This two-part article is primarily concerned with how the Titanic’s reported distress positions came about, and why they were so far west of the now known position of the Titanic wreck site. In the first part of this article we looked at the track Titanic was following from Queenstown to New York. We saw that Titanic took departure off Daunt’s Rock lightship at 2:20 p.m. GMT on April 11, 1912, hugged the southern coast of Ireland passing Fastnet Light at 5 p.m., and then followed a great circle route to a turning point in the Atlantic known as “the corner” at 42° N, 47° W. From the corner, we saw that the ship would take a straight rhumb-line course of 265° true to a point just south of the Nantucket Shoals lightship, and from there to the Ambrose Channel lightship marking the entrance to New York harbor. By noon Sunday, April 14, Titanic had covered 1,549 of the 1,675 nautical miles from Daunt’s Rock to the corner. We also looked at what Titanic’s fifth officer Harold Godfrey Lowe had to say concerning the role he played in calculating Titanic’s positions that Sunday afternoon. In particular, he explained how he derived a speed of 21 knots for the ship which he used to estimate the ship’s 8 p.m. dead reckoning (DR) position, and why that may have been somewhat underestimated because he based his estimate on a turning time of 6 p.m., the time when he came back on watch. As he put it, “It is nothing of any great importance.”

We also took a very close look at the course and distance that Titanic traveled from noon to the corner, and why Captain Smith set the time to alter the ship’s course toward New York at 5:50 p.m. We also saw that the change in the ship’s compass heading of 24 degrees was intended to put the ship onto the 265° true rhumb line to Nantucket, but later on, after a set of star sights were worked up by fourth officer Baxhall, he found that ship was actually making 266° true after correcting for compass deviation error.

We also started to look into the issue of the so called “delayed turn of the corner” that first came up during the British Inquiry. Both third officer Pitman and fourth officer Boxhall testified that the ship turned the corner late, Pitman specifying that he thought the ship’s course should have been altered at 5 p.m. instead of 5:50 p.m. In this part we will consider why these two officers believed that to be true, and how that was related to the CQD position that fourth officer Boxhall came up with. We will also look into the question as to why the initial CQD distress position transmitted from Titanic, attributed to Captain Smith, was even further away to the west of the wreck site.

THE BOXHALL CQD POSITION (41.46N, 50.14W) AND ‘7.30 STARS’

Sunday evening a set of stars were taken by Titanic’s second officer Charles Lightoller to obtain the ships position. This is known as a celestial fix. He was assisted by third officer Herbert Pitman who recorded the time of each sight. According to Pitman, the observations were taken

“between half past 7 and 20 minutes to 8.”¹ Following that, Pitman went inside the chartroom to begin the job of working up the sights. He was there for almost 20 minutes when fourth officer Boxhall and sixth officer Moody came on watch. Boxhall went to the chartroom where he found Pitman working on the star sights. Upon seeing Boxhall, Pitman handed him the set of sights and said, “Here is a bunch of sights for you, old man. Go ahead.”² And with that simple exchange, the job of working out the sights was handed off to Boxhall to complete.

At the British Inquiry fourth officer Boxhall was very specific about how he computed the ship’s distress position that was sent out in the CQD message picked up by the Carpathia. The information he provided was that he started from the ship’s 7:30 position, allowed a speed of 22 knots on a course of 266° true, and used a collision time of 11:46 p.m.³ Although the celestial fix is often referred to as the “7.30 position,” the actual position that would have been charted would be for the sight time of the last star that was taken.⁴ The process would be to advance the lines of position of all the stars along the ship’s track to the time of the last sight. According to Pitman, the last sight was taken about 20 minutes to 8, which means that the fix position would be charted for 7:40 p.m. if the last sight was taken at that time. What this means to Boxhall’s position is that he would compute the distance the ship ran from 7:40 p.m. to 11:46 p.m. by multiplying his 22 knots, which was his assumed speed over ground, by 4 hours and 6 minutes (exactly 4.1 hours) to get 90.2 nautical miles. He then needed to find the change in latitude and change in longitude from the fix position by moving 90.2 miles on a course of 266° true from the fix. For this he would most likely have used a set of traverse tables. One table, for the ship’s course, would given him the difference in latitude (called D. Lat.) in minutes-of-arc from north to south, and the change in distance, called the departure (or Dep.) in nautical miles from east to west. The second table, for the ship’s mean latitude, would give him the difference in longitude (called D. Lon.) in minutes-of-arc to the west by using the departure distance taken from the first table. All of this would take him less than 5 minutes to work out since he had the position of the celestial fix and the ship’s course already written down in his workbook.⁵

