had no inkling that the world’s most famous sea disaster was about to occur. He only knew there was a lot of ice out there, and the safe thing to do was to stop for the night. This was the right decision—provided nothing happened. But something did happen, and Captain Lord’s failure was his inability or unwillingness to adjust to an entirely new situation. True, be had his own ship and crew to think about, but that was no excuse for doing nothing. He didn’t even wake up his wireless operator, only a few feet away, while the rockets were going up. What was good seamanship before the rockets became a woeful lack of enterprise afterward.

Even when summoned to Washington, Captain Lord seemed to feel that the real issue was his prudence, rather than his failure to answer the rockets. Hence his curious remark that his purpose was “to tell the Committee why my ship was drifting without power, while the
Titanic
was rushing under full speed.”

Given that mind-set, it required a forceful man to be
on watch that night—an officer not afraid to take on a reluctant captain. There’s some question as to whether Herbert Stone was the ideal person to be in this position. While there was always a gulf between the master and his officers in those days, it seems to have been especially deep between Captain Lord and Second Officer Stone. Lord was an austere autocrat; Stone was an easygoing type. Later he reportedly told friends that he and Gibson did indeed think that the rockets were distress signals, but they “couldn’t get the old man out of the chart room.”

How hard did they try? While Stone twice reported the rockets to the Captain, carefully describing them each time, he never mentioned his and Gibson’s misgivings about them, or ventured any opinion as to what they might mean. “I just took them as white rockets,” he later told the British Inquiry, “and informed the master, and let him judge.”

Chief Officer Stewart, who took over the watch at 4
A.M
., was a bit of an improvement. When Captain Lord came on the bridge at 4:30 and began talking about proceeding to Boston, Stewart at least asked him if he was going to steam south first and check on the ship that had been firing rockets during the night. “No, I do not think so,” Captain Lord replied, studying the ship that had recently appeared to the south. “She looks all right; she is not making any signals now.”

He was, of course, looking at the wrong ship, the new arrival that Stone had specifically said was
not
the one firing the rockets. Stewart knew this but did not correct the Captain. Why, is anybody’s guess. Was he, too, cowed by the remote presence of the shipmaster? Was he so concerned about the rockets that he was
willing to let the new arrival be a stand-in for the real ship, so that at least some action might be taken? We’ll never know. Even when pressed he never gave the Court any explanation at all.

So, at 4:30
A.M.
the situation remained essentially as it had been all night. The rockets were still ignored, and now Captain Lord was thinking only of getting on to Boston. Yet 50 minutes later, at 5:20, Stewart was shaking the wireless operator awake: “There’s a ship been firing rockets. Will you see if you can find out if anything is the matter?”

What happened that turned everything around during those 50 minutes? Sometimes I wish that some magical time machine could transport me back and let me spend an hour any place I wanted on the night of April 14-15, 1912. I would not spend that hour on the
Titanic.
I’d spend it on the bridge of the
Californian
, from 4:30 to 5:30
A.M.,
sharing the watch with Captain Lord and Chief Officer Stewart. What was said? What ideas were exchanged? What advice was politely rendered? What suggestions were made? What thoughts were passed—or not passed—between them?

We have very little to go on. As shown by their performance in Boston, the officers of the
Californian
were anything but candid about that night. Stewart even maintained that his purpose in waking up the wireless operator was simply to check the identity of the ship to the south—an explanation emphatically rejected by the British Inquiry.