The Other Side of the Night (31 page)

“You have already told us that you were not satisfied it was a company’s signal. You have told us that.”

“I asked the officer, was it a company’s signal?”

“And he did not know?”

“He did not know.”

“You have already told me some time ago…”

“Very well, sir.”

“…that you were not satisfied it was a company’s signal. You did not think it was a company’s signal?”

“I inquired, was it a company’s signal?”

“But you had been told that he did not know?

“He said he did not know.”

“Very well, that did not satisfy you?”

“It did not satisfy me.”

“
Then if it was not that, it might have been a distress signal?
”

“It might have been.”

“And you remained in the chart room?”

“I remained in the chart room.”

With those words, Stanley Lord effectively wrote “Finis” to his career as a merchant captain on the North Atlantic run, though it would be his officers who actually turned the screws on his professional coffin. As the questioning continued, Lord attempted to convince the court that, according to his officers, the unknown ship to the south of the
Californian
had slowly steamed away some time around half-past two in the morning. If she had done so, then clearly she had never been in any danger and so the rockets she had fired could
not
have been distress signals. Both the Attorney-General and the Commissioner were skeptical, but as Lord himself never claimed to have seen the other ship steam away, neither man pressed the point with Lord.

That did not mean they accepted that explanation, however. When Second Officer Stone, who in retrospect seems to be the one officer most heavily under Lord’s influence, attempted to repeat this story in an effort to come to his captain’s rescue, Sir Rufus would have none of it. As Stone tried to explain it, the other ship, which had been presenting its red sidelight to the
Californian
for more than two hours, suddenly steamed off to the southwest at about 2:20 a.m., and did so without presenting her green sidelight at all. In other words, according to Stone, the ship had been showing her port (left) side to the
Californian
, then abruptly turned about 180 degrees and somehow did so without ever showing her starboard (right) side.

Sir Rufus was not fooled, and would have none of it. “How did she do it,” he asked incredulously, “without showing her green light?”

“I did not see her green light at all. She ported. She shut in her red side light and showed her stern light…. I did not see the green light.”

Sir Rufus knew enough of ships to know that this was simply not possible. “She must have shown her green light, you know?”

“We are heading west-southwest and the steamer’s stern was southwest ahead of us. All we would see is her stern light. I did not see any side lights at all after she started to steam away.” Isaacs did not pursue the subject any further with Stone, but he didn’t let it go either. Stone’s testimony was, of course, nonsense. He knew from the position of the stranger’s masthead light and red sidelight that her bow was facing the
Californian
, so his assertion that he had been looking at the stranger’s stern was simply untrue—and he knew it. Likewise was his assertion that he had seen the stranger’s stern light: she had never shown her stern to the
Californian
. Equally absurd was his statement that a ship to the
southeast
of the
Californian
could steam away from her to the
southwest
without showing a green sidelight, regardless of the bearing of the
Californian
herself. Isaacs made this point when he questioned Apprentice Officer Gibson the next day.

“Did you ever see her green [light]?” he asked.

“No.”

“To show you her red light, she must have been heading to the northward of NNW on your story?”

“Yes.”

“You told us you never saw the green light of this vessel?”

“No.”

“Was the glare of light which you saw on the afterpart of this vessel forward or aft of the masthead light?”

“Abaft the mast head light.”

“So that you would be seeing her starboard side?”

“No, her port side …”

“Did you see her turn around?”

“No.”

Gibson then began to add details, saying that he saw, “A white masthead light and a red sidelight,” and “a glare of white lights on her after-deck.” Realizing the significance of what Gibson was saying, the Attorney-General began to draw him out, asking next about the glare of lights Gibson saw on the other ship: “Now tell me, when you first saw that glare of lights in the after part, could you see a line of lights?”

“No.”

“It was more than a single light, was it not?”

“Yes.”

Sir Rufus then established exactly where on the other ship these lights seemed to come from: “Did the glare of light that you saw on the after part of this boat seem to be a pretty considerable distance from the masthead light?”

“Yes.”

The significance of Gibson’s answer, which was immediately obvious to every member of the Commission, though Gibson did not seem to appreciate it, was that “a considerable distance” between the ship’s masthead light and the deck lights was a direct indication that she was significantly larger than a tramp steamer, where the deck lights would be positioned just aft of the masthead light. The Attorney-General decided that the time had come to ask Gibson specifically about what sort of ship he thought it was. “What was it made you think it was a tramp steamer? You saw nothing but the lights?”

“Well, I have seen nearly all the large passenger boats out at sea and there was nothing at all about it to resemble a passenger boat.”

“What is it you expected to see?”

“A passenger boat is generally lit up from the water’s edge.” At first glance this seemed to confirm Stanley Lord’s account that the strange ship had been a small tramp steamer. Stone’s recollection seemed to do the same, when he said that all he could see of her was “One masthead light and a red sidelight and two or three small indistinct lights.” It would be a member of the
Titanic
’s crew, Trimmer Samuel Hemming, who would unexpectedly provide an explanation for how a ship as large as the
Titanic
could offer so little light to a distant observer. When examined by Sir Rufus and Butler Aspinall, Hemming recounted how First Officer Murdoch had instructed him to turn down the lights in the forward part of the ship, making sure that “everything [was] dark before the bridge” in order to avoid dazzling the lookouts up in the crow’s nest. This included closing the scuttles over the forward end of B Deck, leaving the only light showing from the forward end of the
Titanic
’s superstructure coming from a handful of windows on A Deck. When the
Titanic
turned sharply to the north in her effort to avoid the iceberg, she suddenly presented only her darkened bow toward the
Californian
, creating the confusion.

