Capitain Stanley Lord - In the Titanic disaster was he villain or victim?, article by Ishmael

8/3/2019 Capitain Stanley Lord - In the Titanic disaster was he villain or victim?, article by Ishmael

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1964 THEIDLER PAGE 17CAPTAIN STANLEY LORD

IN THE TITANIC DISASTE RW A S HE VIL L AIN OR V I C T I M ?

BY S H M A E LOn April 14, 1912, the handsomeBritish liner Titanic struck an iceberg.As a result, she sank and 1500 personslost their lives.Prior to the sinking a vessel wassighted from the Titanic at a distanceestimated to be betwcen 5 and 6 miles.The Titanic, in those desperate lastminutes, signalled the possible savior.But there was no response and theFourth Officer of the Titanic latertestified: She turned round veryslowly, until a t last I only saw herstern light . . .The steamer Californian1was in anicefield somewhere north of the Titanicduring this period. She too had seenthe lights of another vessel and hadbeen watching them for some time.Flares1 were also noticed but discountedas probably being the signals some-times used by liners to identify them-selves.The Californian did not go to theaid of the Titanics survivors until

the next morning, when she receivedword by radio of the sinking.When these facts became known, aloose n o w of circumstantial evidencefell around the neck of the Califor-nians commanding officer, CaptainStanley Lord. He came to the subse-quent court of inquiry only as a wit-ness, but left relieved of his commandand forced out of the employ of hiscompany. The court had drawn thenqose t a u t :The ice by which the Californian wassurrounded was loose ice extending fora distance of not mare than two onthree miles in the direction of theTitanic. The night was clear and thesea was smooth. When she f i t sawthe rockets the Californian could havepushed through the ice to the openwater without any serious risk and sohaver come to the & i h c e of theTitanic. Hzd she done so, she might havesaved many if not all of the lives thatwere lost.Captain Lord firmly maintainedthat the vessel spotted from the Cali-fornian could not have been the

Titanic. He tried to get his case re-viewed several times in the followingyears, but to no avail.It was not long before World WarI broke out and the Titanic disasterfaded into history. When peace came,Captain Lord, who had spent the waryears a t sea, found little difficulty incontinuing his career in the merchantmarine.He let the Titanic affair drop. Al-though there were growing volumes

of literature on the subject, he did notread them, and by 1927 ill healthforced Captain Lord into retirement.His memory of the Titanic mighthave retired also, had it not been forthe publication of a new bookA Night to Remember published in1956 and a subsequent film of thesame name.The movie, in particular, cast theCalifornian and Captain Lord in acritical light for the failure to respondto the distress signals of the Titanic.The aging Captain Lord read reportsof the films implications and in hisfinal years renewed his efforts to clearhis name. He appealed to the Mer-cantile Marine Service Association, anorganization of British shipmaaters,for assistance. The MMSAs GeneralSecretary, Leslie Harrison, took con-siderable interest in the matter and leda still-continuing effort to get the casereviewed by both English and Amer-ican officials in order to remove cen-sure of Captain Lord from the publicrecord. The Californiansmaster diedin 1962, confident that he eventuallywould be vindicated.There seems little doubt that, if thecase were to be formally reopenedtoday, the conclusions drawn wouldbe quite different from those reachedby the original coilrt of inquiry.For one thing, the court proceededin a dubious manner. Captain Lordhad been told that he was to appearas a witness but found instead that hewas among the accused. We did nothave an opportunity to prepare anadequate defense and he was improp-erly represented.Then there is relevant evidence-some of it available at the time andmore available now-that makes it

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SCENE OF THE TITANIC SINKING

