As promised Mike, here is how a cabin telephone looked like:
I believe it was darkness. We must consider where those witnesses were at the time and how their night vision was at the time. But because of my medical background, I do know one thing; humans overestimate their ability to see in poor light and in the dark, a tendency that cannot be completely overcome with training. Part of the reason is human visual acuity is quite good during daytime but it drops significantly as we move towards dusk and darkness of the night by comparison with many animals. There are individual variations, of course, but with the kind of a very clear and yet very dark and moonless night that prevailed, almost all of them, including the lookouts and the OOW would have mentally believed that they would be able to see just a bit further than they actually could without thinking too deeply about it.
Boxhall was asked about it twice:
| 15339. Did you see anything in the nature of haze? - No, none whatever. 15340. Neither at 8 o'clock nor at any time during the night? - Whenever I was on the deck or at the compass I never saw any haze whatever. | Fourth officer Joseph Groves Boxhall (1884-1967) | British Board of Trade inquiry into the disaster, Day thirteen as examined by Raymond Asquith |
| “He remembered the collision at 11.40. The weather was then perfectly clear all round, with no sign of haze or fog. He was between the officers’ quarters and the bridge at the time of the collision… Before leaving the Titanic he saw the masthead lights of another steamer in the distance. He was ordered to signal to her, and did for a considerable time. She was approximately five miles away. There was no haze which interfered with this view.” | Fourth officer Joseph Groves Boxhall (1884-1967) | 1913 account at the Ryan vs. Oceanic Steam Navigation Company hearings |
One reason would be that Boxhall wasn't on the darkened navigating bridge at the time Fleet saw something in the ship's path and everything that happened in the next couple of minutes at least. Wherever Boxhall was, he would not have had acclimated for good night vision. That would have applied even if they believed his corny story about walking past the Captain's quarters when the 3 bells were struck.
Three things are possible:
You simply cannot count witness for Vs. witnesses against to decide anything. You need to look carefully at what they said, when they said it, how consistent are they, what were they really talking about, etc. Many of what was put in the For Haze list have nothing to do with the situation that would have been seen by the lookouts at 11:40pm that night.
Thank you for your explanation Sam, my statement about counting the amount of people in favour and against wasn't based on that I thought that there was a haze, for I agree with you on that based on the circumstances that night it was to be impossible that there would have been a haze in the first place. The collection of accounts, which were compelled by George Behe in his excellent book, was a way to give some additional food for thought, as well as in playing the 'Devil's Advocate'.
I have a feeling that the 'fuzziness' might have been the result of the first two, or possibly all three of those factors.
Exactly. While statements made by Fleet and Lee as duty lookouts regarding the haze were at least worthy of later debate even if only to disagree with them, those made by others would be far less so. As Sam says, we have to consider where they were, what they really saw and were talking about. Above all, none of them except Murdoch, Fleet and Lee were in a position to distinguish an object ahead in the ship's path at 11:40pm that Sunday nd that's what mattered as far as the disaster was concerned.
What Boxhall said did not make any sense and could not have been true. This has been discussed many times before in different threads of these forums and of course in books by Sam Halpern and Brad Payne. QM Olliver was on the compass platform some 250 feet aft of the bridge when he heard the bells from the crow's nest and started off to go there. Sam has shown that would have taken Olliver close to a minute to reach the bridge and he was almost there when he felt the first shock of the collision. As he continued onto the bridge, he heard the hard-a-port helm order, saw Murdoch at the WTD lever and saw the tip of the iceberg drift past the starboard wing. Except for a single discrepancy, Olliver's statements tally with what QM Hichens, enclosed within the wheelhouse and so from an entirely different perspective, testified.
