Mustering the passengers and those crew members not already on duty was a slow business. No general alarm was sounded on the Titanic. There are at least two theories as to why. It has been suggested the ship itself and the passengers (we seem to be back to the “gallant ladies and gentlemen” in first class) were too dignified to be disturbed by a lot of clanging bells. A “fact” substantiated by the myths and legends of how the passengers waited with collective quiet patience and courage.
Senator Smith asked Second Officer Lightoller if there had been any jostling or pushing or crowding.
Maybe with a touch of British pride, the replied, “None whatever.”
The Senator asked, “The men all refrained from asserting their strength and crowding back the women and children?”
Lightoller told him, “They could not have stood quieter if they had been in church.”
It was a lie and Lightoller knew it was, but it had the makings of a wonderful legend.
Others have suggested no alarm was sounded for the “obvious” reason Captain Smith knew only too well there were lifeboat spaces for less than half the people on board; sounding the alarm would have brought everybody onto the Boat Deck, and once there, realizing the situation (there weren’t enough boats for them all), they would have panicked.
A third suggestion is that Smith wanted to get the first and second class passengers away in the available boats – the location of the first and second class areas of the ship meant they could be summoned to the Boat Deck easily – but a general alarm would have brought the unwanted steerage passengers up too.
Smith did know the lifeboat capacity of course, but at only a few minutes past midnight, it was not his main concern. This is something all too often overlooked. The captain of the Titanic expected help to arrive in time ..... after all, the wireless operators were sending out a distress call. The lifeboat capacity, even the scandalous lack of seamen to launch and man the boats there were, was of secondary concern at this stage.
There is a more “obvious” reason why no general alarm was sounded that night.
It was summed up ten years later by Lieutenant Commander (U.S. Navy) Felix Reisenberg in his Standard Seamanship for the Merchant Service. Although he was writing long after the Titanic went down, Reisenberg was advocating nothing new, revolutionary or reactionary deck officers had not known about for years when he advised them to ... Never allow passengers to swarm up on the Boat Deck in the early stage of an emergency. They got in the way of uncovering and swinging out the boats.
Above all other considerations that night, Captain Smith needed to be practical if he was going to save lives. He was after all up against the most relentless of enemies, Time. A general alarm would have resulted in passesngers swarming onto the boat deck from the start – that is the purpose of a general alarm – and if they had, there would have been close on 1,300 of them getting in the way of uncovering and swinging out the boats. By not sounding the alarm, Smith bought some precious time, even a few minutes, which meant the job could get done, and because of it, he saved lives.
It is, too, the more rational explaination as to why steerage passengers were encouraged to stay below decks for as long as they were. (Despite the myths, there is no concrete evidence more than 3 gates were physically locked to keep the Steerage passengers below decks, or they were locked after the collision. They were of course locked as part of the normal class-segregation policy in force throughout the voyage. Rather than being locked after the collision, it seems they were not unlocked, for whatever reason, and that is not the same thing.) Things ‘up top’ were going to be difficult enough for the crew when only the first and second class passengers heard what was going on and drifted up. If the Steerage passengers had been there as well – many unable to speak or understand English – there would have been chaos. More in fact than there was. Anything remotely resembling effective crowd control would have been close to impossible earlier than it did, and as a direct result, lives would have been lost.
In the meantime, while passengers were being roused and told to put on their lifebelts, and the boats were being uncovered and swung out prior to loading, another, very significant, drama was unfolding in the wireless shack, one that had far-reaching consequences for everybody on the Titanic.
SS Frankfurt
Within three minutes of Jack Phillips’ transmission of CQD, he had an acknowledgement from the Norddeutscher-Lloyd immigrant ship, the Frankfurt. This was the ship Junior Operator Harold Bride would insist at the inquiries was the closest ship to the stricken Titanic. He judged that, he said, by what Phillips told him about the strength of the signal ..... a point brushed aside carelessly at the time, and still ignored in the main today.
Titanic Wireless Operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride
It is not always true of course that a strong signal means the transmitter is close at hand, but more often than not it is, and most certainly it was in the case of the early equipment in use in 1912. Other evidence strongly suggests Phillips was right: the Frankfurt was the closest ship to respond to the Titanic.
Of all the sung heroes that night, and there are several, it is Senior Wireless Operator Jack Phillips who has captured the imagination of most. He is the man (little more than a boy) who stands above the rest. He stuck to his post doggedly right to the end. One story has him in water up to his waist still sending his calls for help. Even the 1943 Nazi-propaganda movie about the disaster made Phillips a hero, sending Bride away to safety – releasing his pet bird – before literally going down with the ship still at his wireless.
