The Other Side of the Night (40 page)
At about 2.40 a.m. Mr. Stone again called up the Master by voice pipe and told him that the ship from which he had seen the rockets come had disappeared bearing SW. 1/2 W., (Stone, 7976) the last he had seen of the light; and the Master again asked him if he was certain there was no colour in the lights. “I again assured him they were all white, just white rockets.” (7999) There is considerable discrepancy between the evidence of Mr. Stone and that of the Master. The latter states that he went to the voice pipe at about 1.15, but was told then of a white rocket (not five white rockets). (Lord, 6790) Moreover, between 1.30 and 4.30, when he was called by the chief officer (Mr. Stewart), he had no recollection of anything being reported to him at all, although he remembered Gibson opening and closing the chart room door. (6859)
Mr. Stewart relieved Mr. Stone at 4 a.m. (Stewart, 8571) The latter told him he had seen a ship four or five miles off when he went on deck at 12 o’clock, and 1 o’clock he had seen some white rockets, and that the moment the ship started firing them she started to steam away. (8582) Just at this time (about 4 a.m.) a steamer came into sight with two white masthead lights and a few lights amidships. He asked Mr. Stone whether he thought this was the steamer which had fired rockets, and Mr. Stone said he did not think it was. At 4.30 he called the Master and informed him that Mr. Stone had told him he had seen rockets in the middle watch. (8615) The Master said, “Yes, I know, he has been telling me.” (8619) The Master came at once on to the bridge, and apparently took the fresh steamer for the one which had fired rockets, (8632) and said, “She looks all right; she is not making any signals now.” This mistake was not corrected. He, however, had the wireless operator called.
At about 6 a.m. Captain Lord heard from the “Virginian” that the “‘Titanic’ had struck a berg, passengers in boats, ship sinking”; and he at once started through the field ice at full speed for the position given. (Lord, 7002)
Captain Lord stated that about 7.30 a.m. he passed the “Mount Temple,” (7014) stopped, and that she was in the vicinity of the position given him as where the “Titanic” had collided (lat. 41° 46’ N.; long. 50° 14’ W.). (7026) He saw no wreckage there, but did later on near the “Carpathia,” which ship he closed soon afterwards, and he stated that the position where he subsequently left this wreckage was 41° 33’ N.; 50° 1’ W. It is said in the evidence of Mr. Stewart that the position of the “Californian” was verified by stellar observations at 7.30 p.m. on the Sunday evening, and that he verified the Captain’s position given when the ship stopped (42° 5’ N.; 50° 7’ W.) as accurate on the next day. The position in which the wreckage was said to have been seen on the Monday morning was verified by sights taken on that morning.
All the officers are stated to have taken sights, and Mr. Stewart in his evidence remarks that they all agreed. (Stewart, 8820) If it is admitted that these positions were correct, then it follows that the “Titanic’s” position as given by that ship when making the C.Q.D. signal was approximately S. 16° W. (true), 19 miles from the “Californian”; and further that the position in which the “Californian” was stopped during the night, was thirty miles away from where the wreckage was seen by her in the morning, or that the wreckage had drifted 11 miles in a little more than five hours.
There are contradictions and inconsistencies in the story as told by the different witnesses. But the truth of the matter is plain. (7020) The “Titanic” collided with the berg 11.40. The vessel seen by the “Californian” stopped at this time. The rockets sent up from the “Titanic” were distress signals. The “Californian” saw distress signals. The number sent up by the “Titanic” was about eight. The “Californian” saw eight. The time over which the rockets from the “Titanic” were sent up was from about 12.45 to 1.45 o’clock. It was about this time that the “Californian” saw the rockets. At 2.40 Mr. Stone called to the Master that the ship from which he’d seen the rockets had disappeared.
At 2.20 a.m. the “Titanic” had foundered. It was suggested that the rockets seen by the “Californian” were from some other ship, not the “Titanic.” But no other ship to fit this theory has ever been heard of.
These circumstances convince me that the ship seen by the “Californian” was the “Titanic,” and if so, according to Captain Lord, the two vessels were about five miles apart at the time of the disaster. The evidence from the “Titanic” corroborates this estimate, but I am advised that the distance was probably greater, though not more than eight to ten miles. The ice by which the “Californian” was surrounded was loose ice extending for a distance of not more than two or three miles in the direction of the “Titanic.” The night was clear and the sea was smooth. When she first saw the rockets the “Californian” could have pushed through the ice to the open water without any serious risk and so have come to the assistance of the “Titanic.” Had she done so she might have saved many if not all of the lives that were lost.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It has become something of a cliché for an author to acknowledge in some form that while it’s his or her name alone which appears on the cover of a book, the writing process is a far from solitary undertaking. Well, count me in the ranks of those who are guilty of doing so–-unashamedly so, for although such a sentiment is indeed a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true. Nor does it diminish in the least degree the efforts of those who provided me with assistance, support, resources or encouragement while I was writing
The Other Side of the Night
. And so I mean to offer my most profound thanks to all of them as best I can.
