Spinning Round

[Paul Lee]

Whilst going through Gibson and Stone's affidavits, and comparing them with Boxhall's observations, I noticed a nice little discrepancy.

Boxhall said that he first saw the other ship's masthead lights first, and then the green light through glasses. Eventually, her red light came into view. Then, the last he saw of the ship, she was showing her stern light - this was just before he got into his lifeboat, c.1:45am

Gibson, on the otherhand, says that "his" other ship was 1 point on the port bow at this time - which means that, although his red light and mastlights would be visible to the other ship (and indeed, Californian's overnight swinging motion does nearly account for what the Titanic saw), the stern light was pointing in the wrong direction from the other ship - and hence invisible.

How could Boxhall see the other ship's sternlight if that ship was the Californian? She was pointing WSW at the time, meaning that the stern light would only be seen if the Titanic was ENE plus or minus 5 points astern!

Heres a little sketch of the situation:

Cheers

Paul

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Paul, if I may, have you ever considered trying to model this showing both ships and how they would have been oriented to each other? Another thought: try modeling this in 3D if you can. It might help.

 

[Paul Lee]

Hi Michael,
I was working on a computer programme that would allow the user to do that - at the moment, its currently on hold because of various personal matters and also because of its complexity. I will get round to it, eventually!

As for how such a model would look, it would be similar to a diagram as shown in Reade's book, with the Californian on one side, and Titanic on the other, but I feel that he has misrepresnted the evidence somewhat.

Boxhall's evidence is good because he was watching the other ship over a length of time, perhaps an hour and a half, and hence chronologically catalogued in his mind what he saw and when - even if he was wrong about the other ship steaming away. Other witnesses seem to just give the lights in the distance a quick glance, which doesn't help this matter! Most people in the lifeboats only saw a white light, which could be either the stern light or a/the masthead light(s), which again, doesn't help either!

Cheers

Paul

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>but I feel that he has misrepresnted the evidence somewhat.<<

Very possible on some levels. With everybody accusing the "other side" of lying and/or misrepresenting evidence, the best thing you can possibly do is check it out, starting with the inquiries themselves, and keep your own counsel on what's credible. Yeah...you'll make mistakes...but they'll be your own and not somebody elses.

>>...even if he was wrong about the other ship steaming away.<<

Eh...was he? Really?

Objectively speaking, he may well have been mistaken and probably was. In all likelihood, he may have been snookered by some sort of optical illusion. These things happen out at sea. (Notice the qualifiyers I put in the above statements.) My point in saying this is simply this: Don't make assumptions.

If Boxhall states that the other ship was moving, research the thing, consider the possibility that he may have been right, then if you can, find some way to either test it, or demonstrate what he may have actually been looking at if he was in fact in error. I've a sense you're trying to take a fresh and objective approach to this thorny issue. Don't take anything for granted as being absolutely true or absolutely false just because the advocates claim it is.

Steer your own course and you just might end up learning something new.

 

[Paul Lee]

Hi Michael,
Yes, you're right of course.

In the meantime, another awful diagram courtesy of M$ paint (yuk)

Again, this comes down to what Gibson saw when he returned to the bridge at 12.55. He saw the other ship's red light, and she was 3.5 on the starboard beam.

Consider this though: on the Titanic, Lowe was helping to prepare Lifeboat 1 for lowering. Beside him was Boxhall, firing detonators. Lowe hears that a ship has been sighted and glances over, seeing a RED light and two masthead lights. Now, Lord Mersey puts boat 1 as being lowered at about 1.10am, although obviously no-one was consciously timekeeping that night. Being generous, I'd allow a 10 minute discrepancy either way, although lets take 1.10am for arguments sake. Now, I'd assume that a lifeboat would take about 5 minutes to prepare for lowering, so Lowe saw the red light at about 1.05am.

Californian sees a green light at 12.55. Titanic
sees a red light at about 1.05. In ten minutes, the other ship seen from Titanic would have had to have revolved (at least) 4.5 points.