While in reality water was not up to Phillips’ waist, nor even yet inside the wireless shack when he and Bride finally got out, the sentiment is a valid one, however exaggerated. The Virginian reporting hearing the Titanic’s radio sending faintly at 2:17 is a clear indication of how fine Phillips cut it before getting out.
Did he literally go down with the ship, as is common belief? Most historians say he did. There is however a chance he did not.
On April 27th, 1912, Harold Bride told the Marconi Traffic Manager, W.B. Cross, that Jack Phillips made it to the overturned lifeboat, Collapsible B, but died of exposure before the Carpathia reached them. It was reported in the American Inquiry, page 1053, and was repeated the following day, April 28th, in the New York Times.
Second Officer Lightoller, himself having reached the overturned Boat B, told the same story years later. He described how Phillips ... slipped down, sitting in the water ... though we held his head up, he never recovered. It was, Lightoller claimed, from Phillips on the overturned collapisible, he got his lost-message-under-the-paperweight story (as unlikely as that seems ..... Phillips is dying, but manages to find the strength to tell Lightoller about the missing message? It is possible, of course, but very improbable)
Was Phillips really on Boat B at all? Most historians doubt it. At least two men died on the overeturned boat. The body of one was trasnferred to Boat 12, and then to the Carpathia and was buried at sea. Some believe it was an unnamed fireman, or maybe third class passenger Abraham Harmer. Both Lightoller and Bride, independently, said it was Jack Phillips.
For all Phillips’ deserved hero-status, however, a question or two about him has to be asked ..... and the most important one is: did he take it upon himself to make a decision that night which proved fatal to him and to the 1,500 passengers and crew of the Titanic who died?
Was he ordered to do it?
John George (‘Jack’) Phillips was doubtless a courageous man, but was he truly the complete hero legend and myth say he was? He clearly made more than one very serious error that night, including his terse, unprofessional dismissal of Cyril Evans on the Californian when he tried to tell the Titanic about the ice (see CHAPTER EIGHT)
There was, however, something else. When Captain Smith gave the order to send out the call for assistance, Phillips (according to Harold Bride) asked if he should send the “regulation distress call” and Smith told him “yes”. Phillips then hunched over the Morse key and began tapping “CQD” into the freezing night.
The question is ..... why did he do that? “CQD” was not the international regulation distress call in 1912. “CQD” had never been the interrnational regulation distress call. Technically, “CQD” was not a distress call at all.
As far back as 1906, Germany initiated the Berlin Wireless Telegraphic Conference in the hope not only to get wireless telegraphy standardized – it was very much in its infancy at the time – but also to do something about the potentially dangerous rivalry between the various telegraphic companies, like Telefunken and Marconi. It was a rivalry that was not only widespread, but also dangerous, even – on occasion – life threatening.
At the risk of making an over simplified generalization, most German ships of the day carried Telefunken operators and equipment, while most British registered ships used Marconi. Operators from one company frequently refused tohandle messages either to or from the rivals. Equally important, there was no standard distress call, although as early as 1903, at another Berlin international convention, it had been suggested, but not adopted, that “SSSDDD” could serve as an ‘unmistakable’ distress call.
In the meantime, from 1904, Marconi operators had been using “CQD”, but it was not an interantional call, and neither was it a distress call.
It was made up of two sets of letters: “CQ” and “D”. The transmitted letters “CQ” was an all stations call, one directed at no ship in particular, but all in general. Marconi operators, if they were not actually working a ship – that is, sending and receiving messages – transmitted “CQ” every couple of hours or so just to keep in touch with the others and find out who was in their area (a practice still being used in the 1960’s).
In 1904, Marconi added “D” to “CQ” – making it “CQD” – which was to be used in the case of required assistance. The popular press of the day, and the public, loved it; they convinced themselves it stood for Come Quick Danger. Many today still believe it. It did not. What it meant was, “CQ” (all stations ..... anybody out there listening) “D” (I am in need of assistance). It was a call that could be and was used in any and all situations when a ship was asking for help from any other ship near enough to give it. Maybe a doctor was required for a crewmember or passenger, maybe the ship’s engines had broken down and it was drifting, maybe another ship without wireless required some form of assistance ..... and maybe the ship was on fire, or sinking and lives were at risk. Whatever the problem, “CQD” was sent, and once it had been, an amplifier was necessary. The nature of the required assistance needed to be explained.
In short, and importantly, aside from the fact it was exclusively a Marconi Company signal and not an International Distress call, “CQD” on its own meant nothing beyond the fact the sender required some kind of assistance.
