The Other Side of the Night (26 page)

Senator Smith then asked Rostron to recount in detail the events of the night of April 14–15, and how the
Carpathia
responded to the
Titanic
‘s distress call. During the course of describing the
Carpathia
’s frantic dash north to the aid of the
Titanic
, Rostron was asked what preparation he had made to handle the survivors. Almost as if he had anticipated the question, Rostron drew a typewritten list from his coat pocket, on which he had recorded all the orders he had given to ready the
Carpathia
for a rescue operation.

Smith then had Rostron describe the task of recovering the
Titanic
’s survivors, and the trip back to New York. The alacrity with which Rostron had responded to the
Titanic
, the comprehensive preparations he made, and the courage he had shown by steaming full speed into the ice field to pick up the survivors left an indelible impression on Smith and the other committee members, making Rostron the yardstick by which other ship’s captains would be measured.

The
Titanic
’s Fourth Officer, Boxhall, was called before the committee on the third day of the hearings, April 23, the same day that the story of the
Californian
broke in the two New England newspapers. Boxhall’s testimony would prove to be some of the most lucid and informative of the entire investigation. Questioned primarily by Senator Smith, but also at times by Senators Burton and Bourne, Boxhall carefully described the
Titanic
’s lifeboats, the watch-keeping routine of her officers, the conditions on the night of the collision, the collision itself, and the process of loading and lowering the
Titanic
’s lifeboats. It was during this part of his testimony that the Fourth Officer first mentioned that another ship had been close by the
Titanic
as she was sinking.

“You remained on the upper deck?” Smith asked.

“On the upper deck.”

“Where these lifeboats were?”

“Where these lifeboats were…. Generally assisting.

“Assisting in lowering these lifeboats?

“Not in lowering them, sir.”

“In manning them?”

“Yes, sir, in manning them; but my attention until the time I left the ship was mostly taken up with firing off distress rockets and trying to signal a steamer that was almost ahead of us.”

So startling was Boxhall’s revelation that he had to mention it twice before Smith realized the significance of what he was saying—that there was another ship which was close enough to see and be seen by the
Titanic
as the White Star liner was sinking. There is no record of Smith’s reaction, if any, to Boxhall’s words, although surprise, followed by disbelief and then consternation would have been understandable. In any case, Smith wasted no time in following this new thread of information.

Boxhall quickly described the unknown ship’s lights, saying that he could see her masthead light and her red sidelight, that she seemed to be bows-on to the
Titanic
, and appeared to be only about five miles distant. He then went on to describe how Captain Smith told him to try to contact the stranger by Morse lamp, which Boxhall did, but, “I can not say I saw any reply. Some people say she replied to our rockets and our signals, but I did not see them.”

When other witnesses confirmed Boxhall’s testimony, Smith became determined to find that ship and find out why. What Smith would discover would create a sensation and a controversy which would still remain unsettled and unresolved nearly a century later.

When Senator William Alden Smith read the articles in the
Boston American
and the
Clinton Daily Item
alleging that the
Californian
had been close enough to the
Titanic
to have seen her distress rockets, he immediately realized that she could have been the “mystery ship” of Boxhall’s dramatic revelation. He promptly sent his marshals up to Boston, to serve Engineer Gill, Captain Lord, and the
Californian
‘s officers with subpoenas to appear before his committee on Friday, April 25, in Washington DC, where the hearings were being moved. The press, which by now was following the committee members and their assistants everywhere they went, quickly picked up the scent of a good story in the making, and that Friday morning the hearing room was packed.

The Inquiry had shifted to Washington for the simple reason that the facilities at the Waldorf-Astoria were inadequate to the committee’s needs; also, the public’s interest was threatening to turn the hearings into a circus. At one point, on the third day of the Inquiry, a group of women collectively marched into the hearing room, and not finding enough room for them to be seated together as a body, immediately began rearranging the furniture to suit their convenience. Smith, tight-lipped and furious, promptly ordered the ladies to cease their disruptive behavior, on pain of being forcibly removed from the hearings. Returning to Washington would allow the committee to sit in a more controlled, subdued, and ultimately productive environment.