Heres a picture to summarise this:

Cheers

Paul

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Yes, you're right of course. <<

If you mean about my suggestion to steer your own course, yes, I have reason to believe that I am. Everything else is open to debate.

Regarding times, just about any difference you come up with is going to tend to be specualtive as any local civil time they were going by or altering their clocks to would have been based on the previous days navigation fix for whatever the local apparent noon would have been. Since Californian (The slower ship) was ahead of Titanic's position at this time, their local apparant noons would have differed.

It's a shame that the idea of standard time zones hadn't caught on as this would have cleared up a lot of confusion, or made it much easier to see through any deliberate attempts at same.

 

[Paul Lee]

I agree. Perhaps it would have been better to say that, "as the rockets were being fired by Boxhall, the lights visible were..." rather than tie everything down to times. Remember, that when Gibson returned to the bridge, 5 rockets had already been seen by the Californian's OOW.

Cheers

Paul

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Well, if you can nail down the actual times, that might go a long way towards settling some questions. Eaton & Haas claimed there was a 13 minute time difference between the two ships in local civil time, but as far as I know, they never really did offer any conclusive data to back it up.

Like so much in this debate, it appears to have been contrived out of nothing. (However, I could be wrong.)

 

[Paul Lee]

Perhaps times aren't important in this context, just the question of reciprocity: what one sees, the other should too.

Cheers

Paul

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Perhaps times aren't important in this context, <<

I don't know about "Unimportant." If you can nail down the times reliably, it would go a long way to putting to rest once and for all some facets of this whole mess considered forever debatable.

>>just the question of reciprocity: what one sees, the other should too.<<

Good point there.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Just keep in mind that the best one can hope for is time of events to the nearest 5 minutes. No digital clocks in those day. People just rounded things to the nearest 5 minutes since their clocks and watches were marked in 5 minute intervals. That said, when people estimate time without looking at a clock or watch there can be big errors, especially in what one perceives as an interval of time. 10 minutes to one person might feel like 20 minutes to another.

By the way, the difference between Californian time and Titanic time was very likely 6 minutes, with Titanic ahead by that amount. We know from Evans that Californian was 1:55 ahead of NY despite the noon longitude reported by Lord, which should have made it 1:50 ahead of NY. The Titanic was likely 2:01 ahead of NY based on her noon longitude which can be derived by the sum of the days runs in distance from the time she left Queenstown and knowing her established route. Confirmation of this difference also comes from Bride who had two clocks in the Marconi room, one set to ship's time and the other set to NY time, and was well aware of the difference between those two all day on the 14th.

Cheers to all.

 

[Paul Lee]

Hi Samuel,
One point that Senan Molony makes, and which I had missed, was the possibility of Californian's clocks being retarded sometime in the evening of April 14th. Senan makes note of Stone's statement that the went on watch at 12.08 - or 8 minutes later than he should have. What this means exactly is open to a very fruitful debate!

Best wishes

Paul

 

[Dave Gittins]

Eaton & Haas give a 12 minute time difference between Californian and Titanic. I think this may have originated with Peter Padfield, but I don't have a copy of his book.

It's based on the assumption that Titanic's clock was set to noon to match real local noon on 14 April. Working with information from Harold Lowe, Titanic's noon longitude on 14 April was near enough to 44° 30' W. Therefore her clock was 2hr 58 min behind UTC or 2hr 2min ahead of NYT. We know from evidence from Pitman that this was not so, but it suits the Lordites. Captain Lord said that his time was 3hr 10min behind UTC or 1hr 50min ahead of NYT. He based this on his noon longitude of 47° 25'W, rounding his time off to the nearest minute for convenience. His evidence seems better than that of Evans, whose time difference does not match the noon longitude.

If we could believe Groves, there's no problem. Groves saw a ship suddenly change course and stop at 11-40 p.m. Therefore Titanic time equals Californian time. Pity that Groves knew the time of the collision from the press.

I place no value on evidence from Bride. He gave the time difference as two hours somewhere. Bride was a bad witness and at times was very willing to agree with suggestions from lawyers.