Not surprisingly, it created some confusion and delay while the ship receiving the signal waited for details that were not always forthcoming immediately (if at all), and had to be asked for. After all, any ship was prepared – in fact was required by international law – to go to the assistance of a ship in real trouble, but few captains were prepared to inconvenience his own ship, passengers and owner, to say nothing of the added expense or potential risk, to go chasing around after another ship that really was in no danger.
In 1906, the Berlin Conference took the matter up (not for the first time) and various suggestions for a truly international distress call were put forward. The Germans wanted SOE – it was already the German equivalent of Marconi’s “CQ” – the Americans wanted “NC”, the existing international distress signal code for visual signaling. Eventually, after much discussion and one imagines arguing, a variation on the German “SOE” was adopted.The new and first International Distress Call for wireless was ..... “SOS”.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Except ..... in the case of the Titanic, it was not.
A great deal has been made of the simplicity of the Morsed letter “SOS”. It is true, they are simple: three dots, three dashes, three dots. Virtually anybody can recogize them without telegraphic training, although of course it would help not a all if that was all that could be read, and nothing of the distressed ship’s coordinates.
The ease with which the letters could or could not be read, however, was not the overriding factor behind their adoption. Trained operators were going to be receiving them. The thing about this call was its uniqueness. It was intended to be.
For a Marconi operator (Jack Phillips of course was a Marconi employee) to preface a call with “CQ” only meant a general call to “ALL STATIONS”. Something else would follow ..... or nothing at all if all he was doing was keeping in touch during a quiet period. When “D” was added, it was clear to whoever received it the caller was not, for example, about to transmit a weather report (or a frivolous having-a-wonderful-time-wish-you-were-here message from a passenger), but was going to ask for some kind of assistance. What it did not mean was the ship sending it was necessarily in any phyiscal or immediate danger, or that lives were at risk. It could well have been the case, but “CQD” did not necessarily mean it was.
On the other hand, “SOS” was intended to have one and only one meaning; no amplification or long-winded explanation was called for. For an operator to send “SOS” and then his ship’s position was – at least in theory – the only thing required for other ships to react swiftly and without question, in much the same way “MAYDAY” would later come to mean the same in voice transmissions. A ship could send “CQD” and then its position and then maybe nothing more because it had lost power, or gone down, or for whatever reason. In the meantime, the operator receiving it would certainly and legitimately waste time calling back to ask for details ..... ask, What is the matter with you? What kind of assistance do you want?
“SOS” meant a ship was in grave danger and lives were at risk, and that is all it meant. On hearing it, a wireless operator was to inform his captain and the ship would make all possible speed to go to the rescue. It was obliged to do so. Under Article 2 of the Brussels Convention, a captain ..... or person in charge of a vessel shall render assistance to every person who is found at sea in danger of being lost. Any failure to comply would mean the captain – or person in charge of the vessel – was Guilty of a misdemeanor.
It was a sensible and responsible solution reached in Berlin in 1906.
Also agreed in Berlin was that “SOS” would be phased in by 1908 and used exclusively by all operators of all telegraphic companies of all countries for all serious distress situations ..... two years after the conference and four years before the Titanic struck the iceberg.
Of course, a signed agreement between companies, even one subsequently ratified by governments, was no guarantee the old rivalries between operators and companies would vanish overnight, nor even over a period of months and years. When the White Star Line’s Republic sank in 1909, its Maroni operator, Jack Binns, sent “CQD” a full year after “SOS” had been officially phased in and become the only acceptable International Distress Call.
Maybe that could be explained away as Binns’ loyalty to Marconi and the old ways. But in 1912 another, more sinisiter, element had entered the arena.
The Great War in Europe did not break out suddenly and unexpectedly in 1914; it came as no surprise to anybody. There had been a long, gradual build-up of tension over the years. The British for example had been stock-piling oil since before 1910 with just this approaching conflict in mind. Jack Phillips – 24 years old – and his fellor operators were children of their age, influenced by the international political waves which generated, maybe demanded, patriotic responses. By 1912, the old rivalries between the “British” Marconi and “German” Telefunken were as much motivated by national and international politics and prejudices as they were by any out-dated company loyalty and/or professional jealousy. Maybe more so. And while we can maybe convince ourselves it was loyalty to the reduntant Marconi signal that prompted Jack Binns to stubbornly send CQD instead of “SOS” from the sinking Republic in 1909, can we really believe the same of Jack Phillips on the Titanic three years later? He hadn’t even been a wireless operator at the time of the 1906 conference. He was trained to know the only international distress call was “SOS”. And yet, at around 12:15 a.m. on Monday, April 15th, he transmitted “CQD” into the ether ..... and something like three minutes later, received the first acknowledgement, from the Norddeutscher Lloyd ship Frankfurt. A German.