First and foremost, I have to acknowledge my undying gratitude to the late Walter Lord, author of
A Night to Remember
, the book that has introduced the
Titanic
story to so many millions of people over the past half-century, myself among them. He became known—and rightly so—as “the dean of
Titanic
historians;” there are few, if any, people who could match his knowledge not only of the ship and the disaster, but also of the humanity involved. I’m willing to submit that while there may be some who may possess a more intimate technical knowledge of the
Titanic
, no one has matched his understanding of the men and women who built her, crewed her, sailed in her.
It was this genuine affection for people that most impressed me when I first became acquainted with Walter Lord, more than two decades ago. I was just beginning work on my own book about the
Titanic
,
“Unsinkable,”
and Walter was particularly gracious in his readiness to make his own resource material available to me. As time passed and our acquaintance grew into a more of a friendship—-albeit a long-distance one, as I lived in Florida and he in New York—he began to take a closer interest in my work, offering his encouragement as often as he did his knowledge. I was at once humbled yet immensely proud when he reviewed
“Unsinkable”
as it went to press and declared it “A masterful retelling of the
Titanic
story.”
The pinnacle of our relationship came on a Wednesday afternoon in April 1998, as I sat in the living room of his New York apartment, and described to him how I had begun receiving letters and emails from children ten, eleven, twelve years old, telling me how excited they were to read about the
Titanic
in
“Unsinkable.”
A huge grin spread across his face as I recounted that I had been in that same age group when I first read
A Night to Remember
, and discovered the
Titanic
story for myself, triggering a life-long fascination. “Well, Dan,” he said, with a pleased tone in his voice, “that just makes you my successor.” Few words spoken to me have ever meant so much.
Within another year, Walter’s health began to fail, and as it did, hope faded for one last
Titanic
project that he had envisioned. In 1986 he had published a second book about the
Titanic
,
The Night Lives On
, in which he explored aspects of the disaster which were originally outside the scope or the knowledge of
A Night to Remember
. It was Walter’s hope to combine them both, along with a considerable amount of new material, into a sort of “
Titanic
Omnibus,” meant to be a near-definitive work on the subject, as far as such a thing was possible. (Walter readily acknowledged that no one would ever have the last word on the
Titanic
.) Alas, it was not to be, and Walter Lord died in May 2002.
But he had left me with a glimmering of an idea. I was not egotistical enough to believe that I could—or should—attempt the “
Titanic
Omnibus” project. But in one of our last conversations, Walter and I discussed how he had created a story arc in
A Night to Remember
and
The Night Lives On
. In the first book he had focused almost exclusively on the
Titanic
, shifting occasionally to the
Carpathia
, with only brief detours aboard the
Californian
. In the second book, he devoted considerably more attention to both the latter ships, though the primary focus was still the
Titanic
. Was it his intent, I wondered, to produce a third volume, where the emphasis was on the
Carpathia
and the
Californian
, with the
Titanic
providing the link between them? No, he said, he never had such an idea in mind, but there was some merit to it. We left it at that, and there the concept lay for more than five years.
Finally, in the autumn of 2004, I picked up the threads of the story again and began writing. It was never my intention to try to produce a “sequel” to
A Night to Remember
and
The Night Lives On
. What I wanted to tell this time was not another recounting of the disaster—I had already written about the
Titanic
herself in
“Unsinkable” —
but rather to focus on the rescue of the survivors and the aftermath: the two investigations and the consequences of the actions and inactions of the
Carpathia
and the
Californian
. I wanted to tell the story of that “night to remember” from an entirely new perspective—I wanted to tell the tale that was
The Other Side of the Night
.
It should come as no surprise then that many of the same people and institutions which made significant contributions to
“Unsinkable”
also played a part in the writing of
The Other Side of the Night
. The first place any United States citizen researching the
Titanic
should start is the Library of Congress. It not only holds the original transcript of the Senate Investigation, but there are literally hundreds of Titanic-related references in its collection, including the only surviving original copy of the ship’s manifest. Other libraries where I did work and research include the Van Wylen Library, Hope College, Holland, Michigan; the libraries of the Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan; the Public Library of Grand Rapids, Michigan; and the Broward County Library System, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Museums played a major part in my research, beginning with the Grand Rapids Public Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was a fountain of information on Senator Smith, as Grand Rapids was his hometown. The Mariners Museum of Newport News, Virginia, and the National Maritime Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, are repositories of excellent archival collections; also worth particular mention is the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Also well worthy of note and mention are the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, also located in Halifax, where the staff is always ready to assist anyone who wants to learn more about the
Titanic
. Because many of the
Titanic
’s dead rest in Halifax cemeteries, the city has always held her memory in a special place.
The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum of Belfast, Northern Ireland, possesses a unique institutional knowledge of the men who designed and built the
Titanic
, of their times and their world, and can make those lives and times very, very real to a dedicated researcher. I want to make specific mention of the curator of maritime history, Mr. Michael McCaughan, who went out of his way to be helpful to me.