Since we know the CQD position he obtained, what we can do is work Boxhall’s problem in reverse to find the position for the celestial fix using the information provided. We start at 41° 46’ N, 50° 14’ W, his CQD position, and go 90.2 nautical mile on the reciprocal course heading of 266°, which is 086° true. What we find, using the same traverse table data that Boxhall would have used, is a position at 41° 52’ N, 48° 13’ W for the celestial fix that he worked up.

Shown on the chart below is Boxhall’s CQD position, Boxhall’s celestial fix, and Lowe’s 8 p.m. DR which we derived before. In addition, I extended the 266° course line back from Boxhall’s celestial fix to a point that corresponded to where the ship would have been at 5:50 p.m. (17:50 ATS) when her course was altered. What is quite clear from this picture is why third officer Pitman and fourth officer Boxhall believed that the ship had turned the corner late. Notice that this point, worked back from the star sight position, is about 15 miles southwestward of the corner. And since all of Titanic’s surviving officers believed the CQD position worked out by Boxhall was absolutely correct, it can only mean that the ship had to have turned the corner late for it to have traveled as far as it did when those star sights were taken. We of course know now that the CQD positions were not correct which means that an error worked its way into the overall process somehow.

WORKING UP THE STAR SIGHTS

At the American Inquiry fourth officer Boxhall explained the process of how the ‘7:30 star sights’ were taken to Senator Burton:⁶

“The officer who takes the observations always is the senior officer…He simply takes the observations with his sextant. The junior officer takes the time with the chronometer, and then is told to work them out…When you take stars you always endeavor, as they did that night, to take a set of stars. One position checks another. You take two stars for latitude, and two for longitude, one star north and one star south, one star east and one star west. If you find a big difference between eastern and western stars, you know there is a mistake somewhere. If there is a difference between these two latitude stars you know there is a mistake somewhere. But, as it happened, I think I worked out three stars for latitude and I think I worked out three stars for longitude…They all agreed.”

Assuming he did not make any mistakes in his calculations, Boxhall should have obtained a valid celestial position for Titanic. As he said, “one position checks another” and that night “they all agreed.” But in a 1962 BBC radio broadcast he said that the ship’s position was “just over 20 miles ahead of the dead reckoning.”⁷ As we can see in the area chart above, if you back the 8 p.m. DR of fifth officer Lowe by 20 minutes of steaming to 7:40 p.m. ATS, and then compare that to the position of the celestial fix for the same time, you can easily see what Boxhall was talking about. And there lies the clue to unlocking this mystery; a clue that should have produced some concern when that fix was first computed.

To fully understand what may have gone wrong, we need to understand a little bit about how a stellar position was actually determined during the period of time known as nautical twilight, when it was dark enough to see the stars yet bright enough to clearly see the horizon. Once the senior officer taking the sights determines which “navigational stars” should be used, he goes out on the wing of the bridge with his sextant to measure the altitude of each star; i.e., the angular height of the star above the horizon. At the same time, the junior officer would be looking at a watch, today referred to as a hack watch, to get the exact time of each sight to the nearest second at the instant the senior officer calls out “mark.” This hack watch would have been set close to the time on the ship’s chronometer which was keeping Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).⁸ The junior officer would also take the sextant to read off the vernier scale after each sight to get the exact angular measurement, and write down both the sextant reading and the exact time of the sight. This process would continue until all sights were taken, a process that was completed about “20 minutes to 8 p.m.” according to third officer Pitman.