Scribbling it down, we are told, Phillips tore the sheet from the signals pad and handed the Frankfurt’s reply to Bride, who took it to Captain Smith, who was probably on the bridge. According to Bride, when he gave the message to Smith, the captain said he wanted to know the Frankfurt’s position, so the junior operator went back to the wireless shack where Phillips told him he was waiting for just that ..... for the Frankfurt to give its position.
In the meantime, if we can believe the report in the German monthly magazine for Army and Navy affairs (Überall) the Frankfurt’s captain, Hattorff, on learning about the Titanic’s “CQD” from his wireless operator, ordered the ship to change course and head at full speed for the liner’s given position. According to Überall he even gave orders for the galley to bake bread and the crew to get out blankets. Boat crews, too, were ordered on deck and told to stand by. By Hattorff’s calculations (the Frankfurt could make around 13 knots) he could be at the Titanic’s side by 2 a.m.; with luck, a little earlier.
He paced his bridge, fixed his gaze on the distant, star-studded horizon, and considered the situation as he understood it to be. He had no choice. He had no idea what the situation really was. All he knew was that the Titanic was sending “CQD” in the middle of the night. The liner was telling “ALL STATIONS” it was “IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE”. Frankly, that could mean anything or nothing. It was clear Hattorff was going to need more details. He needed to know, for example, exactly what the nature of assistance the Titanic was asking for. More importantly, he needed to know if the liner was capable of steaming, and if it was, was it actually doing so. And if it was, in which direction and at what speed? It would serve no purpose if the Frankfurt arrived at the Titanic’s given position only to find it had sailed away to somewhere else.
Hattorff sent for his Telefunken wireless operator.
And on the Titanic, Jack Phillips heard from the Carpathia, a British ship with Marconi wireless operator and equipment; it was coming at full speed. Again Bride found Captain Smith. He told him the Carpathia was 58 miles away and coming hard.
How far away from the Titanic was the Frankfurt?
SS Mount Temple
Following the testimony given by Captain Moore of the Mount Temple, the official findings of the inquiries placed the German ship around 140 miles from the Titanic. Clearly, too far away to help. It is the distance most historians accept today. However, recalling how the Carpathia took around four hours to reach the Titanic’s lifeboats from 58 miles while traveling at 17 knots, and Captain Hattorff (doing 13 or 14 knots) believed he could be with the liner in less than two hours, it is likely the Frankfurt was no more than 20 miles away when its operator picked up the CQD, thus making it – as Bride said Phillips had told him – the nearest ship to answer the call for help.
Captain Henry Moore
The news the Carpathia was coming was good, but Captain Smith understood it wasn’t good enough. That critical fire-damaged bulkhead was going to collapse before the Cunarder could reach the Titanic. There had to be something closer!
Smith returned with Bride to the wireless shack and asked what other ships were in touch. Phillips told him the Olympic had just answered from around 500 miles away. According to Bride, he made no further reference to the Frankfurt and neither did the captain (hard to believe, on reflection), but Smith did ask what call was being used and Phillips told him “CQD”. And then a very curious thing happened. Having assured us neither Smith nor Phillips mentioned the Frankfurt again, Bride testified that he suggested to Phillips he should switch from “CQD” to the “new” “SOS”, and added it could be his (Phillips’) last chance to use it. Apparently the joke appealed to both Phillips and Smith: they laughed.
Following that, Phillips sent “SOS”, but continued to alternate it with “CQD” (There is another Titanic myth that has become ‘true legend’ ..... that the Titanic was the first ship to send “SOS”. It was not. The American Arapahoe sent it in August 1909, and there were others. However, the Titanic seems to be the first British registered ship to send it.)
Is that really how it happened? Having firstly made no further reference to the only other ship Smith knew had answered the call for help, he then asked what call Phillips was using (why ask at all? “SOS” was the only international distress call and Smith had already told Phillips to use it) and when Phillips told him “CQD” (which was not even a distress call), Bride suggested he switch to the “new” (already six years old) “SOS” .....? Far more likely is that, on his arrival in the wireless shack and learning that Phillips was using “CQD”, Smith was surprised and maybe shocked. Why wasn’t Phillips sending “SOS”? Send it at once!
What motive though could Bride have had for making up the it-was-all-a-joke story, assuming he did make it up? He actually explained it himself when he told the New York Times, “I learned to love (Phillips) that night. He was a brave man.”
Undoubtedly he was, but he had been sending the wrong call! Maybe Bride thought an admittance of the fact would sully his hero-status if he explained how the switch really took place, but figured if he said it was the result of a light-hearted half joke, it wouldn’t look so bad. Harold Bride had no intention of allowing a mistake to detract from Phillips as a brave man, a true hero.
