Hi everyone; new here.
I’ve been browsing the forums for awhile, and decided to sign up and join the discussions. While the riddle of the Californian does fascinate me, the only materials I’ve read on the subject are Walter’s two most famous books, and this one. I’d love to learn a little more about this, from other book sources
I have read this book, The Other Side of the Night by Daniel Allen Butler. I thought it was a good read, but of course there are a few thoughts that came to my mind, most of which appear to be discussed here.
1. It appears to have a Walter Lord type feel to it, but as I read it, I felt like Mr. Butler was expanding on points Walter made, with new evidence. From what I’ve read on the forums here, Mr. Butler isn’t the best when it comes to citing sources.
Case in point, from page 96, taken from when C/O Stewart and Evans ran up the stairs to inform Captain Lord: “Thrusting the message at Lord, Stewart stood by, anticipating that Lord would order the ship to get underway immediately. Instead, Lord took one look at the message and shook his head in disbelief: “No, No, this can’t right, you must get me a better position than this, he said, handing the message back to Evans” There is no footnote for this, so I can’t tell which of the sources in the back he consulted to find this information. Same goes for the below paragraph.
2. On page 154, There is a paragraph that talks about the news conference Lord had, the one in which he states “If I go to Washington…”, he also apparently states, in the April 23, 1912 edition of the Boston Globe, rather an outburst: “It is all foolishness for anyone to say that I, at the point of a revolver, took any man into this room and made him swear to tell any kind of story. No member of the crew has ever been in this room, and none of them come near this place except to clean up”
Mr. Butler later uses these two above incidents to paint a picture of Lord’s sociopathary. At least Walter Lord never went so far to call him a sociopath, but rather just suggested that he should have woken up the wireless operator, to at least check things out. Butler, however, uses the point that he didn’t even wake up Evans as a key component to his sociopathary. To be fair, though, Walter Lord suggested in his book, The Night Lives on, that perhaps the crew were intimidated by Captain Lord, which might explain the amount of slackness aboard ship.
I wonder why Walter never found or talked about the alleged two above sayings? Each time I read the book, I'm wondering whether he actually said these or not.
I can neither agree nor disagree with Mr. Butler’s assertions. The rest of the book seems to be a rather convincing read. He paints Capt Lord as a decent person, who, in a moment of disaster showed his dark side.
