W
William D. O'Neil
Member
There has been a bit of a stir in the UK where some notes made by an official after inspecting Titanic have just come to light. The news accounts are not very useful but the Daily Mail offers very readable images of two critical pages from the notes at Titanic safety officer Maurice Clarke's warning that they needed '50% more lifeboats' were ignored as astonishing cover-up is revealed after 100 years | Mail Online.
The official was Capt. Maurice H. Clarke, a Board of Trade marine surveyor who was stationed in Southampton and was responsible for clearing Titanic for her voyage as an emigrant ship. At the Mersey hearings he carefully hewed to the BoT party line, but on pages 9 & 10 of his inspection notes (the ones reproduced in the Daily Mail's article) he made it clear that he thought the ship should have more boats and speculated about ways in which this could have been done.
But at the end, under a heading of "Exercising Powers" he wrote, "To deviate from Regulations which had been drawn up by the Advisory Committee of ship owners and approved by my department would leave me without support. I might be shifted as suggest [sic] to me by Owners if I enforced my views as to efficiency."
In other words, the fix was in and Clarke did not want to sacrifice his position in a futile gesture.
The official was Capt. Maurice H. Clarke, a Board of Trade marine surveyor who was stationed in Southampton and was responsible for clearing Titanic for her voyage as an emigrant ship. At the Mersey hearings he carefully hewed to the BoT party line, but on pages 9 & 10 of his inspection notes (the ones reproduced in the Daily Mail's article) he made it clear that he thought the ship should have more boats and speculated about ways in which this could have been done.
But at the end, under a heading of "Exercising Powers" he wrote, "To deviate from Regulations which had been drawn up by the Advisory Committee of ship owners and approved by my department would leave me without support. I might be shifted as suggest [sic] to me by Owners if I enforced my views as to efficiency."
In other words, the fix was in and Clarke did not want to sacrifice his position in a futile gesture.