The Other Side of the Night (33 page)

On the subject of Captain Lord and the
Californian
, Lord Mersey was merciless. The evidence, he said, made it abundantly clear to him that the ship the
Californian
’s officers saw from their bridge, and watched as she fired rocket after rocket, was the
Titanic
. Captain Lord’s excuse that he was sound asleep in the chartroom and couldn’t recall having been told about the rockets didn’t wash with Lord Mersey, and he believed that Captain Lord had acted most improperly in failing to ascertain what was the matter with that ship and go to the stricken liner’s aid. The language of his conclusion was uncompromising:

So what really happened that night in April 1912, on that mirror-smooth patch of the North Atlantic at the edge of that icefield? Did the officers of the
Californian
indeed watch as the
Titanic
fired off her distress rockets in the vain hope of attracting their attention, and stand idly by as she sank? Did the
Californian
’s captain actually ignore those signals when they were reported to him? Or was the ship that Stone and Gibson saw in truth only a small tramp steamer just a few miles away, the rockets nothing more than simple company signals? Was Stanley Lord in fact justified in not moving his ship during the same hours that the
Carpathia
was racing to the northwest, toward the icefield?

One myth that has been needlessly perpetuated since the disaster and deserves to be dispelled is that
had
the
Californian
immediately responded to the white rockets her officers saw, she would have arrived alongside the
Titanic
in time to save everyone aboard. This simply isn’t true, and in fairness to Lord and his ship it deserves to be put to rest. Time was everyone’s enemy that night, from the men and women aboard the
Titanic
, desperately hoping some ship would appear before the liner sank, to Arthur Rostron on the
Carpathia
, knifing through the darkness in the hope of reaching the
Titanic
before it was too late, and even for the
Californian
, who, though she could have performed a legendary feat of mercy that night had she responded to the
Titanic
’s distress signals, still would have been unable to rescue all of the
Titanic
’s passengers and crew.

In the most ideal scenario, when the
Titanic
fired her first rocket at 12:50, Second Officer Stone, standing on the
Californian
’s bridge, would have spotted it, but taken only passing notice—after all, a single rocket does not a distress signal make. But when a second one went up ten minutes later, Stone would have called down to Captain Lord with the news that there is a ship to the south firing white rockets. Lord would be concerned, but not unduly so at this point, and take the easiest and most practical action at the moment, advising Stone to awaken Cyril Evans, the wireless operator. Evans, after setting up his equipment, would have heard the
Titanic
’s CQD and rushed to the bridge with the news. Stone in turn would instantly inform Lord, who orders the ship to get underway while he returns to the bridge to work out the course to the sinking
Titanic
.

By now the time would have been somewhere between 1:15 and 1:20; Lord would likely have been confused by the position given in the
Titanic
’s wireless calls, knowing that 41.46 N, 50.14 W is ten to twelve miles distant, on the other side of the ice field that had stopped him for the night. But the rockets Stone saw—and by now Chief Officer Stewart most likely would have reached the bridge in time to see one or two more go up—came from the south-southeast. Did this mean the
Titanic
had steamed through the icefield, only to come to grief on the other side? Deciding that this was hardly likely, and that the officer on the
Titanic
who had worked out the position had made a mistake somewhere, Lord would have ordered the
Californian
to steam toward the ship to the south, and rang down to the engine room for “Slow Ahead,” cautiously taking the ship away from the ice until he was confident he was in open water, where he would gradually increase speed.

Meanwhile Evans and Phillips would continue to exchange signals, as Evans tries to get more information for Captain Lord. After a few minutes, Phillips sends Bride to the bridge to ask Captain Smith to come back to the wireless office; once Phillips explained the situation, Smith instructs him to signal the
Californian
to assume that the ship she saw to the south firing rockets is indeed the
Titanic
. Phillips sends this to Evans, who in turn passes it up to the Californian’s bridge.

When the
Californian
stopped for the night, Captain Lord had instructed the chief engineer to keep up steam in her boilers, in case it would become necessary to move the ship during the night. Now, in this hypothetical scenario, Lord’s caution pays an unexpected dividend, allowing the
Californian
to get underway almost immediately. Working her way clear of the scattered drift ice nearby, it still takes time for the ship to begin to build up to her full speed, and now the iron constraints of time begin their work against the
Titanic
and the
Californian
. Nothing can done to alter how rapidly the
Titanic
is sinking, while the
Californian
has to cross ten miles of open water to reach her—it will take her almost forty minutes to travel that distance. As the smaller ship approaches the doomed liner, the
Californian
’s officers and crew see that she is sharply down by the head, her bow entirely submerged, her stern beginning to rise out of the water. It is 2:10 a.m., the last lifeboat had been launched, and clearly the end is only minutes away for the
Titanic
.