But then the Frankfurt was back, and Jack Phillips made his third bad mistake. This time, though, it likely cost him his life.
At the inquiry in New York, Senator Smith asked Harold Bride, “Did you have any further communications with the Frankfurt after that ship responded to the distress call?”
Bride told him, “He called us up at a considerably long period afterwards and asked us what was the matter.”
“How long after?” Smith wanted to know.
Bride told him, “I should say it would be considerably over twenty minutes afterwards.”
Needing amplification on that ambiguous CQD call, the Frankfurt asked, What is the matter with you?
The senator asked Bride if the Frankfurt said anything else. Bride ignored the question and told the senator Phillips had called the Frankfurt a fool. The legend (myth) is that the Titanic’s response to the Frankfurt’s question was, You fool! You fool! Stand by and keep out! It was, of course, a response as equally unprofessional as the snapped Shut up! to the Californian a couple of hours earlier. When the Olympic – 500 miles away and of no practical use to the Titanic – asked whether or not it (the Titanic) was steaming south to meet it, Phillips replied, We are putting the passengers off in small boats.
In short, a “silly” question from a British ship, with Marconi equipment and operator too far off to help, received a polite and patient reply (the fact the Olympic and Titanic were both owned by the White Star Line was irrelevant: Phillips wasn’t a White Star employee), but a far from “silly” question from a German ship with a Telefunken operator and equipment, close enough to be of considerable assistance (we need to remember that, according to Bride, Phillips believed the Frankfurt was very close) got an angry and insulting dismissal.
Phillips was tired and under stress. Of course he was, but he wasn’t under as much stress as he would be an hour later. It seems that professional and political differences were at work ..... except, again, the circumstances at 12:30 a.m. on Monday April 15th were not the way we view them today. The Titanic disaster had not happened. It was in the process of happening, but it had not yet. Almost certainly Phillips and Bride did not believe (at 12:30) the ship was in serious trouble; at least, not in any serious immediate trouble. It seems they (he: Phillips) thought they could afford to pick and choose who would come to the rescue. The Carpathia, after all (a British ship with Marconi equipment) was coming. There was no cause for immediate concern; everyone would be rescued long before the Titanic actually sank ..... if Phillips, at that time (12:30), believed it would sink at all. At 12:30 most on board thought the Titanic would be all right. Second Officer Lightoller said later he did not believe, at first, the ship would sink. Half an hour later ..... an hour later, it was different. But at 12:30 a.m. optimism was generally riding high.
At the American hearing on April 20th, and wishing (as he put it) for the record to be as complete as possible, Senator Smith asked Harold Bride if he knew whether the operator on the Frankfurt understood English.
Bride told him, “There was no necessity for him to understand the English language.”
“Because this call .....”
“Was an international call.”
“And CQD means the same in the German language and the French language and the English language?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Under the Berlin Convention?” Smith had done some homework.
Bride’s reply to that was a surprise. He said, “I cannot say.”
Smith said, “Under the regulations of the Marconi Company .....?”
Bride told him, and there seems to be a touch of defensiveness in his reply, “It is recognized by all ships’ operators as being a signal of distress.”
It wasn’t and Bride knew it wasn’t. Besides, only the day before, Gugliemo Marconi himself had testified that the Berlin Convention adopted “SOS” in 1906 to be phased in by 1908. Bride knew that, but maybe all he was doing was lying to protect the man he had come to love.
The senator then asked Bride why Phillips, on receipt of the Frankfurt asking what was the matter, had not replied that the Titanic was sinking and the lives of the passengers and crew were in danger (simply sending “SOS” would have done that, of course.)
Bride explained that it took “a certain amount of time” to send that information.
He was right. If Phillips wasn’t going to send “SOS”. But he was prepared to take the time to reply politely to the Olympic and, of course, it also took a “certain amount of time” to tell the Frankfurt’s operator he was a fool and to keep out.
Senator Smith asked, “Do you know what the Frankfurt’s position was when she received the “CQD”?”
Bride told him, “That is what we were waiting for.”
“Did you ever ascertain it?”
“No, sir.”
Smith put the same question to Bride a number of times and in a variety of ways. The reply did not change: the Frankfurt did not give its position. But a week later, when questioning the captain of the Canadian Pacific Mount Temple, the senator was surprised to hear James Henry Moore say the Frankfurt had given its position as 39° 47’ North, 52° 10’ West.