With the times and angles recorded, the process of sight of reduction would begin. This process was started by Pitman a little after 20 minutes to 8. The first step in the reduction process would be to adjust for known errors and corrections. These include the dip of the horizon for the height of eye above the water (a correction of about 8 minutes-of-arc for the 65-70 foot height of eye on Titanic), as well as the sextant index error, both of which apply to all sights taken. In addition, an altitude correction would be subtracted for each individual star sight to compensate for atmospheric refraction. Then there are time adjustments to be made. The first would be to correct for the difference in hack watch time and chronometer time, and then to correct for any chronometer error based on the known chronometer gain or loss rate. This single time correction would then apply to all sights, and once done, would give the time of each sight to the nearest second in GMT.

All of these are the relatively easy things to do and were probably completed by Pitman when he handed the set of sights over to Boxhall to finish with at 8 p.m. What Boxhall had to do was to reduce the corrected sight data to get the ship’s position in latitude and longitude. Essentially, the task was to solve what is called the navigational triangle for each sight taken. This navigational triangle is formed from three points on the celestial sphere, the imaginary sphere of the heavens upon which we can consider the stars to be fixed for navigational purposes. For an observer in the northern hemisphere, the first point would be the north celestial pole, P, the point in the heavens directly above the north pole of the earth. The second point would be the observed star’s location, X, on the celestial sphere which we can get from a nautical almanac. Just like geographic locations, a star’s location on the celestial sphere is expressed by two coordinates. The first is called declination (d), the equivalent of the stars latitude, and measured in degrees north or south of the celestial equator. The second is called Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA), the equivalent of the star’s longitude, and measured westward from the Greenwich meridian in degrees or in units of time. The third point is the observer’s zenith, Z, the point on the celestial sphere directly overhead at the time the observation was taken. If we can determine exactly where the zenith point is for the time of the observation, then that can easily be converted to a point on the surface of the earth expressed in terms of latitude and longitude. It is the location of this zenith point that is being worked. The figure below shows the navigational triangle and these three points.

By 1912 there were a number of methods in use to work out star sights to fix a ship’s position. But whatever method Boxhall actually used, the longitude of the ship depended on an accurate measurement of time. And this is where I believe a misreading took place.

When Pitman started to work up the sight data before the change of watch at 8 p.m. he had to correct the time on the hack watch to the time on one of the ship’s chronometers located in the chart room. To do this he needed to know the exact time difference between the two. That difference was taken by comparing the time on the two clocks. As the second hand of one clock struck 12, he would note the position of the second hand on the other clock, then note the position of the minute hand, and finally the position of the hour hand in that sequence. The times on both clocks would then be recorded, and the difference in time to the nearest second is the correction that would be applied when converting the time taken on the hack watch to chronometer time for each sight. A simple misreading of just 1 minute would affect all of the sights taken by moving their Greenwich Hour Angles by 1 minute of time, which is equivalent to 15 minutes-of-arc (1/4 of a degree), either way.⁹ The result is that any derived fix that was worked from these sights would off by exactly that amount.

Unless Boxhall suspected a conversion error such as this, he would have no way of really knowing if his sights were off or not. The sights would appear to all agree, which they did. The result of this error is that the celestial fix that he calculated would be just over 11 nautical miles from where it should have been. This would then put his CQD position, which is a dead reckoning position derived from the celestial fix, 11 miles from the location where it should have been. I believe that a one minute error in the comparison of the hack watch time and the time on the chronometer added a 1 minute increase to the GHA of all the star sights taken thereby shifting the lines of position of these sights to the west by 15 minutes-of-arc.

How can such an error happen? Consider the chronometer pictured below.

When time is read off the dials it is taken by reading the second hand first at the “mark,” then the minute hand, then the hour hand. What you see on the chronometer above is 52 seconds, 7 minutes, and 11 hours. But the time on the chronometer is really 11:06:52, not 11:07:52. A mistake that is very easily made if one is not being very careful. The result of such an error is an advancement in GMT time by exactly 1 minute. A result that would shift the lines of position for all star sights by 15 minutes-of-arc to the west.

