A Ship Accused

[Charles Barlow]

Michael,

I admit my last posting takes a very simplistic view of the matter and is somewhat emotional. George Behe and Dave Gittins have the scholarly inclinations to examine and refute point by point many of the allegations of the Lordite camp, using only evidence and logic without a tinge of emotional input. I'm not so much anti-Lord as anti-Californian. I believe Stone could have awakened Cyril Evans on his own initiative if he were truly concerned.

All the Best, Chuck

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Matthew, rockets were used close inshore and on the high seas for signaling/communications perposes of all kinds. Not just distress. You might wonder why Captain Lord asked if they were company signals. (Because they frequently were used and misused on the high seas perhaps???) The conventions in existance were pretty complicated, so it's far from unreasonable.

I think what's signifigent however is no sense of urgency seen in the whole matter. No matter what they saw, it wasn't enough to get them to put two and two together, and Stone didn't even bother to mention it to Captain Lord until after he had been watching this fireworks show for nearly half an hour.

Why is this?

Erik asks;"Very interesting, so are you saying that two groups of people can see the same piece of evidence two different ways??"

BINGO!!!!!!! Give that man a cigar!

 

[Charles Barlow]

Michael and Erik

I admit my last posting takes a very simplistic view of the matter and is somewhat emotional. George Behe and Dave Gittins have the scholarly inclinations to examine and refute point by point many of the allegations of the Lordite camp, using only evidence and logic without a tinge of emotional input. I'm not so much anti-Lord as anti-Californian. I believe Stone could have awakened Cyril Evans on his own initiative if he were truly concerned.

Erik, okay Rostron was lucky. But can you imagine the outcry that would have erupted if Cunard had fired him for recklessness? I think even today if a SUCCESSFUL rescue took place without damage to the rescuing ship, the company would take too much bad press for firing a "hero". As to what would be the public's reaction to a rescue gone bad with two ships foundering instead of just one, I have no idea.

All the Best, Chuck

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Charles Barlow Said; >>I admit my last posting takes a very simplistic view of the matter and is somewhat emotional. <<

Yep...and that's the whole problem. It's everywhere too. People seem to want Lord to either be the wrongly sainted angel or the evil Fu-Manchu who should have been strung up from the yardarm. He was none of these things. He was a man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

>>George Behe and Dave Gittins have the scholarly inclinations to examine and refute point by point many of the allegations of the Lordite camp, using only evidence and logic without a tinge of emotional input. <<

I quite agree. They do...and Senan Maloney does the exact same thing with the arguements proposed by Captain Lord's critics. Even if Senan is unabashedly passionate about it, he is consistantly on point too.

>>I believe Stone could have awakened Cyril Evans on his own initiative if he were truly concerned. <<

Hmmmmmm...that old red herring about the wireless again. Charles, I think that what Stone could have and should have done if he were truly concerned was to stand up the lookouts, get underway and spell things out to Captain Lord while steering a course towards the source of the rockets. Wireless was not everywhere, he had no way of knowing whether or not "his" mystery steamer had it, and even if he had figured that much out, all he would have recieved from the Titanic was the wrong position to add to the confusion.

 

[Erik Wood]

Charles Barlow said: I think even today if a SUCCESSFUL rescue took place without damage to the rescuing ship, the company would take too much bad press for firing a "hero".

I don't know about that, ask the ex captain of the M/V Teakglen.

 

[Erik Wood]

Michael Standart said: BINGO!!!!!!!Give that man a cigar!

I will take a cuban, if you can throw in a beer.

 

[Charles Barlow]

Seems I can hardly keep the taste of fresh foot out of my mouth lately.

Michael, excellent points about getting the wrong position via the wireless. I will get Maloney's book ... I'm not as closed minded as it may appear.

Erik, Is there anything on the web regarding the Teakglen? I think I'll shut up, read, and hide in lurkmode for a loooong time.

Take Care ... Chuck

 

[Erik Wood]

Charles Barlow said: Erik, Is there anything on the web regarding the Teakglen?

