The Other Side of the Night (27 page)

Here Lord paused and Smith asked, “You heard nothing more about it?”

“Nothing more until about something between then and half past 4; I have a faint recollection of the apprentice opening my room door; opening it and shutting it. I said, ‘What is it?’ He did not answer and I went to sleep again. I believe the boy came down to deliver me the message that this steamer had steamed away from us to the southwest, showing several of these flashes or white rockets; steamed away to the southwest.”

Smith then asked, “Captain, these Morse signals are a sort of language or method by which ships speak to one another?”

“Yes, sir; at night.”

“The rockets that are used are for the same purpose and are understood, are they not, among mariners?”

“As being distress rockets?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yes; you never mistake a distress rocket.”

It is particularly difficult to credit Lord’s last answer, for it implied that there was only one specific type of rocket to be used as a distress signal, which simply wasn’t true. That Smith was far more knowledgeable than Lord apparently believed him to be would be demonstrated when Smith introduced the contents of the British Board of Trade’s signals regulations into the Investigation’s official record, emphasizing that their legality was duly recognized by the United States government. Perhaps Lord took Smith’s ignorance for granted, or smugly presumed he would not have access to the British Board of Trade regulations which outlined the use of signal rockets in the event of distress, and the procedures for responding to them. Or he may have simply assumed that he was more clever than Smith, and the blatant lies he had just told the Senator would never be found out. In light of what would subsequently be revealed about Lord’s personality, the latter is the most likely.

What would assume a larger significance in the weeks and months ahead was Lord’s willingness to distort and fabricate facts in order to put himself in the best possible light. At first he claimed that he had never actually seen the other ship, then later described how he had personally watched it come up “within 4 miles of us;” he admitted that he had never seen the
Titanic
, yet testified that he told Cyril Evans of the other ship, “This is not the
Titanic
, there is no doubt about it.” Most egregious of all, although Smith wasn’t aware of it, Lord’s account of the reports made to him by Stone and Gibson of the white rockets, as well as his own responses, was completely at variance with what had actually occurred.

Wireless operator Cyril Evans then took Stanley Lord’s place on the witness stand, and Smith carefully drew from him a narrative of the exchanges between the
Californian
and the
Titanic
before Evans signed off for the night on April 14—including the infamous attempt by Evans to warn the
Titanic
that the
Californian
had been stopped by ice, which nearly deafened Phillips, who in turn cut off Evans in mid-signal. Smith then questioned Evans about the events of the morning of April 15, from the moment Evans was roused by Chief Officer Stewart, making a point of asking the wireless operator if he had any explanation for why he hadn’t been awakened earlier, specifically when the ship to the south began firing rockets. Naturally, Evans was at a loss to provide a reason for this omission.

Evans’ testimony closed the proceedings for the day, but Senator Smith was far from finished with Stanley Lord or the
Californian
. The New York and Boston newspapers were tenaciously clinging to the story of the
Californian
, and Smith was following them closely. What was disturbing was how dramatically and conveniently Stanley Lord’s version of the night of April 14-15 changed—and how his public statements differed from his sworn testimony before the investigating committee.

On April 19, Lord had told the
Boston Traveler
that the
Californian
was “30 miles north of the scene of the frightful disaster,” yet on April 22, he told the
Boston Post
his ship was only 20 miles from the
Titanic
, and later testified to the Senate committee that his ship was 19 miles away from the White Star liner’s position. In that same report it was said that Lord “stoutly denied” that his ship had sighted “rockets or other signals of distress.” He told the
Boston Globe
that the
Californian
spent “three hours…steaming about the spot, hoping to be able to pick up something, or recover some body…. At the end of three hours, our search having been without result, we put on steam and headed for Boston,” but had told Senator Smith that his search lasted barely more than two. When asked by a number of reporters about the
Californian
’s actual position when she stopped for the night on April 14, Lord replied that such information was “state secrets,” prompting the
Boston Evening Transcript
to remark on how different this was from the usual practice, where, “Ordinarily when a steamer reaches port and has anything to report, figures giving exact positions reckoned in latitude and longitude have always been obtainable from the ship’s officers.”

One newspaper report which apparently had a direct influence on Cyril Evans’ appearance before the committee was found in the
New York Herald
on April 23, 1912, the same day the
Californian
story broke. Lord had told reporters questioning the veracity of Carpenter McGregor’s allegations, as well as Ernest Gill’s affidavit, that, “With the engines stopped, the wireless was of course not working, so we heard nothing of the
Titanic
’s plight until the next morning.” To Smith, who had experience with railroad telegraphy and was at least conversant with wireless, this made no sense—as long as the Californian had steam up, there was power for the wireless; that her engines had stopped was irrelevant.

One curious remark made by Lord in the course of his conversations with the American press would not assume any significance until many years later, when its implications would suddenly loom huge. In the April 25, 1912,
Boston Journal
, appeared an account of a press conference Lord had held in his cabin aboard the
Californian
a few days after she docked in Boston. (It was in this interview that he made the infamous statement “
If
I go to Washington…”) Lord continued to deny that anyone aboard the
Californian
had seen anything that might have been distress signals or rockets. At one point, however, for no apparent reason, Lord suddenly blurted out, “It is all foolishness for anybody 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 a story. No member of the crew has ever been in this room, and none of them come near the place except to clean up.” What made the remark so bizarre was that it came out of nowhere. No one, either among Lord’s officers or members of the press, had even implied that such an incident, or anything remotely resembling it, had occurred. For some reason Lord was finding it necessary to deny any part in an incident which as far as anyone knew had never taken place.