The diagram below shows the result of such a shift on the lines of position of six navigational stars that were available to Lightoller that night. The fix on the left is what Boxhall would have computed. The fix shown on the right is where it should have been if a one minute misreading error had not taken place.

If this is what happened, then we have a plausible explanation for why Boxhall’s CQD position was so far off. Boxhall’s ‘7.30 stars’ charted for 7:40 p.m. (19:40) ATS should have worked out to be 41° 52’ N, 47° 58’ W. His CQD position should have been 41° 46’ N, 49° 59’ W, less than 3 miles from the wreck site instead of 13 miles away. And if fifth officer Lowe would only have taken the time to be more careful in using the time that the ship actually turned the corner, 5:50 p.m. instead of using 6:00 p.m., then he would have obtained a speed over ground of 21.6 knots for his dead reckoning work, and his 8 p.m. DR would have worked out to 41° 56’ N, 48° 03’ W. Backing that for 20 minutes to 7:40 p.m. ATS, we find a DR position for the ship at 41° 57’ N, 47° 53’ W, a distance that is only 5 ½ miles from our corrected celestial fix instead of 20 miles from the uncorrected fix.

The chart below shows what should have been.

THE SMITH CQD POSITION (41.44 N, 50.24W)

We now come to question of why was the initial CQD position worked by Capt. Smith even further away from the wreck site than that of fourth officer Boxhall? What Smith had available to him was the celestial fix worked out by Boxhall which was put on his chart about 10 p.m. that night.¹⁰ What he would have noticed from the position on the chart is that Titanic was about 3 nautical miles south of the intended track line from the corner to the Nantucket Shoals lightship. This would come as no real surprise since he already knew that ice was reported well south of where it usually was expected for that time of year, and that the water temperature had already dropped below the freezing point indicating that his ship was likely being set southward by the “arctic current.” At the time he worked up the initial distress position he would have used the star fix that was on his chart as the logical starting point. After all, all lines of position had crossed at that point. However, the course that he set for the ship when they altered course at 5:50 p.m. was to put her on 265° true toward the Nantucket lightship. It was only after Boxhall worked out the deviation of the standard compass after first coming up with the star fix did he realized that the true course being followed was 266° true as we have seen.

Did Boxhall mention to Capt. Smith that the ship was making 266° true instead of 265° true? According to Boxhall it appears that he did.

15678. You would not have to return to look at the [Captain’s] chart after the accident? – [Boxhall] No, I had used that same position two or three times after giving it to the Captain, and that same course I used two or three times after giving it to the Captain as well, between 10 o'clock and the time of the collision, for the purpose of working up stellar deviations.

15679. That is to say checking where you were? - No, checking the compass error.

Compass checks were required at regular intervals on board White Star Line vessels.¹¹ Compass error would be checked by comparing the true azimuth angle of a celestial body, calculated from celestial sight data, with a measured compass azimuth angle for the body using the azimuth mirror and ring on the standard compass located on the amidships platform. The difference between the computed azimuth angle and the true azimuth angle is the total compass error. To get the deviation error of the compass, you would just subtract the local magnetic variation for the ship's location from that result.¹²

Boxhall first needed to find the compass error for him to realize that the ship was really on a heading of 266° true instead of 265° true. It may be that he gave the celestial fix to Capt. Smith to put on his chart before working up the compass error. According to Boxhall, Capt. Smith “put down the ships 7.30 position on his chart...approximately [at] 10 o'clock.” And then “between 10 o'clock and the time of the collision” Boxhall said he was working “up stellar deviations” to check compass error. To get an accurate value for the ship’s true course heading, you first must have an accurate value for the compass error.