So it was that Thursday, April 25, was the last day of the New York hearings. When they reopened in Washington the next day, all of the subpoenaed
Californian
officers and crew were present. Without a doubt the story that would be related by Ernest Gill would create a sensation, and Smith, who had some doubts about Gill’s credibility, suddenly found himself hesitant to bring the engineer to the witness stand, lest his testimony ultimately prove to be an embarrassment to the committee. Smith decided to have a brief private interview with the engineer before he appeared before the committee. At one point in their conversation the Senator asked Gill outright how much he had been paid for the story. Gill, with perfect candor, replied $500, but then explained that he would most likely lose his job after his testimony was made public (within days he did), and he had to do something to secure an income as he had a family to support. But when pressed by Smith about the veracity of his affidavit, Gill budged not an inch—it was all true, he said, and he just wanted to set the record straight about what went on aboard the
Californian
that night.

Grateful for the man’s forthrightness, Smith had Gill testify to the whole committee. He was taken step by step through his entire affidavit, clarifying some points and expanding on others, with an emphasis placed on the ship firing the rockets. “I am of the general opinion that the crew is,” Gill concluded in his testimony, “confident that she was the
Titanic
.”

Captain Lord was the next to testify. Before leaving Boston he had arrogantly told the
Boston Journal
, “
If
I go to Washington, it will not be because of this story in the paper, but to tell the Committee why my ship was drifting without power, while the
Titanic
was rushing under full speed. It will take about ten minutes to do so.” To his chagrin, it took a good deal longer than ten minutes. The gist of Lord’s testimony was that he personally never saw the other ship, yet he was absolutely certain that the ship his officers saw, which didn’t appear to be in any danger, was too small to have been the
Titanic
. Instead, that unknown ship stopped some ten to twelve miles from the
Californian
about twenty minutes before midnight, then had steamed off around half past two. That was also the ship the
Titanic
saw, and not the
Californian
, which was too far away to be seen. Lord also told the Senators that his officers had reported to him only once that the other ship was firing rockets. Why that ship should be sending up rockets Lord had no idea, but he maintained that he was quite convinced that they weren’t distress signals, and that the vessel was in no danger.

Smith then began a careful cross-examination, quietly and methodically, which would ultimately shred Captain Lord’s story. Throughout the first part of his testimony, the same arrogance Lord had displayed in Boston began to assert itself, and believing that in Smith he was dealing with a fool—or at least a credulous rube—he assumed that he could play on the Senator’s relative ignorance of maritime matters to his own advantage. Having no idea of Smith’s skills in cross-examination, which were terrific, Lord rattled on with his answers, while Smith carefully drew a noose around him. At one point, Smith asked Lord about the icefield the
Californian
encountered: “When you notified the
Titanic
that you were in the ice, how much ice were you in?” Lord replied, “Well, we were surrounded by a lot of loose ice, and we were about a quarter of a mile off the edge of the field.” A few minutes later, Smith asked, “How badly were you interfered with by the ice on Sunday evening?”

“How were we interfered with?”

“Yes.”

“We stopped altogether.”

“What did you stop for?”

“So we would not run over the top of it.”

“You stopped your ship so that you might avoid the ice?”

“To avoid the ice.”

“And did you avoid it?”

“I did.”

A few moments later, after probing about the
Californian
’s movements through the icefield once she had received news that the
Titanic
had sunk, in the middle of a series of questions about lookouts, Smith suddenly asked, “If you had received the C.Q.D. call of distress from the
Titanic
Sunday evening after your communication with the
Titanic
, how long, under the conditions which surrounded you, would it have taken you to have reached the scene of the catastrophe?” Lord’s reply was quite firm: “At the very least, two hours.”

“Two hours?”