Chart shows area in which the sixiking of the Titanic occurred, and illustrate8the facts in dispute concerning the role of steamer Cafifornian.P O I N T A indicates the Californian's estimated position at 6:30 p.m. theevening of the disaster. This position is confirmed by the Californian havingsighted three icebergs observed and plotted earlier by another vessel. Thepositions of the bergs separately sighted ( to the south of point A) werewithin four miles of each other.POINT B indicates the Californian's estimated position a t 10:21 p.m. onthe edge of an ice belt that prevented her further movement to the west.The course she had steered from point A was due west and her speed hadbeep 1 1.6 kts.POINT C is the spot where the Court said the Titanic collided with aniceberg and sank. It w,ill be noted that other evidence points to the existenceof an ice belt east of this point and chat the Titanic, which h d been steamingat a fast 22 knots, would have had to pass through tbis entire belt beforecolliding with the iceberg.POINT D is where the C a l i f o m h would have been if the ship she had seenten miles to the southeast at 11:50 p.m. had actually been the Titanic. Inorder to have sailed from Point A to Point D in the required amount of time,the Californian would have had to do three things there is no evidence she did.1, She would have had to have steered a t least ten degrees to the leftof her course.2. She would have had to cruist zt 14.7 knots, or 3.1 knots over thespeed she believed herself to be travelling.3. She would have had to pass completely through the icebelt. In fact,$he stopped w h n she came to the edge of it.W I N T E is where the Titanic's survivors were picked up by rescue vessehThough she had radioed her position as being a t point C, the Californian,other vessels in the area all proceeded to point E and found no wreckage orsurvivors. The Titanic's remains were found on the other side of the ice belt-at Point E. It is apparent that the Titanic's reported position, the onenccepted by the Gmrt , was in error. Thus, at the time the Califarnian sighteda vessel to the southeast the Titanic was not five to ten miles away, but' c l m r to thirty, well beyond the range of visibilixy. The C a f i f w n i m couldhcit haw seen t h e Titanic and the Tirmic codld nor have seen the Culif0tniar;r.

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OCTOBER THE DLER PLE 19doubtful that the Californian eversighted the Titanic or vice versa.

The Navigational EvidenceThe chart indicates the situationduring the hours before and after thesinking of the Titanic. Examinationof the chart alone, based on one thatappeared in the Merchant Navy Jour-nal, raises grave doubts that the Cali-fornian could have seen the Titanicafter the collision or been seen by thestricken vessel.The Matter of the FlaresMuch of the criticism of CaptainLord centered on the fact that theCalifornian had seen white rocketscoming from the vessel they werewatching and failed to take action

upon them. T h e Californian did, infact, try to make contact with theother ship through the use of a flash-ing light, but the ship did not respond.She slowly turned and moved awayfrom the Californian, hardly theaction of a vessel in distress.The meaning of the rockets seenby the Californian has never beenestablished. If they were not theTitanics distress flares what werethey? According to Captain AlecKane, a contemorary mariner, the ar-gument by the CaZifot-nicnsSecondOfficer that he took them for privatesignals of a slteampship company hadmerit. Said Kane in a recent interview:$Everybody knows that in thosedays firing of rockets was a practiceamong merchant seamen. All the A t -lantic shipping lines had rockets oftheir own to identify themselves bysea. They used to say two linerspassing in the Atlantic could only rec-ognize each other if these rockets werefired,

Lord himself offered another ex-planation. He noted in his testimonyto the Court that a good many steam-ers did not carry lights for flashingMorse code. He suggested that theother vezsel might have been answer-ing the Culifornianss signals.I have recently received a letterfrom Leslie Harrison suggesting stillanother possibility. Mr. Harrison sug-gests that the unknown vescel saw theTitanics signals and was firing her

own flares to indicate that she was onher way to investigate.In any case, the fact that theserockets were not the Titanics is al-most as,sured by the fact that theTiranic used explosive signals thatmake a loud noise like gunfire. Therockets seen by the Californian madeno noise.It also appears that these rocketswere fired a time different from thosesent up by the Titanic.The primary reason the Californiandid not investigate the signals wasthat the vessel turned and movedaway. If she had been a vessel indistress it is not likely that she wouldhave avoided a rescuer so near. Andif she had been the Titanic. she wouldnot have been seen to move at all, andcertainly not two hours after hittingthe iceberg.The Matter of TimingIt is important to note that boththe Catifornim and the Titanic werekeeping careful lookout watches. Andyet the Californian first saw the un-identified vessel to the south twohours before the Titanic observed anyship in the area. If the Titanic hadseen the Culifornian it is most prob-able that shi w.x!d f:rst observeher before the Californian saw her asher lookouts and watchkecphg officerswere locatnd a t a m u c h great heightthan those of the Californiari. Fur-ther the 7iranic was steaming a t 2 2knot. through an area known to haveice while the Californian was stoppedin an icefield. Surely the Titanicslookont watch would be expected tohave been tauter than that of theCalifornian. In any event the dis-crepancy cf two hours in the time ofsightings cannot be adequately ex-plai:iec! u:ilecs one assumes that thetwo vessels did not see each other.I t is apparent that, actually, twopai rs cf vessels must have been in-volved.Other evidence confirms this. Theship seen b y the Californian turnedaway after firing the rockets. Thiscould not have been the Titanic. Shehad struck an iceberg and was sinking,dead in the water.

