At 11:40 p.m. on the night of April 14, 1912, the White Star Line's "unsinkable" liner Titanic struck an iceberg. Three hours later, at 2:20 a.m., she sank with over 1,500 passengers and crew still on board. To this day it remains the greatest peacetime disaster in the history of the North Atlantic, and almost a hundred years later continues to captivate.
Near the Titanic -- estimates vary from five to twenty miles away -- was the Leyland liner Californian, a small freighter stopped for the night due to thick float ice. The officer on watch, Second Officer Herbert Stone, and apprentice James Gibson, watched a mysterious ship in the distance stop near midnight, fire eight rockets, and disappear within three hours. They alerted the Californian's captain, Stanley Lord, that the ship was firing rockets, and Lord took no action.
In the subsequent American and British inquiries into the disaster, and in the court of public opinion a century after the fact, Lord has been vilified and considered negligent for failing to answer a distress signal. But Lord claimed to the end of his life that the ship seen from the Californian was not the Titanic, and a small but vocal minority of supporters, called "Lordites," have staunchly defended him and sought to clear his name by placing the Californian much farther from the site of the Titanic than previously thought, by supposing the existence of a third ship in between the Titanic and the Californian, and by pointing out discrepancies in the timing of the firing of the rockets, and even placing blame on the Titanic's captain for not sending a proper distress signal.
Was Captain Lord responsible for the deaths of 1,520-some people? Or was he made the scapegoat of a shipping company looking to whitewash itself and a public eager to find someone to blame?
The Californian Controversy
Knowing what happened that cold April night, how can anyone defend Captain Lord? The Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. -- approximately the time that Gibson and Stone saw the ship in the distance stop. The Titanic fired slightly fewer than twelve rockets -- Gibson and Stone saw eight rockets fired. The Titanic foundered at 2:20 a.m. -- approximately the time Gibson and Stone saw the ship apparently "steam away."
Captain Lord steadfastly denied that the ship the Californian saw was the Titanic, and he maintained that position until his death in January of 1962. He stated that he was too far away from the Titanic to render assistance – a position that the British Ministry of Transport agreed with when it reopened the case from 1989 to 1992. That report did not exonerate Lord of ignoring a distress signal, although it concluded, based on the location of the Titanic wreck (discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard in 1985), that had Lord responded to the rockets, the Californian could not have reached the Titanic in time to save any more lives.
Captain Lord's defenders, known as "Lordites," continue to argue a plethora of points to exonerate Captain Lord not only of any responsibility for deaths on the Titanic, but of doing anything wrong at all.
The third ship
Most of the Lordites' arguments center on the hypothesis that there was a third ship in the vicinity, between the Titanic and the Californian, which was seen by both ships. They point out that Gibson and Stone's written depositions state that the ship they saw appeared to be steaming away, and that Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall aboard the Titanic saw the ship in the distance appearing to approach, then turn and steam away.
Titanic survivor Edith Haisman recalled seeing a ship in the distance, and no sooner did she spot it than it disappeared; clearly that could not have been the Californian, which was stationary all night. Still, it must be pointed out that she recalled the incident in 1994, eighty-two years after the fact. No one is questioning her integrity or honesty, but human memory is unreliable even over the short-term, and since her recollection contradicts other recollections and facts, it must be assumed that her memory was faulty.
The counterargument put forth by historian Leslie Reade is that Boxhall noted the ship's positions at various times over the course of an hour – far too long for a ship to be making a turn. However, given Gibson and Stone's observations of the ship they saw, which was first visible to starboard and then moved to the port side, the Californian drifted around over the course of an hour, thus first presenting her portside red light, then both lights, and finally only her green light, to Boxhall.
It should also be noted that the "depositions" in which Gibson and Stone state that the ship was "steaming away" were written at Captain Lord's instigation, before the Californian arrived in Boston and her involvement in the sinking became an issue. One must ask, if Captain Lord had behaved correctly and there was no possibility that the ship Gibson and Stone had seen was the Titanic, why he asked for those letters?
Even if there was a third ship – and despite a vigorous search for contenders, no candidate has withstood rigorous examination -- as Reade points out, you could add a third ship or a fourth ship or the entire British Navy; that does not subtract the Californian.