So the question is what was the course used by Capt. Smith when he worked up his distress position? If you start from the celestial fix worked out by Boxhall, 41° 52’ N, 48° 13’ W, and draw a line to the Smith position at 41° 44’N, 50° 24’ W, you find a course line that runs 265° true, exactly parallel to the course from the corner to the Nantucket lightship but about 3 miles to the south. This is shown on the chart below along with the 266° course line from the celestial fix to the Boxhall CQD, and the 265° course line from the corner to the Nantucket Shoals lightship. (For additional reference, all the known ice warnings received by wireless on Titanic that Sunday, April 14, 1912, are also indicated on this chart.)¹³

In dead reckoning work you always start from a known fix at a known point in time. To get to a position for some other time, you take the ship’s heading and assumed speed and calculate the distance traveled along the course line for a given time interval. If Capt. Smith was indeed informed by Boxhall that the ship was actually making 266° instead of 265°, then he should have used 266° for the course. But from the chart above it seems that he used a heading of 265° true from the fix. Why? One reason may be that Captain Smith did not have the course line that Boxhall worked out after Boxhall gave him the celestial fix position to put on his chart at 10 p.m. The other reason may be that Capt. Smith realized from the position of the celestial fix that the ship’s course-made-good over ground was being set to the south of the actual heading she was on, and smartly decided to use the older course heading instead. Either way, the undeniable fact is that the Smith CQD is located on a line 265° true from the charted Boxhall celestial fix.

With the knowledge we have, let us work through the steps that Capt. Smith would have taken to find the initial distress position.

According to Quartermaster Robert Hichens, when the accident occurred, “the first officer told the other quartermaster standing by [QM Olliver who just came onto the bridge] to take the time, and told one of the junior officers [Moody most likely] to make a note of that in the logbook. That was at 20 minutes of 12; sir.”¹⁴ So what Capt. Smith had available to him was an accident time of 11:40 p.m., a celestial star fix charted for 7:40 p.m., and a course line of 265° true that he decided use. He also knew that Titanic was running on smooth seas for the last several hours since the sun went down. Just as Boxhall assumed, he probably would have allowed 22 knots over ground for same reasons that Boxhall noted.¹⁵

Using a course of S 85° W true (265°) and a speed of 22 knots, let us try to reproduce the computations that Capt. Smith would have made and see what may have happened to produce the result he obtained.

The first thing Capt. Smith needed to do was find the distance that the ship had run since departing the celestial fix position. If the fix was charted for the time the sights were completed, 7:40 p.m. according to Pitman, and the accident was logged at 11:40 p.m. according to what Hichens said, then we have a run of 4 hours of time at 22 knots for a distance of 88 nautical miles. The next thing Capt. Smith needed to do is find the change in the ship’ latitude and longitude for the course she was making. For this he would refer to the use of traverse tables since no tedious mathematical calculations would be need. One table would give him the change in latitude to the south as well as the departure distance to the west for the distance traveled from the fix. The second table would give him the change in longitude to the west using the departure distance obtained from the first table. The entire process would literally take just a couple of minutes to do.

So let’s look at what he found. A traverse table similar to the one below for a course of 265° true would be used first.¹⁶ Starting from the columns on the bottom of the table marked: Dist., Dep., and D. Lat., he would first find the distance traveled (88 miles) above in the Dist. column, then get the departure distance (in nautical miles) from the Dep. column, and then the difference in latitude (in minutes-of-arc) from the D. Lat. column. He would write those items down on a piece of paper:

Dist. = 88 miles, Dep. = 87.7 miles, and D. Lat. = 7.7’

Next he would take the traverse table corresponding to the parallel of latitude that they were closest to ( 42°) and use the columns labeled D. Lon. and Dep. at the top of the table.¹⁷ As shown below, he would go down the column marked Dep. until he got to the departure distance he obtained from the first table (87.7 miles), and then take the value for the difference in longitude (in minutes-of-arc) under the D. Lon. column that is next to it:

D. Lon. = 118’

He now has everything he needs to get the distress position coordinates from the star fix coordinates. All he had to do is subtract D. Lat. = 7.7’ from the latitude of the star fix, and add D. Lon. = 118’ to the longitude of the star fix. Some very simple arithmetic using a pencil and paper.