But it was the rockets, along with Captain Lord’s insistence that they could not have been distress signals, which so greatly disturbed the Attorney-General, and which have been the bane of those who would attempt to exonerate Stanley Lord ever since. Returning to Stone’s observation that the ship to the south was firing white rockets, Sir Rufus asked, “What had the Captain told you which would force your mind to the conclusion that that is a vessel which is not in distress?”

“He emphasized the fact about company’s signals.”

“But you knew they were not company’s signals, did you not?”

“I said I did not think so.”

Mersey stepped in again at this point. “You did not believe they were company’s signals?”

“I had never seen company’s signals like them before.”

“Then what did you think they were?”

“I did not think what they were intended for; white rockets is what I saw them as.” Mersey began losing his patience again, and his acerbic nature took over, offering one of history’s most memorable courtroom exchanges.

“Wait. You did not think they were company’s signals?”

“No.”

“You did not think they were being sent up for fun?”

“No.”

“What did you think?”

“I just thought they were white rockets, that is all.”

Again the Counsel for the Solicitor General, Butler Aspinall headed off another of Mersey’s biting retorts. Clearly not satisfied with Stone’s answers, it seemed inconceivable to him that neither Stone nor Gibson would ever mention the possibility that what they were seeing was, indeed, a distress signal. Rising to his feet, he began his own line of questions to Stone. “I want to take you back. You remember those 20 minutes you told me you were talking to Gibson—not all the time, but you and he were from time to time having a conversation about the ship, after the eight rockets. That was between 1.40 and 2 o’clock; it was 20 minutes?”

“Yes.”

“Did anything of that sort pass? Did you say something of this sort to Gibson: ‘A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing’?”

“Yes,” Stone replied, with an ambiguity worthy of his captain, “I may possibly have passed that expression to him.”

“Well, do you think you did?”

“Yes, I think I did do so—it is quite possible.”

“And were you talking about the ship all the time until she disappeared?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say this to Gibson, ‘Have a look at her now; it looks queer. She looks to have a big side out of the water’?”

“No, I did not say she had a big side out of the water; he remarked it to me.”

“Did you say, ‘Have a look at her now; she looks queer’?”

“That is at the time when I told him the lights appeared to be altering their position with regard to one another. Yes.”

“Did you think she looked queer?”

“I merely thought it was a funny change of her lights, that was all. That was before I had looked at her through the binoculars.”

“In view of the fact that this vessel had been sending up rockets, and in view of the fact that you said it looks queer, did not you think at the time that that ship was in distress?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I did not think the ship was in distress at the time.”

“It never occurred to you?”

“It did not occur to me because if there had been any grounds for supposing the ship would have been in distress
the Captain would have expressed it to me
.” The consternation in the London Drill Hall was complete: Stanley Lord earlier testified that he had expected Second Officer Stone to inform him if the rockets he was reporting were a distress signal, and here was Stone emphatically declaring that he expected
Lord
to tell
him
. Just what was going on aboard the
Californian
that night?

Lord Mersey, for one, had had enough of this nonsense. Turning to Stone, he said bluntly, “Never mind about the Captain. You are being asked about what you thought yourself. Do you mean to tell us that neither you nor Gibson expressed an opinion that there was something wrong with that ship?”

“No, not wrong with the ship, but merely with this changing of her lights.”

“Well, about this changing of her lights?”

“That is when I remarked that the lights looked queer. The lights, I said, not the ship.”

Mersey was completely out of patience with such semantic pedantry: “The lights are what I call part of the ship. The whole thing, lights and all, make up the ship. You want me to believe, do you, that notwithstanding these rockets, neither you nor Gibson thought there was anything wrong on board that ship; you want me to understand that?”

“Yes.”

Aspinall, perhaps sensing Mersey’s rising impatience, interceded, again addressing Stone. “I went back for a moment, but I want now to take you to the later period, when you spoke to the Captain and told him that the steamer had disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me whether the Captain made any reply to that, and, if so, what?”

“He again asked me if I was certain there were no colors in those lights whatsoever. I again assured him that they were all white, just white rockets.”

Now Aspinall began to delve into the heart of issue: “Can you explain why it was that the captain should again ask you if you were sure there were no colors in the lights?”

“No.”

“Have you no idea?” Aspinall was clearly disbelieving, casting a thinly-veiled aspersion on Stone’s professionalism, “You
are
a sailor?”

“Yes.”

“You were an onlooker paying careful attention, keeping those lights under observation, and then this question again comes from the Master. What did you think he meant by such a question?”

“I did not know, except that he had the thought in his mind that they may have been company signals of some sort.”

“But do you really mean that?” In other words, do you really believe that? Aspinall was asking.

“That thought may have been in his mind; I did not say it was in his mind.”

“Was it in yours?”

“That they were company’s signals?”

“Yes.”

“No, not that they were. They may possibly have been.”

Here Mersey asked for a clarification, “Would there be any significance in the lights if they were colored as distinct from white, Mr. Aspinall?”

“As I understand it, white lights are distress signals; company’s lights are very often colored.”

“Would distress signals be colored?”

Aspinall was momentarily at a loss for the appropriate regulation, but a colleague came to his rescue, handing Lord Mersey a copy of the Board of Trade pamphlet covering the use of nighttime signals. Thumbing through it, Mersey quickly discovered the appropriate passage, reading it aloud to the court: “Rockets or shells throwing stars of any color or description, fired one at a time at short intervals.”