I suppose there may have been another ship around. For the sake of this discussion lets say there were 6 ships. But, surely none of these other ships were firing rockets at intervals. Which brings me back to my original question - how common were rockets being fired at sea at intervals? I think I already read here that firing without being in distress was a contravention of the laws. If that’s right, surely the duty of a captain is to come to the bridge to determine for himself and try and contact the vessel in distress even if his vessel is stopped.
Lord ignored the rockets. He knowingly had a conversation with the apprentice. He could not bring himself to call the apprentice a liar - because it was true. Simply denying it happened if it did not is the easiest thing to do, particularly as the person making the claim was a subordinate.
Hello Paul.
let me attempt to answer your qustion i a sensible way, keeping clear of the number of ships etc.
A. It was no common for ship's to fire rockets at intervals... short or long.
B. It was not the practive of the master of a ship to immediately ruch to his bridge when informed of the sighting of a single rocket.
C. It was not common for distress signals to rise to half the height of the masthead light of the ship firing them.
D. It was not common for ships to fire distress signals to half the height of the masthead light then steam away from the location.
On the other hand:
1. It was commont for a ship to fire distress rockets at "short intervals" if she was in urgent need of asistance...not necessarily sinking.
2. "Short" intervals were by definition, not "Long" intervals since the idea of firing rockets was to convey urgency.
3. The Rules for indication distress also included a sound to attract attention, whether it be by a gun or, in the case of
Titanic, a combination of sound and light.
The evience indicates:
X. Captain Lord was notified of but a single rocket before the vessel steamed away. he was not advised of the others before it did so.
( Accoding to the evidence of Captain Lord and Apprentice Gibson.)
As for the so called Mystery vessel stopped nearby to
Californian? Here are two facts which many on this site and in the past have ignored, completely dismissed out of ignorance or for a more synister reason:
First: The vessel seen near to the
Californian could never have been the RMS Titanic because
Californian showed a green light in its direction between the firing of the 1st and 6th signals seen by Stone and Gibson. Whereas the vessel seen from
Titanic showed a red light for mosy of the time a colured side light was seen.
Second: The vessel seen from
Titanic was on her port bow. This could only have happened if Titanic had turned southward then northward during the iceberg avoiding sequence This did not happen according the QM who was on the wheel at the time.
Third: There is no evidence to show that a second helm order was given as part of the avoidance sequence. If one had been given, it would have been ineffectual. This is because the rudder does not turn a ship, it stops a turn and instigates a turn. The ship generated current actually turns the ship. For a ship's rudder to act at it's most eficient, the engines must be running ahead at Full Power and the ship making headway at full speed. In the case of
Titanic, this did not happen. The engines speed and consequently ship speed were dropping rapidly. this had two effects...reduction of speed and reduction of rudder efficiency. In reality, the rudder would have been hard-pressed to check the swing to port, let alone check that swing and cause the ship's head to swing in the oposite direction. If you and any other doubters don't believe this, then I suggest you take the problem to a good school of Naval Architecture and present it as an hypothetical case.
However, in the case of the SS
Californian, this may be a waste of time since the "bubbles of belief" have super-strong skins which are almost impossible to burst