So let’s do the simple math taking one coordinate at a time. We begin with the latitude calculation.

Boxhall’s star fix latitude was 41° 52’ N. From this Smith subtracts 7.7’ which gives him 41° 44.3’ N. Rounding off to the nearest whole minute-of-arc, he writes: 41° 44’ N for the CQD latitude. This is shown in the work up below:

Next he works on the longitude.

Boxhall’s star fix longitude was 48° 13’ W. To this Smith adds 118’ which gives him 48° 131’ W. But 131 minutes-of-arc needs to be converted to degrees and minutes of arc, there being 60’ in every 1° of arc. So he just divides the 131 by 60 to get 2° with a remainder of 11’. Now he can easily add the 2° to the 48° of the fix, and the 11’ to the 13’ of the fix. Right?

This is where I believe a simple error was made after having made such an error myself when first working this up. If you add 2° 11’ to the longitude of the star fix, 48° 13’ W, you get what is shown in the work up below:

But the error is adding 2° 11’ to the star fix longitude. The reason is that the value 2° 11’ already contains the 13’ from the star fix longitude. The correct answer is obtained by adding 2° 11’ to 48° 00’ to give you 50° 11’ W, not the erroneous 50° 24’ W shown above.

A simple error possibly made by in the haste to work up the ship’s distress coordinates. Under other circumstances, such an error would probably have been quickly realized. But under the conditions of a sinking ship, having been told that the ship may be gone in an hour or an hour and a half, it probably went unchecked. 18

If we accept this possibility as the means in which the coordinates of the initial CQD came about, then we should realize that if such an error was not made, Capt. Smith would have obtained 41° 44’ N, 50° 11’ W as the initial CQD position, just about 2 miles east and 2 miles south of the Boxhall CQD location. Still, because of the common 15’ error in the celestial fix, it would have been over 10 miles west of the wreck site. Ironically, if we also remove the 15’ error in the celestial fix from this result, the Smith CQD would have worked out to 41° 44’ N, 49° 56’ W, a position almost directly over the wreck site and very close to the where the collision most likely took place.¹⁹

“HE TOLD ME TO TAKE IT TO THE MARCONI ROOM”

It was "approximately 20 minutes to half an hour" after the collision that fourth officer Boxhall returned from his second inspection down below and “reported to the Captain” about the flooding he saw in the mail room. He then went to call upon Lightoller, Pitman, and Lowe. After calling upon those officers:²⁰

“I think I went towards the bridge, I am not sure whether it was then that I heard the order given to clear the boats or unlace the covers. I might have been on the bridge for a few minutes and then heard this order given…I went right along the line of boats and I saw the men starting, the watch on deck, our watch…I went along the port side, and afterwards I was down the starboard side as well but for how long I cannot remember. I was unlacing covers on the port side myself and I saw a lot of men come along - the watch I presume. They started to screw some out on the afterpart of the port side; I was just going along there and seeing all the men were well established with their work, well under way with it, and I heard someone report a light, a light ahead. I went on the bridge and had a look to see what the light was…But before I saw this light I went to the chart room and worked out the ship’s position.”

Why did Boxhall go to work out the ship’s position after coming onto the bridge after someone reported a light? It is obvious that someone had told him to do that. That person had to be Capt. Smith.²¹

“I encountered him [Capt. Smith] when reporting something to him, or something, and he was inquiring about the men going on with the work, and I said, ‘Yes, they are carrying on all right.’ I said, ‘Is it really serious?’ He said, ‘Mr. Andrews tells me he gives her from an hour to an hour and a half.’ Evidently Mr. Andrews had been down.”