If there is you will have to do some digging on the www.boatnerd.com site to try and find it. I would go to the News section and start digging. This was back in the late or mid 1990's.

Charles Barlow said:I believe Stone could have awakened Cyril Evans on his own initiative if he were truly concerned.

This is a great point. I have been thinking on this issue amoung others. In my opinion had Stone been truely concerned he would have conveyed that to Captain Lord and if he didn't receive a response that met his satisfaction he could have woken the wireless operator or kept bugging Captain Lord.

On a side note, I don't really know where I stand. I am not really anti anything or pro anything. I will say that I think a lot of people have put more guilt on Captain Lord then he truely deserved. There is no doubt that he over looked something or should have taken a look. Does that make him the devil or a rotten sailor. No, on both counts. It makes him a unlucky sailor and a man who made the wrong decision.

The discussion then goes to, if Captain Lord had decided to get to the bridge and discovered the situation as it was, what could he have done? Mr. Standart, Ms. Smith and I wrote an article (which desperatly needs revising) about such an undertaking.

Some key questions that we don't have answers to are:

1. Exactly how far away is Californian from Titanic?

2. What is the extent of the ice between the two ships?

3. If ice is between the Californain and Titanic how long is it going to take the Californian to get around that ice.

These three questions can't be answered by any of us, since none of us where there. We can only quess and make calculations from there.

There are some other questions that are more easily answer but are equally difficult to answer.

1. Given the resources that Captain Lord had what kind of preparations could he have made while underway and while keeping his watches fully manned and extra lookouts posted?

2. Assuming that Captain Lord had the extra bodies onboard to prepare the ship how many of them where well trained and could carry out the orders with little supervision?

3. When Californain got there what would have been the best way for her to retrieve those in the water?

These are all things that hamper the debate. Then we have very pointed questions like:

1. Why didn't Captain Lord go to the bridge.

2. Why did Stone not convey a sense of urgency to Captain Lord and/or wake the wireless operator.

3. What is exactly that Stone saw? Whatever it was it didn't seem that important to him.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of other questions that could be asked. All of which have there own merit. But when researching the evidence, and discussing the debate we need to remeber that driving and operating ships isn't like driving and operating any land board vechile, different rules apply not only legally, but logically. What appears logical to us on land isn't necessarily logical to us at sea.

Charles Barlow and some others have brought some very interesting debate. I am enjoying it, and I encourage Charles to stick around.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Charles, like Erik, I'm neither pro nor con. I've been both at one time or another, but every time the subject comes up, everything I see, read and hear makes me agree with a remark Parks Stephenson made here on the board several months ago. The remark being to the effect that there's something here were all missing. I think he's right. Why no sense of urgency to something which to us looks so obvious? What snookered them?

My gripe with the debate itself...aside from the fact that it's notorious for degenerating into flamewars...is that each side seems to want it's reductive and simplistic hero's and villians. That or they want to convince people that some kind of miricle save could have happened if only Californian had acted. In fact, it's hardly certain Californian could have made a difference even if they had made they attempt.

There were no hero's or villians in this mess, Only players caught in the middle of events they didn't understand when it mattered most.

My gripe with Lords treatment at the time was that for all the accusations flying about, the man never got so much as a trial. Now guilty or innocent, he deserved that much. It's a matter of due process which I'm a bit of a stickler for. If somebody made charges of any kind against me, I'd want the thing to be heard in court. Don't just say it, and let the thing do it's work and leave me no recourse or route of appeal. Convince a jury!

Captain Lord never got any of that.

What he got was public damnation and censure, but since legally, nothing ever happened, he had no possible route for redress or remedy. A really handy scapegoat whether he in fact deserved it or not.

That's just not right.

Erik, how about a Cohiba double carona and a MGD?

 

[Tracy Smith]

Erik said:

In my opinion had Stone been truely concerned he would have conveyed that to Captain Lord and if he didn't receive a response that met his satisfaction he could have woken the wireless operator or kept bugging Captain Lord.