It is maybe odd that Moore’s co-ordinates regarding the position of the Frankfurt should be the only ones presented and accepted by the inquiries, or that the Frankfurt’s log and wireless log were not checked, or that none of the Frankfurt’s officers or crew members were called to give evidence. Pages reputedly taken from the German’s wireless log were later produced. They supported Captain Moore’s testimony. Closer examination of the pages however, reveals them to display a not very subtle appearance of having been doctored. By Captain Moore? There is no hard evidence to that effect, but it is tempting to point out that nobody else had a motive.
Further questioning of the Mount Temple’s captain also revealed that the Frankfurt and Titanic exchanged messages including, from the Titanic … we have struck iceberg and sinking. Yet Bride testified emphatically there was no communication between the two aside from the German’s acknowledgement of Phillips’ “CQD” and that ‘silly’ request for more details. Bride swore repeatedly the Frankfurt did not give its position.
Was somebody lying? If so, who? And why?
It is interesting to note the only testimony we have regarding the alleged exchanges (beyond the original acknowledgement and Phillips’ abusive you fool!) between the Frankfurt and the Titanic came from Captain Moore ..… exchanges apparently not heard by Harold Cottam, the wireless operator on the Carpathia who was, at the time they are supposed to have taken place, in virtual constant touch with the sinking liner.
James Henry Moore, of course, had, as we will see, reasons of his own to want to bend the truth.
But why did Phillips call the Frankfurt’s operator a fool? Was it really because of the Marconi/Telefunken rivalry, or the increasing mistrust he had of Germans? Or could it have been, as some have suggested, because a non-British ship coming to the rescue would claim a large salvage fee whereas a British ship would (probably) not?
If that was the case – and there is no evidence to substantiate it – it wasn’t something Phillips would have thought of, or acted upon alone. Matters of salvage and cost would have been of interest to the managing director of the White Star Line, and/or the captain, not a $40 a month wireless operator. Is it possible that Captain Smith, upon hearing about the Frankfurt, told Bride to tell Phillips to get rid of the German! …? Or did Smith tell Ismay, and he in turn told the Captain to tell Bride to tell Phillips …?
It is an interesting theory. On the other hand, at 12:30, Jack Phillips could well have believed a number of rescue ships would sooner or later – and in time – appear on the horizon, in which case it didn’t matter if he rejected one, particularly if it was a German. After all, he didn’t know what Thomas Andrews knew ….. that he didn’t have the time to pick and choose. Had he known, however much he distrusted (or hated) the idea of being rescued by a German, he would have understood there was no room for the luxury of turning away such a promising offer of help from a ship very close by.
There is another tantalizing question ..… what if Phillips had sent “SOS” at the outset, as he should have done, instead of the out-dated non-specific non-international non-distress call “CQD”? Would the Frankfurt’s captain have allowed himself to be put off by a stupid insult as easily as he apparently was? Or would he have continued steaming towards the stricken Titanic anyway, and most likely reach it in time to save some if not all of the passengers and crew, including Jack Phillips?
Or would the ice field Captain Moore claimed stopped the Mount Temple also have prevented the Frankfurt from getting through?
We will of course never know.
And regarding the Mount Temple ..… even as the Titanic’s officers and crew were still stripping away the canvas covers from the lifeboats, and the passengers were beginning to assemble and wait for somebody to tell them what to do, the Mount Temple picked up the call for help, and around 12:30, ship’s time, the wireless operator, John Durant, woke Captain Moore and told him the Titanic was sending “CQD”.
To Moore’s credit, he responded quickly, in much the same way as Captain Rostron on the Carpathia did, and Captain Hattorff on the Frankfurt. Even before dressing, Moore ordered the ship’s course changed to North 45° East and full steam ahead. Then he hurried into the chart room. Minutes later, Durant was back to say the Titanic had revised its position to one 10 miles further east of the original. Moore did his calculations and ordered a new course, North 56° East. Then, curiously, he told Durant not to send to the Titanic, only to listen out. Durant (not called to give evidence at any inquiry) – according to Captain Moore – did so, and allegedly heard the exchanges between the Titanic and Frankfurt Harold Bride swore again and again had not taken place, and of which Harold Cottam on the Carpathia had no knowledge.
Captain Moore took the Mount Temple’s wireless log with him when he gave evidence at the American Inquiry. He told Senator Smith the German ship had given its 12 o’clock position as 30° 48’ North, 52° 1’ West.
Questioning him further, the senator said, “You must excuse me for being so minute about it, but I want to find out whether the Frankfurt made any effort at all to reach the Titanic’s position.”
Captain Moore did not answer the question. Instead, he said, “The Titanic gives his position and asks, Are you coming to our assistance? The Frankfurt asks, What is the matter with you? “MGY” (the Titanic) replies, We have struck iceberg and sinking. Please tell captain to come.”