All this time business is just a lot of flim-flam designed to hide simple truths. The whole Californian story is, as George Behe said, a manufactured mystery. The only real question is why qualified officers made such an unholy mess of a simple task. That is something that can't be explained.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

G'day Dave:
I agree with you about the Titanic's noon position longitude. I get 44 31.5'W which calculates out to 14:59 GMT at LAN, also taking into account the 1/2 minute adjustment for the EOT on 14 Apr 1912. I also agree that if Lord's noon longitude was correct, LAN for the Californian would have been at 15:10 GMT making a difference of 11 minutes between the two. But I have little reason to trust Lord's numbers. Evans was quite clear about a time difference of 1:55 ahead of NY time, and he would have had two clocks in is Marconi room, one on ship's time and the other on EST or GMT. Despite what you think of Bride as a witness, when confronted by a suggestion by Senator Fletcher that the time difference between Titanic and NY was "about 1 hr 55 min," he did not agree with it, but corrected it, "There was about a two hour difference between the two." It seems that that was one thing he was quite sure of that night. (Maybe the only thing.)

Regarding Groves' observation, if the lights disappeared at his 11:40 time (which I take as an about time), that puts the collision as taking place about 2 minutes beforehand since it takes the Titanic about that amount of time to turn up to a heading of about 315 true in the approximate direction of the Californian while turning to port following the collision. In Titanic time, that puts the collision about 11:44 PM which is within an acceptable window of time since most observers called it between 11:40 and 11:45.

Other correlation of events can be seen between these two ships, including rocket observations. Just one example, last rocket observed on Californian by Stone was estimated at 1:40 AM Californian time. Boxhall was firing off rockets till ordered to man lifeboat No. 2 at about 1:45 AM Titanic time. Another, QM Rowe said he was helping firing off rockets between 12:45 to 1:25 Titanic time before being ordered to the boats. In fact he brought them up to the bridge. Gill's time of 1st rocket observation can be shown to be at just about 12:40 Californian time, about 5 minutes after Gibson left the bridge. Again good time correlation between the same events taking the difference in clock times into account.

Another indirect time check comes from Groves' 1st observation of the Titanic's masthead light coming up over the horizon somewhere estimated between 11:10 and 11:15 Californian time. Without going into details here, I calculated the two ships were about 21.5 miles apart when Titanic's masthead light would 1st become visible from the Californian bridge. Working from a calculated Californian EP to the Titanic track line puts the Titanic at 21.5 miles distance at 11:19 PM Titanic time, or 11:13 Californian time.

Regarding the bearing changes discussed in this thread, the only steaming away was in the immagination of the observer. The Californian was swinging more than one way that night with its helm left set at hard aport. Changing bearings combined with changing visual aspect due to the Titanic's trim and list changes could very well give the appearance of a vessel steaming away. Afterall, both Stone and Gibson thought her lights were not right. Even that stern light observation by Stone near the end can be explained. Stone took the brightest light remaining as a sterm light. It was to the left of all other lights. No sidelights visible at all. What was he really seeing? The mast light low down near the horizon as the Titanic's bow was well under. By the way, I put the two ships beyond the visible horizon from each other in hull down positions. Nobody that extremely clear night could judge true distance very well. There was no discernable horizon.

I fully agree with you concerning this entire Californian affair and the mystery ship hypotheses. It was a made up mystery to explain unexplainable inaction. There really is no mystery.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Just a point of clarification here. Even if the difference in time between clocks on the two ships were closer to 11 minutes apart based on their noon longitudes, and for some reason Evans' ship's clock in the Marconi office was set wrong, which is always a possibility, we still have good correlation of events given that most times quoted were not specific but rather people's best guesses. The only specific clock time that I recall was Gibson saying that he told Lord that the ship they were observing disappeared at 2:05 by their wheelhouse clock. (Also probably rounding off to nearest 5 min interval.) Adding 11 minutes and you get something close to the time on the Titanic that the lights would have gone out, just a few minutes before the stern section went under at 2:20 by most accounts.