The
Californian
’s crew have worked hard to get their ship ready for a rescue at sea: her lifeboats are uncovered and swung out, cargo nets slung along the ship’s sides, rope ladders and slings at the ready. But Captain Lord sees the panic sweeping over the
Titanic
’s decks, and as the
Californian
stands off a few hundred yards from the White Star ship, he orders his boats lowered with the instructions to stay well clear of the wreck. There is no way of telling what sort of suction or disturbance the
Titanic
would create when she goes under, and he doesn’t want his boats to be swamped or capsized by frenzied swimmers trying to escape the sinking ship. The
Titanic
’s lifeboats begin converging on the
Californian
, while her own boats are plucking people out of the water as best they can. For those left aboard the
Titanic
, there is little hope: for most, her decks are too far above the water for them to safely jump. Some slide down the empty lifeboat falls, while a few near the bow are able to leap into the water, only to be sucked under by the sinking ship. The
Titanic
’s lights grow red, while the din is tremendous as her stern suddenly begins to rear into the sky. It settles back slightly after a few moments, the lights flash brightly for a second, then go out forever, and at 2:20 a.m. the hull quickly slips under. The
Titanic
is gone.

Now, those who are in the water began swimming desperately for the lifeboats. This too is a race against time, as hypothermia begins its insidious work, numbing arms and legs, sucking away the swimmers’ breath, sapping their strength. Within ten minutes most of them are unconscious. After another ten minutes have passed, most of them have died. The
Californian
’s boats do their best, plucking possibly as many as three hundred of the
Titanic
’s passengers and crew from the water. Added to the more than seven hundred men, women, and children in the
Titanic
’s lifeboats, over a thousand lives have been saved. But tragedy hasn’t been averted, only somewhat diminished. Twelve hundred people still have lost their lives.

But none of that would have been the fault of the
Californian
, had she responded. By making the effort to come to the aid of the stricken liner, Captain Lord and his crew would have fulfilled every moral and legal obligation to which they might have been held accountable. They could not have saved everyone, but they would have saved some—and even one life would have been worth the effort. But in reality, Stanley Lord never made the effort. And so hundreds needlessly died.

But was the
Californian
truly so close to the
Titanic
that she could see the White Star liner as she was sinking? That has been the crux of the “
Californian
incident” for almost a hundred years. For every argument put forward by those who would condemn Stanley Lord which places the
Titanic
in sight of the
Californian
— and vice-versa—there is a counter-argument made by his defenders which moves the two ships far apart, beyond the range of either’s vision. The issue could only be decided if there was one set of facts, one chain of events or incidents which conclusively separates the two ships—or ties them together.

Fortunately for historians, and unfortunately for Stanley Lord, just such a framework of incidents exists, one which irrefutably places the sinking
Titanic
and the
Californian
within plain sight of each other. Certain bits of information gathered by Senator Smith began to lead in this direction at the US Senate investigation, but it wasn’t until Sir Rufus Isaacs had thoroughly examined Lord, Gibson, Stone, Groves, Boxhall, and Rowe that it became clear there were four distinct incidents which were independently corroborated by witnesses aboard both ships, and which inseparably tied them together.

The first incident was when the
Titanic
’s Fourth Officer Boxhall, while working with the crew uncovering the lifeboats, saw the lights of a ship about “two points off the port bow,” that is, about thirty degrees to the left. This meant that the
Titanic
was showing her red (port) sidelight to any ship along that bearing, including the ship Boxhall spotted. The Fourth Officer could clearly see the green (starboard) sidelight of the stranger; he was convinced that the other ship carried three or four masts, and was quite certain that she was “not a two-master.” He pointed her out to Quartermaster Rowe, who had just arrived from the auxiliary bridge at the stern with a box of rockets under his arm. Rowe immediately began fitting one of the rockets into the firing socket on the starboard bridge wing, and sometime around 12:50, he estimated, he lit off the first one.

Aboard the
Californian
, Second Officer Stone had been keeping an eye on the ship to the south. She was abaft the starboard beam; that is, she was sitting slightly behind the
Californian
, and her red sidelight was clearly visible. Together with the position of her masthead light, this showed that she was pointing north, toward the
Californian
. The
Californian
, in turn, was bearing to the east-northeast, drifting on the current, her bow slowly swinging to the south, toward the other ship. At the moment she was showing her green light to this stranger. It was sometime between 12:45 and 12:50 a.m. when Stone saw a white rocket burst over the stranger, followed by four more sent up over the next thirty minutes. Unsure of what to do, Stone notified Captain Lord.