The Senator said, “That indicates that the second message was a further call for assistance?”
Moore said, “Yes, sir.” He added, “Of course, the distress signal was going. We first caught it at 12:20 by our ship’s time, sir.”
“You think you are getting what the Frankfurt got?”
“These are the messages that crossed between the two ships, sir, which we caught.”
“The Titanic and the Frankfurt?”
“Yes.”
Allegedly, John Durant also heard the communication between the Titanic and the Olympic, and then the Frankfurt saying … Our captain will go for you. And a little while later Jack Phillips threw away the best (as it turned out the only) hope he and 1,500 others had by calling him a fool and to keep out. The Frankfurt did just that; it returned to its original course, and was around 140 miles away when it heard the news that the Titanic had gone down.
Why did Captain Hattorff do that? He turned his ship around on receipt of an unspecified needing assistance call (the “CQD”). He ordered the lifeboats made ready on the strength of it; he even ordered bread to be baked (if we can accept the account in Überall) ..… why did he then just give up so easily? Maybe because, having learned that his operator had been called a fool and ordered to keep out of it, he decided the whole thing was a hoax (not uncommon in wireless telegraphy in 1912), or maybe he figured the Titanic wanted a British ship to lend ‘assistance’ (there had been enough of them around during the day and night, including the Birma, Mount Temple and Californian) ..… and maybe prejudice was working the other way too, and the Germans were no less suspicious of the English-speaking nations as they were of Germans.
Besides, all he had to go on was that non-specific “CQD”. It gave no indication the Titanic was in any serious trouble. Unless Harold Bride and Harold Cottam were wrong and the Titanic really did receive the Frankfurt’s position and explained it had struck an iceberg and was sinking. Considering what Captain Moore had to hide, however, it seems more likely he lied in an attempt to divert the attention from himself.
What did he have to hide?
On April 27th, W.H. Kenervorst from Nelson, British Columbia, made a damning statement in Spokane, Washington, about the Mount Temple. Kennervorst had been a passenger and claimed the ship had been only 5 miles from the Titanic half an hour before it sank. He said, “I saw the lights of the Titanic, and although Captain Moore had received wireless messages that the White Star liner was sinking and that the women and children had been put off in boats, he hove his ship to in spite of the entreaties of his officers that he rush to the aid of the Titanic. Captain Moore’s argument was that to go on would be to endanger his own ship.”
And on April 29th, another ex-passenger on the Mount Temple, Doctor F.C. Quitzrau, swore an affidavit before William James Elliott, Notary Public for the Province of Ontario, Canada, and said the Titanic was sighted by some of the officers and crew, but that as soon as it was seen, all the lights on the Mount Temple were put out, the engines stopped, and the ship allowed to lie dead for 2 hours. The Mount Temple’s officers were not called to give evidence at the hearings.
In statements to the press, Captain Moore explained what had happened.
“We raced along in the night,” he said, “until we came to a large ice field. I had sixteen hundred passengers on board ….. and ….. dare not take the risk of plowing my ship through the field of ice in the darkness, probably onto the meet disaster.” He added that the Titanic had sunk at “2.20 o’clock” and at the time, “I was ten miles away”.
Canadian Pacific deck officer W.H Baker said the Mount Temple’s officers had told him they were 14 miles from the Titanic. Kenervorst said 5 miles, and he saw her ….. Doctor Quitzrau also swore the Titanic had been sighted. But who was telling the truth? The passengers and officers, or the captain? We know ships’ lights were seen from the decks of the Titanic. Were they the Frankfurt (before Phillips called its wireless operator a fool and Captain Hattorff took his ship out of the picture)? Some believe they were. Others are convinced they were the Californian. Surely, they could not have been the Mount Temple’s because, according to Doctor Quitzrau, as soon as the Titanic was sighted, all lights on the Mount Temple were put out.
While standing on the Titanic’s Boat Deck with her mother and father, 15-year-old Edith Brown looked off the port bow and suddenly saw the lights of a ship. She tugged at her father’s arm and pointed ..… but as he turned to see, Edith saw the lights go out.
It would certainly seem Captain Moore had good reason to want to divert attention from the Mount Temple to the Frankfurt.
At around 12:30 a.m. on the stopped Californian Second Officer Stone tried again to signal the distant steamer which was “five miles” away and which had not moved since around 11:40 p.m., and which had ignored all attempts to contact it with the Morse lamp. It must have been puzzling. We are assured the Californian’s lamp was powerful enough to be seen with the naked eye ten miles away. Yet Stone flashed it and received no response ..... while from his place on the Titanic’s bridge, Fourth Officer Boxhall studied a four-masted steamer whose light he first noticed shortly after the collision. He could, he would say repeatedly later, see the ship quite clearly through binoculars. It was, he said, dead ahead and about five miles away. It seemed to be moving, too. It looked like it was approaching the Titanic.
