NonMystery Ships

[George Behe]

Hi, all!

On another bulletin board Mike Tennaro was kind enough to provide me with a recent Lordite author's list of various vessels that (at one time or another) have been proposed as candidates for the so-called 'mystery ship' seen by the Titanic. That list of ships is as follows:

Saturnia
Trautenfels
Lindenfels
Paula
Parisian
Frankfurt
Victorian
Samson
Premier
Almerian
Mt. Temple

It's possible that ET members might be unfamiliar with a few of the above names, so I thought I'd share some of my own research findings to counterbalance past Lordite allegations that one or more of these vessels was close to the sinking Titanic on the night of April 14/15.


Saturnia: Far from being a 'mystery ship' candidate, Captain Taylor said that his vessel was 350 miles from the disaster site at the time of the sinking.

Trautenfels: At 8 a.m. on April 14th the Trautenfels was already west of long. 50 W. Captain Huper said his vessel was 100 miles southwest of the Titanic by the time the disaster took place.

Lindenfels: The sole reference to this vessel I've been able to find was in a letter from the Treasury Dept. to the Commissioner of Navigation that was quoted in the Senate Inquiry: "The 'Trautenfels' of that line arrived at this port early in the morning on 18th April, and the 'Lindenfels' on 20th April. As I am informed that the voyage from the locality mentioned by the Bureau to this port is from three to five days, according to the speed of the steamer, the 'Trautenfels' would probably not have been in that locality on 15th April."

Without more information about the Lindenfels, I'm afraid no serious case can be made for its having been close to the Titanic during the sinking.

Paula: On April 14 the westbound Paula passed her last iceberg at 5:30 p.m. at long. 50.13 W. and continued on her way.

Parisian: At 8 p.m. on April 14 the Parisian was at 41.42N, 49.55W. This position is *south* of the disaster site (whereas the Titanic's 'mystery ship' was north of the disaster site.) Parisian moved onwards after 8 p.m. anyway.

Frankfurt: My Commutator article about the 'Frankfurt Incident' completely dismantles the notion that Frankfurt was close to the disaster site that night.

Victorian: This tale is based on a story that was told by the father of Geraldine Hamilton, who claimed that he saw the Titanic's rockets while on board the Victorian. Captain Outram, on the other hand, said that his westbound vessel was informed of the Titanic disaster eight hours after the disaster occurred. He posted extra lookouts to watch for wreckage and bodies when the Victorian passed the disaster site, but none were seen (although the Victorian did pass thirteen icebergs and a heavy ice field.)

Samson: What can I say?

Premier: This story is based on a tale that Edward Rose told to writer Edward Rowe Snow. Rose was said to have been a crewman on the Premier and claimed that his schooner (which did not have a masthead light) was close enough to see the Titanic's 'flares' that night; the next morning the Premier supposedly saw a lot of floating debris in the water. Needless to say, the vessel seen by the Titanic was displaying masthead lights; moreover, no schooner was seen after daylight on April 15th by any of the vessels that are *known* to have been on the scene.

Almerian: This was supposedly the vessel that 'accompanied' the Mt. Temple during the final stages of her ENE run toward the disaster site. (Of course, this means she was headed in the wrong direction and was on the wrong side of the icefield to have been the so-called 'mystery ship.')

Mt. Temple: Dr. Quitzrau freely admitted that his allegations about the Mt. Temple were based on hearsay; the timing of the events described in those allegations simply does not hold up to close scrutiny.


Anyway, I hope the above information will be helpful to anyone who has ever given credence to Lordite allegations about the above vessels. (With eleven 'mystery ships' crowding the area, it's perhaps surprising that three or four of them didn't collide with each other in their haste to escape the scene before daylight.)

All my best,

George

 

[Colleen Collier]

LOL@ last sentence. Maybe....the Titanic hit one of the mystery ships instead of the iceberg... New conspiracy theory brewing.

 

[Robert W. Collier]

Perhaps the Titanic collided with the "grassy knoll". Just a thought.
Robert

 

[John M. Feeney]

George: Excellent analysis. The Almerian is an extremely dubious candidate for another reason, as well. (See also Dave Gittins' recent web page on this.) Captain Lord's reference to a pink-funneled, two-masted steamer seen in the vicinity of the Mount Temple on the morning of the 15th (and his 1959 affidavit's unsubstantiated identification of that ship as the Almerian, also of the Leyland Line) is in flat contradiction with both Officer Groves and Captain Moore, who testified that the vessel's funnel was 1) black and 2) black with an insignia, respectively. (Either way, black; but not pink!)