We know from what Boxhall said that he came back onto the bridge to have a look at the light of a ship that someone reported ahead. However, when he gets to the bridge he encounters Capt. Smith who, having most likely just returned from the Marconi room after handing Phillips the CQD coordinates for the initial distress message,²² asks him how the work was progressing on getting the boats out. Boxhall then asks Smith if the situation is really serious, and Smith shares with him what Thomas Andrews had said. It was at this time that the subject of a distress message must have been brought up. It may have been Boxhall who suggested that he check the position since the celestial fix showed the ship well ahead of the DR, and that the ship’s true heading was S 86° W instead of the S 85° W originally intended. In any case, Smith must have thought it was a good idea for Boxhall to check the position, and Boxhall was sent to the chart room to do so.²³

“But after seeing the men continuing with their work I saw all the officers were out, and I went into the chart room to work out its position…It was after that, yes, [that I saw this light] because I must have been to the Marconi office with the position²⁴…I submitted the position to the Captain first, and he told me to take it to the Marconi room.”

The time Boxhall needed to work out his CQD position would be a less than five minutes. He had the celestial fix location already recorded in his workbook as well as the ship’s true heading that he worked out earlier. A set of traverse tables were readily available to him, and he only need to open the one for a course of S 86° W and another for a latitude of 42°. Interpolation between different tabular values would not have been necessary. His worksheet probably looked something like what is shown below.

CONCLUSIONS

From the work presented in this article, we see how a simple 1 minute error in reading the time difference between a hack watch and the time on a chronometer can offset a set of star sights by 15 minutes-of-arc. This type of systematic error would tend to go unnoticed since all sights would be affected exactly the same way. We also noted that such an error would affect all positions derived from that celestial star sight reference, including the two distress positions that were transmitted by wireless from Titanic that night. Furthermore, we saw how such a misplacement of this celestial fix would cause third officer Pitman and fourth officer Boxhall to conclude that the ship must have turned the corner much later than what was originally thought.

We also looked at the ships position for local apparent noon on April 14 from two independent sources. One from evidence provided by fifth officer Lowe, and the other from the distance the ship made good since departing Queenstown on April 11. We also compared this to data taken the year before from Titanic’s sister ship Olympic. Additionally, we took a detailed look at how fifth officer Lowe worked up the ship’s 8 p.m. dead reckoning position for the night orders book. We found that fifth offer Lowe tends to be very precise in the numbers he gets such as the ship’s course from noon to the corner, and the speed of the ship from noon to 8 p.m. However, his results may not have been very accurate since he appears to not have used the correct time that the ship actually altered course when near the corner. As we have seen from Lowe’s own description, he did not consider the 8 p.m. DR to be of much importance.

In addition, we also saw how a simple and understandable oversight in adding a tabulated difference in longitude to a star sight longitude could have shifted the initial CQD position further westward from where it should have been. We also noticed that if simple errors such as these were not made, the initial CQD position would have fallen almost directly on top of the wreck site location.

Although the results presented in this article appear to give rational explanations as to why the two CQD positions transmitted from Titanic were so far off, the reader is cautioned by the assumptions that were necessarily made in coming up with these explanations. Unfortunately, there is no direct proof that a misreading of a clock took place by third officer Pitman, or that Capt. Smith actually made that simple oversight error in his haste to work up the initial distress coordinates. But what we do know is that both CQD positions were well to west of where Titanic foundered. The explanations presented here are entirely consistent with what we do know about how ship positions were calculated back in 1912, and they make use of evidence presented in the historical record, including the use of data presented by Titanic’s surviving officers and several others.

There were many things that affected the course of events for Titanic and the people who sailed upon her that memorable night in April 1912. Some were caused by nature, while others were caused by simple human error. There were a number things that seemed to go wrong. A possible misreading of a clock, a DR location that was considered not to be “of any importance,” a possible oversight in adding two numbers together, and a failure to recognize that something may not be quite right when an otherwise perfectly good fix was put down on the chart too far ahead of the DR.

For the survivors of Titanic that night there were also a few things that did go in their favor. They were fortunate that Carpathia ’s wireless operator decided to call up Titanic instead of turning off his set and going to bed. They were fortunate that fourth officer Boxhall had the foresight to have some green flares put in his boat before he left Titanic.²⁵ And they were very lucky that Carpathia just happened to be coming up from the southeast having to pass close to the wreckage and lifeboats on her way to the wrong location.