The city of Southampton has never entirely forgotten the grief caused by the terrible death toll among the crew. As a result, the Southampton City Heritage Centre has kept the legacy and memory of the crew and their families alive, and the community history manager, Mr. Donald Hyslop, never hesitated to assist me, whenever it was possible, in my efforts to tell their story.
The glory days of the great British shipyards have gone the way of the glory days of British shipbuilding, now just a thing of memory. That sadly includes Harland and Wolff in Belfast, where the
Titanic
and her sisters were built. The slipways where they were constructed, the vast Thompson Graving Dock where they fitted out, and the old Administration Building are about all that is left of the yard from 1912, when Harland and Wolff was the largest shipbuilder in the world. The shipyard itself is now an engineering firm, and it is very much in doubt if any ships will ever be built there again, despite the fact that the yard possesses the largest drydock in the United Kingdom. But the sense of the firm’s history—along with a pride in it—is growing in Belfast, and much that might have been lost is now being preserved. What is priceless for an historian is the friendliness of the people of Belfast, and their willingness to share the stories of the fathers and grandfathers who built the great ships for the White Star Line. Whenever I’m in Belfast, I never feel as though I’m a visitor—it feels more like I’ve come home.
And an especial word of thanks to the British Public Records Office. It is there that the transcript of the Board of Trade Inquiry is held, along with those of the Parliamentary debates which followed it. I was a source of endless amusement to the staff there, as my late 20
th
Century “American English” was not up to the demands of early 20
th
Century “English English,” particularly when it had been contorted by lawyers. Not to fear, the staff at the PRO were always willing to help out “the fellow from the colonies.”
Where maritime issues were involved I relied very heavily on the advice and guidance of men who knew ships and the sea first hand, as a profession. First among them is Capt. Ronald Warwick, retired commodore of the Cunard Line, one time master of the
Queen Elizabeth 2
and the first captain of the
Queen Mary 2
. He was more than generous in sharing his insights and experiences in the pleasures, perils, and burdens of commanding a passenger liner on the North Atlantic. He has both my thanks and my admiration.
Another source of practical experience and advice was my father, Harold E. Butler, who passed away in 2002; as a young man he had served as a quartermaster with the United States Merchant Marine during the Second World War. As a consequence of his experience, he was able to provide me with a wealth of knowledge and insights into the details, technicalities, and, above all, the realities of the life of a sailor at sea. My debt to him, for a multitude of reasons, is boundless.
I’m also deeply grateful to Matthew McLean, a retired bosun from the British Merchant Marine. His intimate knowledge of life in the fo’c’s’le of a British merchantman has been priceless, not in the least for his insights into the sometimes complex relationships between officers and crew aboard British ships.
Worth particular attention—and mention—are four individuals and their websites. They are: Dave Billnitzer, who maintains the site
http://home.earthlink.net/~dnitzer/Titanic.html
; William “Bill” Wormstedt, whose website can be found at
http://home.att.net/~wormstedt/titanic
; Dave Gittins, whose site URL is
http://users.senet.com.au/~gittins/
; and George Behe, whose site, “Titanic Tidbits,” can be found at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com
/homepages/Carpathia. If these four gentlemen are considered “amateurs,” it is only because they don’t make their living as historians. Their work is, collectively and individually, sterling and well worth taking the time to examine in detail.
In understanding and explaining the character of Stanley Lord, and in particular the nature of his personality, I’m deeply indebted to the clinical psychologists with whom I consulted and who, independently of each other, returned identical verdicts about Captain Lord’s sociopathy. They are Dr. Dorothy Mihalyfi of Boca Raton, Florida; Dr. Marilyn Wyndham of Sacramento, California; Dr. Julian Edney, Dr. Jeffrey Hirsch, and J. Lee Brubaker, PhD., all of Los Angeles, California. I’m also indebted to Dr. Martha Stout, of Cape Ann, Massechusetts, and Dr. Robert D. Hare, of Vancouver, British Columbia, whose work added confirmation their colleagues’ conclusions.
There were other individuals who gave of their time and expertise and deserve recognition. There are few experiences more gratifying to an author than to have an editor whose excitement about a project matches their own. My editor at Casemate, Steven Smith, is just such an individual: he was enthusiastic about this book from the time that the idea first came up in conversation. I want to thank him for his determination and effort in seeing it go into print. Likewise, my gratitude goes out to David Farnsworth, the publisher at Casemate, who came to share Steven’s enthusiasm, and to Tara Lichterman, who, I believe, actually keeps Casemate up and running—at the very least, she kept me on track.
Thanks also to James and Denise Carlisle, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, not only for their hospitality, but also for Jim’s reminiscences of his grandfather, Alexander Carlisle, who as a young man had worked on the
Titanic
at Harland and Wolff. A special word of acknowledgment is due to Captain Tony Crompton, retired Master Mariner, and Ilya McVey, an officer in the British Merchant Marine. These two gentlemen, in a correspondence that stretched out over a period of more than four years, offered many insights and real-life examples of how the realities of life at sea differ from the ideals cherished by regulators and academics. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least.