Lord alone recalled a two-masted, *pink*-funneled steamer in the vicinity. And Evans' reported wireless communications (sometimes mistakenly assumed to be corroborative) about a pink-funneled steamer -- a FOUR-masted one -- in fact probably allude to his *own* ship, "Do you see a 4-masted, pink-funneled steamer?" apparently being his way of using the Californian as a "beacon" to guide the other ships in.

Quite a stretch, some of those other "feasible" culprits. But, of course, even if they'd *all* somehow been there, would that in any way alter the fact that the Californian was on record as having witnessed what was inescapably (we now know) the Titanic's distress signals, and had done nothing to respond, even though her captain had been notified at least three times?

Adding additional "bad Samaritans" doesn't elevate the moral standing of the first. I'd certainly be among the many enraged to discover that any one of those ships (or any other) had truly been there and concealed the fact. But it still wouldn't change the culpability of the Californian one iota, just add another accomplice.

Cheers,
John

 

[John M. Feeney]

Robert, I think you may be on to something there! :^)

If the CIA's precursor agency was also somehow involved, they could easily have disguised (or just "deep-freezed") the grassy knoll, towed it out to sea, and "Voila!": accidental iceberg. That, and infiltration of the ship's company with special agent Lee Harvey Murdoch, would certainly have done the trick, eh? ;^)

Cheers,
John

 

[Bill Wormstedt]

George, do you know if the book you're refering to excludes any of these ships (seems to me they should be excluding at least some of the obvious ones), or is saying they are all possibilities?

 

[Dave Gittins]

The book is pretty obviously A Ship Accused, by Senan Maloney. Senan actually dismisses the ships listed, but still concludes (page 220}---

"Also there, in the wider vicinity, was another party; a ship that approached to within five miles of the Titanic, banked (sic) and stopped. A ship that both saw and heard the giant White Star liner's distress rockets, yet instead of coming to assist, decided instead to flee the scene."

Elsewhere, Senan expresses the hope that some proof of this will be found in some long-forgotten log or letter.

 

[George Behe]

>"Also there, in the wider vicinity, was another >party; a ship that approached to within five >miles of the Titanic, banked (sic) and stopped. A >ship that both saw and heard the giant >White Star liner's distress rockets, yet instead of coming >to assist, decided instead to >flee the scene."

John Feeney summed up the matter so well that I can only requote his statement:

"But it still wouldn't change the culpability of the Californian one iota, just add another accomplice."

Well said, John.

All my best,

George

 

[David Billnitzer]

Interesting; thanks for posting this, George.

I suppose it's obvious, but I will say it anyway. None of the named and identified ships on Maloney's list is a new candidate - each one of them has been mentioned before in different pro-Lord books. Many of them were dismissed as early as 1912, or shortly after the official investigations. Maloney's list doesn't read so much like the results of a new investigation as a gathering of the same old "usual suspects" from Haas & Eaton, Leslie Harrison, et. al. As for Senan's "hope that some proof of this [unknown vessel] will be found in some long-forgotten log or letter...," I reminded of an exchange from Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible:

John Proctor (accused of witchcraft): There might also be a dragon with five legs in my house, but nobody has seen one.

Reverend Parris (instigating a witchhunt): Your Honor, we are trying to discover precisely that which nobody has ever seen.

Dave Billnitzer

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Elsewhere, Senan expresses the hope that some proof of this will be found in some long-forgotten log or letter.<<

As a purely objective aside, I wouldn't mind seeing such either, if only to complete the hysterical historical record, but I'm not holding my breath and I hope he's not holding his breath either.

Assuming there was another party there, (All is rendered moot if there wasn't) the sort of trouble that Captain Lord got into would hardly have been lost on whoever was on watch. I'm confident that anything written on paper would have promptly found it's way into the briny deep or the nearest furnace.

As to the chat about conspiracies and grassy knolls, the CIA's precursor agency, call Robin Gardiner and Oliver Stone. I'm sure they could make one helluva movie out of it.

 

[George Behe]

Hi, Nefarious!