Some have suggested that the Californian did not see the Titanic's rockets, but rather flares fired from a fishing boat to alert its longboats to its position. However, there is no contemporary support for that theory; Gibson and Stone testified specifically that they saw white rockets, not flares.
Captain Smith and the Improper Distress Signal?
When one concedes that the ship seen by the Californian could only have been the Titanic – or at least that the rockets seen by Gibson and Stone's could only have been the Titanic's – there is a new argument currently being championed by the Titanic Historical Society.
The Board of Trade regulations of the time defined a proper distress signal as "rockets or shells, throwing stars of any colour or description, fired one at a time, at short intervals." The THS concedes that the Californian saw the Titanic's rockets, but points out that the Titanic did not fire its rockets at regular intervals; consequently it was Captain Smith's fault that the Californian did not understand the meaning of the rockets.
But this defense ignores several important facts. One is that neither Captain Lord, nor Gibson or Stone, ever mentioned that they were confused by the intervals of the rockets. Another is that Captain Lord's only defense for the rest of his life was that his ship did not see the Titanic, but rather an unidentified small ship that was steaming away. Third, and most importantly, the BOT regulations specified that "if these signals are used in any other place, for any other purpose than stated, they may be signals of distress, and should be answered accordingly by passing ships, and claims sent in for payment of salvage." In other words, if there is any doubt whatsoever as to the meaning of the signals, investigate.
Captain Lord admitted to Lord Mersey at the Board of Trade disaster inquiry that the rockets "might have been" distress signals; that was tantamount to a confession of gross negligence. Stone also conceded, when Mersey pulled out the aforementioned regulations, that he was looking at a distress signal.
Captain Lord's strange behavior
There are two possibilities: every member of the U.S. Senate Investigation Board and the British Board of Trade inquiry were involved in a conspiracy to railroad the blameless captain of the Californian, or Captain Lord was guilty of criminal negligence and tried to cover his trail with lies in which he involved his officers. Either way, we will never know exactly what happened aboard the Californian.
Anecdotally, however, we do know that when wireless operator Cyril Evans brought Captain Lord the Titanic's last reported position on the morning of April 15, 1912, Lord stared at the paper and said, "This position won't do. Bring me a better one." We also know anecdotally that when Chief Officer Stewart told Second Officer Stone that morning that the Titanic has sunk, Stone replied, "Yes, I know, I saw her rockets last night."
During the trip to Boston, Lord demanded and received affidavits from Stone and Gibson describing what they had seen that night; unusual behavior for a man who was completely innocent and who had yet to be accused of anything. The Californian's log, further, made no mention at all of either the ship seen that night or of the rockets, and the scrap log was mysteriously missing.
When the Californian arrived in Boston and rumors began to spread that she had been within visual sight of the Titanic, Captain Lord denied that his ship had ever seen any rockets or signals of any kind. Later, in both the U.S. Senate investigation and the Board of Trade investigation, Lord admitted on the stand to having been told of "one" rocket. In a strange series of questions and answers too convoluted to be repeated here, he changed his story numerous times; granted, he was being mercilessly grilled and must have been under tremendous stress, but one must wonder why a man who was telling the truth would continually change his story.
Questions remain
As we approach the one hundredth anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, the question of the Californian is far from settled, at least as far as the "Lordites" are concerned. This has by no means been an exhaustive article, nor should it be construed as such. Further, if bias against Captain Lord is detected here, it is only because the facts, when taken together and with no omissions, weigh against him. There is no personal agenda.
However, arguments both for and against Captain Lord are far too numerous to be explored in one article. Suffice it to say, the Californian controversy is one of the most contentious and fascinating aspects of the whole Titanic tragedy, and one which remains a hot button issue nearly a century later.
Sources:
British Board of Trade regulations, “Signals of Distress,” 1912
Butler, Daniel Allen, The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost, 2009, ISBN 978-1-935149-02-6
Butler, Daniel Allen, personal correspondence, April 17, 2010
Reade, Leslie, The Ship That Stood Still: The Californian and her Mysterious Role in the Titanic Disaster, 1993, ISBN 0-393-03537-9
Stone, Herbert, affidavit, April 18, 1912
Lord, Walter, “A Certain Amount of Slackness,” 1986
Titanic: Death of a Dream, A&E video, 1994
Titanic Historical Society, personal correspondence, c. 2005
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