What did Boxhall really see? Probably not a ship; not the four masts. He saw lights (he said that: lights, plural) quite far apart, which made him assume, because of the distance between them, it was a four-master (the Californian had four masts, but so too did the Mount Temple).
In reality, what Boxhall saw were two white lights whose distance apart suggested the length of the ship, and the length of the ship suggested four masts. But it could just as well have been a two-masted ship which had its lights the same distance apart as a four-master. The Titanic’s own masthead lights were wide enough apart to have made it appear to be a four-masted ship if the masthead lights were all that were visible. In short, Boxhall could have been looking at a two-masted ship with its lights far apart .... or a four-master as he claimed.
two-master or four master? two-master or four master?
Whichever, Boxhall said he tried to contact it with the Titanic’s Morse lamp. He even thought it was making reply with its own lamp, but he changed his mind because he could make nothing of it. He decided the distant ship’s masthead light was flickering. There was nothing unusual about that; many ships had no electricity in 1912, and even if they did, many used oil lamps on their masts, as did the Titanic.
Captain Smith had also seen the other ship, but the wireless shack had reported no contact with anything that close, in which case either it didn’t have wireless or the operator didn’t keep a 24-hour watch. Far from this development being cause for further concern, however, Smith had every reason for continued – even renewed – optimism. A ship that close would be sure to see distress rockets and would respond to them quickly and in time; it might even be able to take the Titanic in tow and get it to shallow water. Smith ordered Quartermaster George Thomas Towe to fire distress rockets, one immediately and one every five or six minutes (in accordance with Knight’s Modern Seamanship which stated that distress signals were rockets or shells throwing stars of any color or description, fired one at a time, at short intervals). Maybe Smith passed the word on to his officers who were loading the lifeboats: a rescue ship was about to come alongside, have the boats row across to it, off-load their passengers and come back for more. That order was given.
At around 12:45 a.m. the first rocket shot into the night sky and exploded in a shower of white stars over the Titanic. And on his cold and lonely vigil on the bridge of the Californian (Apprentice Gibson had not yet returned) Second Officer Stone saw a flash of light bursting above the distant stopped steamer. He doubted he had seen correctly; it looked, of all things, like a rocket. About five minutes later, he saw another.
Second Donkeyman Ernest Gill also claimed to have seen rockets. “White”, he said, “about ten miles away on the starboard side. I thought it must be a shooting star. In seven or eight minutes, I saw distinctly a second rocket. I said to myself, that must be a vessel in distress.”
Gill was somewhat vague, however, when told to repeat his newspaper story.
Picture “A” – a four-master Picture “B” – a two-master
(virtually impossible to tell when all we saw were the masthead lights)
In New York, Senator Fletcher asked Gill, “Did you see any lights on the steamer where the rockets were sent up?”
Gill said, “No, sir. No sign of the steamer at that time.”
“You could not see any lights at all?”
“No, sir.”
“As I understand it, you never did see the ship, did you?”
Gill said, “No, sir, not without the one I seen, the big ship that I told my mate was a German boat.”
“You think it may have been the Titanic?” Senator Fletcher wanted to know.
“I am of the general opinion that the crew is,” Gill replied. “That she was the Titanic.”
The Senator wanted to know what made Gill think the ship he had seen was German. The donkeyman told him, “Because the German ships would be heading to New York about that time, or from New York. It is in that vicinity we meet those boats.”
This was Gill’s first trip across the Atlantic, in which case his use of ‘we’ was curious.
Always supposing Gill actually did see the stopped steamer and the rockets, as he claimed, it needs to be remembered, at first, he believed he was seeing a shooting star (there were many of them that night), so it is not impossible it was not until the following morning he ‘identified’ what he had seen as distress rockets ….. that is, after listening to the talk of the Titanic and the rockets seen during the night.
Hindsight might have colored his judgment ….. or maybe something else did. The ‘mate’ he told about the German ship was William Thomas, but when Thomas was interviewed by the Boston Herald, he denied Gill had said anything to him about a steamer, or about rockets. He added, though, that Gill was engaged to a girl in England. He said, “I could see where the offer of a sum of money as large as reported in the forecastle would greatly tempt him.”
Gill was paid $500 by the Boston American ..... more than a year’s wages to the donkeyman. With that, William Thomas said, Gill could buy himself a little shop back home.
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