>None of the named and identified ships on
>Maloney's list is a new candidate - each one of >them has been mentioned before in >different pro-Lord books.

Do you know if Maloney's book had anything to say about the Thistledhu? (Mike Standart? Dave Gittins? Anyone?)

All my best,

George

 

[Michael Tennaro]

well, I'm coming late to this party, but since it was my statements from another board that was used to start this thread, I would just like to add a little context.

firstly, my initial comment was that the list of mystery ship wannabes was fairly large. I went on to say that some were mentioned in several author's books, including Reade, Harrison, Bristow and Molony's books. of all the above I said that Molony had by far the most comprehensive coverage of this subject.

George got the impression that Molony's list was an attempt to generate a laundry list of other ships that might have been the culprit rather than Californian. that he got that impression was my fault as I did not make my initial comments as clearly as I should have. in a later post I went on to make the point that, Molony's chapter was not that at all, and that as a matter of fact, he shows that these vessels could not have been the mystery ship.

the implication in several further comments following in this thread that Molony ever implied otherwise are simply not correct.

Dave B goes on to say:
Maloney's list doesn't read so much like the results of a new investigation as a gathering of the same old "usual suspects" from Haas & Eaton, Leslie Harrison, et. al.

well that is perfectly true, but I never suggested that there were any new candidates in the list, just that some of them were new to me. my comment was that no-one else had gone through the trouble to cull all the mystery ship candidates together in as comprehensive a way as Molony did. I for one am grateful to have all that information handy in one compact chapter.

it is apparently only in the topsy turvey world of the Californian debate that a well researched and comprehensive summation of a topic can somehow be construed in an apparently derogatory manner.

oh, by the way, the man's name is Molony. I realize that there has been a lot of bad blood generated over this topic, but you might at least spell his name correctly.

Michael (TheManInBlack) T

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Sorry George, I couldn't find the Thistledew mentioned in any of the text or the index. What's the story behind this one?

 

[John M. Feeney]

Dave Gittins relayed the quote: "Also there, in the wider vicinity, was another party; a ship that approached to within five miles of the Titanic, banked (sic) and stopped. A ship that both saw and heard the giant White Star liner's distress rockets, yet instead of coming to assist, decided instead to flee the scene."

Hi, Dave: Thanks very much for the excerpt. That claim, unfortunately, sounds once again strangely familiar -- a re-hatching of old arguments which blindly assumed that Boxhall was right and everybody else was wrong in their observations of the ship. My own recollection, from Reade and the transcripts themselves, is that several other witnesses countered that the other ship *never* approached, though it did evidently "disappear" towards daybreak. Thus, like many others, I'm quite willing to accept the logical conclusion that the drifting rotation of the otherwise *idle* Californian, manifested by the progressive appearance and disappearance of its running lights, could have been misconstrued as "underway" steering towards the Titanic and away again. (But again, nobody other than Boxhall actually thought the ship "moved".)

This is one more reason that I really wonder about Boxhall's health *at* the time of the disaster. The many quirks -- he's almost incomprehensible at points during his first U.S. appearance, which is immediately followed by several days of "sick leave" -- and occasional outright errors manifested in his testimony at least suggest a plausible interpretation of fever. (He was being treated for pleurisy.) And his later admission at the British Inquiry of having been subsequently (and reliably) informed of significant shipboard actions he'd taken that he just didn't remember *strongly* suggests a man who was already fairly "out of it" by the time of the sinking.

Considering the weight of *all* the evidence given, Molony's naked assertion of a ship "approaching" to within five miles of the Titanic -- based solely on Boxhall's unique perspectives -- seems a classic case of discarding the essential for the inessential.

But thanks again for that extract. It's one of the few I've yet seen!

Cheers,
John

 

[David Billnitzer]

Hi Dave:

"Thistledhu" - or maybe in our case, "This'll do" - is mentioned in the Lynch-Marshall book (p 191). As I recall, it was another version of an old man tearfully recalling having seen rockets while serving on a small vessel in his youth. George: do you have other details beyond that?

Michael: Some months back I was asking around to see if anybody could say whether this book contains new information, or is it the same old stuff all over again, in a new package... and it *still* sounds like the latter to me... at least from what I see in the list assembled above. No offense intended, but even you conceded just now that it's really not much more than a compilation of material that already exists elsewhere.

- Dave Billnitzer