Senator Smith, in the meantime, had contacted the U.S. Navy’s Hydrographer’s Office, asking if it could supply the committee with all the information it had about the icefield the
Titanic
and the
Californian
had encountered, as well as about any ships in the vicinity of the
Titanic
’s final position. The testimony of Captain John J. Knapp, US Navy, has frequently been overlooked in the argument over the
Californian
incident, and yet it is devastating.

Knapp, who clearly had carefully prepared his testimony in advance, began by explaining the responsibilities of the Hydrographic Office. “The duty of the Hydrographic Office, under the law, is to improve the means of safe navigation of the seas, for the benefit of the Navy and the maritime marine, by providing nautical charts, sailing directions, navigators, and manuals of instruction…. Whenever reports are made which have immediate effect upon the safety of navigation, they are given at once to the maritime community and the public generally, and are again flashed out to the sea by means of radiograms, the latter, as a rule, from the wireless stations under the control of the Navy Department.”

He went on to explain how the Hydrographic Office of the Bureau of Navigation “has been publishing graphically from month to month a series of charts known as the Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean, depicting thereon the physical conditions of the ocean and of the atmosphere for the current month, as well as the location of dangers to navigation as reported by incoming ships.” A more detailed description was “given from week to week on a printed sheet known as the Hydrographic Bulletin.”

Just how valuable the Pilot Chart and Bulletins were was demonstrated, Knapp said, by the fact that “Practically all the captains in the trans-Atlantic trade cooperate in this work by handing in their information upon arrival in port to the branch hydrographic offices.” Even more valuable, “the use of radio telegraphy and the Hydrographic Office is thereby enabled to publish daily in a so-called daily memorandum whatever important reports of dangers have been received. This sheet is prepared every afternoon and is mailed to the branch hydrographic offices and there given publicity to all concerned.”

In response to Senator Smith’s questions about the extent of the icefield encountered by both the
Titanic
and the
Californian
, Knapp introduced a series of three charts, the first two of which showed the icefield in the vicinity of the
Titanic
’s final position, as reported by the various ships which had passed through those waters during the day and evening of April 14. Representatives from the Hydrographers Office had, in the days following the loss of the
Titanic
, examined the logs and wireless records of scores of ships which had since arrived in American ports, making careful notes of any detail, however minute, which related to the loss of the White Star liner.

At Senator Smith request, Captain Knapp began correlating these snippets of information—weather reports, ice reports, sea conditions, position reports, ship sightings, notations of when various ships passed in and out of wireless range of each other, exchanges of signals—to produce a coherent picture of which ships were where on the night of April 14–15, 1912. Knapp’s testimony was technical and somewhat long-winded, but it deserves to be presented verbatim, for it was so authoritative that it was damning. In short, Knapp introduced the evidence which would begin nailing down the lid on the coffin of Stanley Lord’s career.

“I submit also another chart (Chart No. 3) and the following memorandum, marked ‘
Titanic
— Ice barrier—Near-by ships.’” What came next was so stunning that, because in the near-century that has passed since “The
Californian
Incident” no one who has approached the issue has possessed better professional credentials, practical experience and professional authority than Captain John Knapp, it deserves to be quoted in full:

“I invite especial attention to that part of the memorandum referring to the hypothetical position of the
Californian
, as shown on that chart, and, in connection therewith, it is desirable to explain that the arcs of circles drawn about the position of the steamship
Titanic
and about the position of the steamship
Californian
were drawn to graphically illustrate the testimony of certain witnesses before your committee.”

“What do these arcs indicate?” asked Smith.

“The outer arc around each ship is drawn with a radius of 16 miles, which is approximately the farthest distance at which the curvature of the earth would have permitted the side lights of the
Titanic
to be seen by a person at the height of the side lights of the
Californian
, or at which the side lights of the
Californian
could have been seen by a person at the height of the side lights of the
Titanic
. The inner circle around each ship is drawn with a radius of 7 miles. This is approximately the distance after reaching which the curvature of the earth would have shut out the side lights of the
Californian
from the view of one in a lifeboat in the water. It appears, therefore, that if the
Titanic
’s position at the time of the accident was as fixed by the testimony, and if it was the side light of the
Californian
that was seen from the boat deck of the
Titanic
, the
Californian
was somewhere inside of the arc of the 16-mile circle drawn about the
Titanic
. It further appears that if the above hypothesis be correct and if the side light of the other steamer could not be seen, as is testified to, from one of the lifeboats of the
Titanic
after being lowered, the
Californian
was somewhere outside of the circle with the 7-mile radius drawn about the
Titanic
.

“In the case of the
Californian
, if the steamer which in the testimony given by members of the crew of the
Californian
, including the captain and the donkey engine-man and others, is said to have been seen by them, was the
Titanic
, she must have been somewhere inside of the circle with the 16-mile radius drawn around the
Californian
. If that be the case, as the
Californian
’s side light was shut out by the curvature of the earth from the view of anyone in a lifeboat of the
Titanic
after being lowered into the water, then the
Titanic
must have been outside of the circle drawn with the 7-mile radius around the
Californian
.