“At the very least, the way the ice was packed around us, and it being nighttime.”

Unexpectedly Smith changed tack, and began questioning Lord about the
Carpathia
, and drawing conscious and deliberate, if rather subtle, comparisons between her actions and performance in the early morning of April 15 and those of the
Californian
. Often overlooked in assessments of the US Senate Investigation is the fact that Smith was a gifted cross-examiner, with a phenomenal memory. He was particularly adept at using the tried-and-true tactic of returning to a subject previously covered in questioning, to see if the witness’s story changed. As would soon become evident, Stanley Lord’s story of the morning of April 15, 1912, changed with every retelling.

Lord did not realize it, but Smith suddenly begun to have suspicions about the captain’s veracity. Already he had contradicted himself by telling the Senator that his Second Officer had indeed seen at least one white rocket fired by a ship to the south of the
Californian
, when he had denied this (as Smith well knew) to the Boston newspapers. Now Lord was giving three different descriptions of the ice conditions his ship had encountered—that the
Californian
was variously “surrounded by loose ice,” or had “avoided the ice,” or that the ice “was packed around” the ship. In doing so, Lord had aroused a suspicion in Smith that he wasn’t being told the whole truth. Next he asked Lord if the captain had ever seen the
Titanic
; Lord replied that he had never seen her, only her sister, the
Olympic
, in daylight from a distance of about five miles. After asking about the
Californian
’s wireless procedures, Smith then turned to the issue which everyone in the hearing room had been anticipating.

“Captain, did you see any signals of distress on Sunday night, either rockets or the Morse signals?”

“No, sir, I did not. The officer on watch saw some signals, but he said they were not distress signals.”

“They were not distress signals?”

“Not distress signals.”

“But he reported them?”

“To me. I think you had better let me tell you that story.”

“I wish you would.” And with that, Smith handed Lord enough rope for the captain of the
Californian
to figuratively hang himself. Lord’s account was so filled with deliberate falsehoods that it deserves to be presented in its entirety.

“When I came off the bridge,” he began, “at half past 10, I pointed out to the officer that I thought I saw a light coming along, and it was a most peculiar night, and we had been making mistakes all along with the stars, thinking they were signals. We could not distinguish where the sky ended and where the water commenced. You understand, it was a flat calm. He said he thought it was a star, and I did not say anything more. I went down below. I was talking with the engineer about keeping the steam ready, and we saw these signals coming along, and I said, ‘There is a steamer coming. Let’s see what the news is.’ But on our way down I met the operator coming and I said, ‘Do you know anything?’ and he said ‘The
Titanic
.’ So, then, I gave him instructions to let the
Titanic
know. I said, ‘This is not the
Titanic
, there is no doubt about it.’ She came and lay, at half past 11, alongside of us, until I suppose about a quarter past 1, within 4 miles of us. We could see everything on her distinctly; see her lights. We signaled her at half past 11, with the Morse lamp. She did not take the slightest notice of it. That was between half past 11 and 20 minutes to 12. We signaled her again at 10 minutes past 12, half past 12, a quarter to 1, and 1 o’clock. We have a very powerful Morse lamp. I suppose you can see that about 10 miles, and she was 4 miles off, and she did not take the slightest notice of it. When the second officer came on the bridge, at 12 o’clock, or 10 minutes past 12, I told him to watch that steamer, which was stopped, and I pointed out the ice to him; told him we were surrounded by ice; to watch the steamer that she did not get any closer to her. At 20 minutes to one I whistled up the speaking tube and asked him if she was getting any nearer. He said, ‘No, she is not taking any notice of us.’ So I said, ‘I think I will go and lie down a bit.’ At a quarter past one he said, ‘I think she has fired a rocket.’ He said, ‘She did not answer the Morse lamp and she has commenced to go away from us.’ I said, ‘Call her up and let me know at once what her name is.’ So, he put the whistle back, and apparently he was calling. I could hear him ticking over my head. Then I went to sleep.”