Or he could have woken Chief Officer Stewart and had him to awaken Captain Lord. Stewart, I'm sure, would have been much more assertive than Stone.

Mike said:

every time the subject comes up, everything I see, read and hear makes me agree with a remark Parks Stephenson made here on the board several months ago. The remark being to the effect that there's something here were all missing. I think he's right. Why no sense of urgency to something which to us looks so obvious? What snookered them?

and:

There were no hero's or villians in this mess, Only players caught in the middle of events they didn't understand when it mattered most.

Exactly. I've been saying this all along and I think this is the key to unraveling the entire matter.

 

[Kyrila Scully]

I just received the new Commutator which contained a personal account of the Titanic disaster by William T. Sloper, who claimed that a ship (which he later learned was the Californian) passed quietly passed his lifeboat by a few hundred yards, and it shocked me as I had never heard that tale before. I haven't yet completed David's book, so I don't know if there is reference to this. But is there any other testimony documented to corroborate Mr. Sloper's? He wrote his account while aboard the Carpathia and presented it to two of his friends who edited newspapers back home, according to this article.
Has anyone else read this piece?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Unless the Californian passed his lifeboat in the morning while the Carpathia was actually picking up the lifeboats, I don't see how this can possibly be true. The Californian remained hove to until after sunrise, and did not come alongside the Carpathia until after 8:00am.

 

[Fiona Nitschke]

Hi Kyrilla - Yes, I have Sloper's book so have read his account before. Given some of the other 'facts' filtered through the lens of 35+ years between the sinking and him writing the book, it's hard to take his report of Californian steaming quietly past his lifeboat seriously.

For those (like me) who don't receive The Commutator, Sloper's Titanic chapter is also available in Ship to Shore magazine (Spring, 1984) and excerpted in Sloper's ET biography. (As an aside, Sloper's book The Life and Times of Andrew Jackson Sloper is supposed to be about his dad but is much more about his own life and times... )


You haven't finished Dave's book? Now it's my turn to be confused... BTW, this thread is supposed to be about Senan MOLONY's book A Ship Accused (The Case of the SS Californian: Re-examined) and I have no idea who this Maloney character people keep referring to is.

 

[Dave Moran]

I have a worry regarding Senan's book, which I very much admire and enjoy by the way. Nevertheless, i have one nagging doubt.

Page 45 shows a swing-o-meter, which Senan himself admits is crude, which shows that if Californian stopped at 10.21 facing NE, then by 12.20 she would have swung to face ENE, that she would have swung by two compass points clockwise - which appears to this layman to be about 25 degrees - a swing of 12.5 degress per hour.

If so, Reade's theory about Californian's swing explaining the supposed mystery ship's movements to the observers aboard Titanic, is refuted. As Senan writes...

" It can only be guessed how long it would take her to swing the remaining points neede to open the red light on her port side to southern view. "

Fair enough - except that on page 126 the diagram at the bottom of the page shows that by 4.20 a.m. Californian has swung so far that she now faces West-northwest. This is a swing of about 270 degrees over six hours - about 45 degrees an hour.

Now, in that latter case, by 12.20 Californian would now be facing SE, and beginning to face on to a Southern observer. Over the next, crucial hour, she would appera to said Southern observer to swing open her red side light...

This concerns me - have I read the diagram wrong? It is not helped by the fact that conventional portraying of the compass is reversed on p 126, with North at the bottom and South at the top.

Corrections and comments welcome, folks

 

[Kyrila Scully]

Must have had a thyroid/memory loss moment there ("David's book" - what was I thinking!) Anyway, I left my magazine at work, or I'd quote the passage in context. Mr. Sloper indicated that the ship passed them during the night, hours before dawn and within enough time after the sinking that many in the water could have been saved in his opinion. Very possibly the dark object he thought he saw could have been an iceberg, and in his shock and distress from the elements, mistaken it for a ship. I believe he mentioned a flask of brandy available as well, which could cause vision problems if consumed in copious amounts.