Go to part 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would especially like to thank Captain Peg Brandon, Assistant Professor at the Maine Maritime Academy, for reviewing this work and also for taking the time to write the foreword to this article. I would also like to thank Captain Charles Weeks, also of the Maine Maritime Academy and respected Titanic researcher, for his review of this work and for the suggestions that he offered.

1 AI p. 272-273.

2 AI p. 275.

3 BI 15639-15644 and 15658-15660. The time he used may have been to simplify his calculations since at the American Inquiry Boxhall told Senator Smith: “There is a question about that [the time of collision]. Some say 11.45, some say 11.43. I myself did not note it exactly, but that is as near as I can tell I reckoned it was about 11.45.” (see AI p. 918.) Using 11:46 allows for some drift following the collision, and it makes the time from a charted fix for 7:40 to a stopping point at 11:46 exactly 4.10 hours.

4 The American Practical Navigator [Bowditch], 2002, Bicentennial Edition, Ch. 20, section 2004.

5 BI 15676-15677.

6 AI pp. 931-932.

7 Transcript of the broadcast.

8 The Titanic actually carried two chronometers in the officer’s chart room, one as a check against the other. (Report of Survey of an Emigrant Ship, Board of Trade Surveyors Office, Belfast, 3rd April, 1912.) The hack watch used on deck would normally be set to match the time on the chronometers. Any difference in seconds would be noted for correction afterward. For the short period of time that it takes to take the star sights, the accuracy of the hack watch would be more than adequate.

9 The earth rotates 360° in 24 hours, or 15° per hour. Therefore, in 1 minute of time it would rotate 15°/60-min = 1/4 of a degree, which is equal to 15’ of arc.

10 BI 1555 1-15554.

11 IMM Co. Ship’s Rules and Uniform Regulations, Issued July 01, 1907, Rule 253.

12 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Handbook of Magnetic Compass Adjustment, Bethesda, MD, 2004, Ch. VII (Ship’s Headings) and VIII (Azimuths).

13 Wreck Commission Report on the Loss of the Titanic, July 30, 1912, Section 2, Subsection: “Ice Messages Received.”

14 AI P. 456.

15 The ship’s measured speed through the water as noted on the taffrail log averaged 22.29 knots from noon to the time of collision at 11:40 p.m. Between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., the ship averaged about 22.5 knots through the water by the taffrail log. (See AI pp. 519 and p. 523, and BI 17608- 17630, and BI 965-966.)

16 The table is actually intended to be used for eight difference course angles, include two running northward (005° and 365°), two running southward (175° and 185°), two running eastward (085° and 095°), and two running westward (265° and 275°). On his table courses would have been written as N5°E, N5°W, S5°E, S5°W, N85°E, N85°W, S85°E, and S85°W.

17 Since each table can be used for handling two different latitudes, one being the complementary angle of the other, the table he would use is the one marked for 42° and 48°.

18 BI 15610.

19 The wreck site coordinates to center of the boiler field is at 41° 43.5’ N, 49° 56.8’ W. The location of this corrected Smith CQD, 41° 44’ N, 49° 56’ W, is just over 5 ship lengths to the northeast, and also very close to where the collision most likely took place. (See: Samuel Halpern, “Collision Point,” on the GLTS Website.

20 BI 15383-15388.

22 Harold Bride said “The Captain gave him [Phillips] the latitude and longitude of the Titanic, and told him to be quick about it or words to that effect.” See BI 16508.

23 BI 15388-15391.

24 The transcript from the British Inquiry read: “15390. Was it after that you saw this light? - It was after that, yes [author’s emphasis], because I must have been to the Marconi office with the position after I saw the light.” However, it was very clear from the overall context that Boxhall saw the light after having worked up his CQD position and taking it to the Marconi room. The punctuation in the transcript makes more sense if it had read: “It was after that, yes, because I must have been to the Marconi office with the position. After, I saw the light.”

25 BI 15448.