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OCTOBERPACE 20 THE DLERThe ship Seen by the Titanic turnedaway also. This could not have beenthe Calrfornian. Her engines werecompletely stopped from 10:21 p.m.until 6 a.m. the next morning, as shesat surrounded by ice.

Big BreakIn the end, exoneration of CaptainLord could only come through posi-tive identification of the vessels sightedby the Titanic and the CaZifornian,for if Captain Lords position wascorrect, if he had been victimized bya strange series of coincidences, theanswer must lie with two mysteryships seen but unknown.Exactly fifty years after the Titanicdisaster, in April 1962, Captain Lordgot the biggest break in his favor.A confidential report, filed by thefirst officer of the Norwegian sealingvessel Samson in April 19 12, with theNorwegian consul in Iceland, was re -leased. This report stated that on the

1 rtdnics last night, the Samson wasoperating in the Newfoundland area.First CRicer Henrik Naess sightedtwo big stars to the south whichhe thought had a peculiar position.According to a recent report: H einstructed the masthead lookout tostudy them through binoculars, andreceived a report that they were notstars, but lanterns and a Ict of lights.A few moments later, several rocketswere seen and shortly afterwards a llthe lights suddenly disappeared. Mr .Naess report continues:- The Samsons position was suchthat it was feared that we might betaken for violating territorial borders,and the lights1 out there meant thathere were Americans in the neighbour-hood. When the lights went out thisprobably meant that we had beenobserved, the rockets being, maybe,signals to other ships. We thereforechanged course and hurried north-wards. When dawn came, there wasno sign of ships anywhere.After the ships arrival in Iceland,Mr. Naezs learned from a newspaperof the Titanic disaster. From theSamsons log, he checked that bothtime, date and position of the disastercoincided with their own observations.

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His report concludes: We now un-derstood the meaning of the lightsand rockets we had seen. We had beenten nautical miles away when the7itanic went down. There we were,with our big excellent ship and eightboats in calm, excellent weather.What might we not have done, if wehad known? Alas, we had no radioon board.It was the most convincing vindi-cation of Captain Lord that hadcome to light in a half-century. Butthe aged mariner knew nothing aboutit . He died three months before thereport was made public.History can be cruel. Once it hasbranded its villains the mark is noteasily lost. Today, official Britishand American records still cast Cap-tain Lord as one of the villains ofthe Titanic disaster, a fact that permitssensationalistic writers t o pen copy .likethat which appeared in an Amerlcantrash magazine in 1958: Add to thelist of seaborne murderers the nameof Captain John (sic) Lord, masterof the steamship Californian.There are questions unanswered.Th rough dogged research of the typealready conducted by the MercantileMarine Service Association and LeslieIlarrison, some day the vessel seen bythe Californianmay be positively iden-tified.There are still questions to beanswered and mysteries to be un-ravelled. Some ask: why bother? ForLeslie Harrison it is an unfulfilledpersonal obligation to Captain Lord.For others it may be simply a desireto avoid giving credence to HenryFords rule that history is bunk.

-e----As part of their campaign publicityprior to the GOP convention, the Gold-water people handed out some attractivematchbooks with a slogan on them. Onthe back was another notation: Madein Sweden.And we thought, listening to Eisen-hower and others, that everyone inSweden was busy committing suicidebecause of all that socialism. Seems likethere were a few Swedes healthy andenterprising enough to sell conservativeAmericans matchbooks to aid them intheir fight against socialism.-*-

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Capitain Stanley Lord - In the Titanic disaster was he villain or victim?, article by Ishmael