No lights on the horizon...rockets sent up anyway?

[J Sheehan]

What would have taken place if the lights of the Californian had not been on the horizon that night?

Do you think that distress rockets would still have been sent up from Titanic's bridge anyway in such a scenario?

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I believe that the rockets would have been sent up regardless of the light on the horizon. The Titanic was stopped and sinking slowly and the rockets were one of the ways of signalling distress. They reached a great height before exploding into stars or patterns and in theory could have been seen by one or more ships that were just beyond the visual horizon at deck - or even crow's nest - level.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

I highly doubt it. The immediate problem was to get as many off the sinking ship as possible, and not spending trained resources sending up signals to no one in sight.

 

[Julian Atkins]

I agree with Arun. Any ship sinking with the possible loss of life (in the case of Titanic catastrophic) and with time to send off any distress signals would do so.

They could be seen at a much further distance than the lights of another ship, and so potentially be visible by other ships.

We know this as a fact by Stone and Gibson seeing the rockets of the Carpathia around 3.20am onwards at a considerable distance.

It didn’t require very much expertise to use these rockets, certainly not a bridge officer. All it required was someone to put the rocket into it’s firing ‘holder’, and pull on a bit of string (lanyard). Awful pun it wasn’t rocket science!

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Also, with Smith, Wilde, Lightoller and Moody on the port side and Murdoch, Pitman and Lowe on the starboard side to start with, there was no shortage of Officers when they started loading and launching lifeboats. There were also other senior personnel like Boatswain Nichols and Chief Purser McElroy to help, including mustering passengers. So, Boxhall was still available to take charge of the rocket-firing and he would have needed just one crewman to assist.

I cannot figure out why Lightoller and Wilde had shortage of deck hands right from the start on the port side.on the starboard side, Murdoch appeared to be making up numbers in some of the earlier lifeboats by allo6crew members in if no one else was willing to board.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

They could be seen at a much further distance than the lights of another ship, and so potentially be visible by other ships.

Quite possibly. But it seems that it wasn't Smith who initiated the sending up of rockets on Titanic. According to Boxhall, he suggested that to Smith while the latter was looking at the lights of the steamer on the horizon.
But then then again, that was Boxhall's claim.
They didn't start to send up rockets until the 2nd boat was launched. Yet, the sighting of these steamer lights came while the boats were first being uncovered, and the wireless was already being used in calling for help.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

According to Boxhall, he suggested that to Smith while the latter was looking at the lights of the steamer on the horizon. They didn't start to send up rockets until the 2nd boat was launched. Yet, the sighting of these steamer lights came while the boats were first being uncovered, and the wireless was already being used in calling for help.

I agree that Boxhall's testimony statements have to be taken with a large chunk of salt. That said, did he know about Thomas Andrews' prediction of how long the sinking Titanic would last when he (Boxhall) made that suggestion? If he didn't and his statement was true, we have to ask ourselves if Boxhall would still have made that suggestion about firing the rockets if there was no light from another ship visible in the horizon. The answer could be either way.

As regards the wireless having been already been used to ask for assistance when the first rocket was fired, I am sure the Captain and officers of the Titanic would have known that some ships would carry only one wireless operator who would most likely have retired for the night by the time they realized that their ship was sinking. Although they did not know that the lights they were seeing belonged to one such ship - the Californian - IMO it made sense to play safe and fire the rockets just in case that one or two ships just beyond the visual horizon with the wireless ops off duty saw the flashes. A hypothetical ship only 18 miles from the Titanic with its wireless operator asleep would not have seen anything of the WSL liner, even from the crow's nest. If the OOW of that ship had seen the flash of the rockets, he might have investigated what was wrong and informed the Captain, thus getting a rescue effort underway. Of course, we know with hindsight that such a ship would never have reached the Titanic on time, but would Boxhall have known when he made that suggestion?

 

[Arun Vajpey]

But then then again, that was Boxhall's claim.

Yes. Boxhall's testimonies in the two Inquiries were vague, ambiguous and sometimes improbable, like his claim to have been walking past the Captain's Quarters when he heard the 3 bells. There were innumerable "I'm not sure", "I don't know" "I've no idea" etc throughout his testimony. It is very hard to determine what he really knew or didn't to the extent that I believe that it was actually his intention sit on the fence with most questions.

In the aftermath of Titanic's impact with the iceberg, Boxhall claimed to have been ordered out on two damage inspection tours, ordered to get the carpenter to sound the ship (which turned out unnecessary as he claimed to have met the carpenter coming to the bridge). Boxhall then said that he went to the chart room to work out the ship's position and upon doing so was ordered to hand the co-ordinates to the wireless operators. He testified, likely truthfully, that by then there was so much noise from the venting steam that it was very difficult to hear and understand anyone.

That is why we cannot be certain about Boxhall's claim to have been told by Captain Smith about Andrews' prediction of how long the Titanic would last, which the late Capt David Brown described rightly as 'hearsay'. This is what Boxhall testified about it at the British Inquiry:

15610. Did you hear the Captain say anything to anybody about the ship being doomed?
- The Captain did remark something to me in the earlier part of the evening after the order had been given to clear the boats. I encountered him when reporting something to him, or something, and he was inquiring about the men going on with the work, and I said, "Yes, they are carrying on all right." I said, "Is it really serious?" He said, "Mr. Andrews tells me he gives her from an hour to an hour and a half." That must have been some little time afterwards. Evidently Mr. Andrews had been down.

15611. Can you tell us how long it was after the collision that the Captain said that?
- No, I have not the slightest idea.

15612. Did you say as a matter of fact in America that it was about 20 minutes after the collision?
- No, I do not think so.

Even there Boxhall sounds like he wasn't really sure of anything. Therefore, we have to ask what he really knew - or didn't - and so his unsupported statement about Andrews' prediction is questionable as to whether true.

 

[brionboyles]

In 1912, rules for the placement of lights were not yet uniform or internationally enforced, particularly heights of masthead lights. Even today, masthead lights for large vessels are surprisingly not REQUIRED to be very high.
That said, at the height-of-eye for Titanic's bridge watch (around 60 feet) the horizon was only about 9-10 miles away.
Her foremast light looks to be about 120 feet above the water, for a nominal range (to someone low the water) of about 13 miles.
A vessel just over the horizon with a low masthead light might not be seen at all from Titanic's bridge... even though it could be merely 15 miles away, yet with Titanic's masthead light plainly visible to the other ship. The other ship could even be far CLOSER, if she was presenting only a stern light (considerably lower), and still unseen by Titanic.
In fact, a stern light at a far closer range could be easily missed altogether or mistaken for a star or planet.
Firing a rocket that explodes, say, 100-150 feet in the air might extend the lights from Titanic's "reach" by about another 6-8 miles... to somewhere around 18 miles, if the atmospheric conditions and brightness of the burst were right...theoretically announcing her distress to vessels beyond Titanic's sight, easily within an hour and a half steaming for even the slower ships of the time.
Being a retired bridge watchstander myself and given that ALL of Titanic's officers aware of immenent sinking and magnitude of the desperate situation, I cannot imagine that at least one of them wouldn't have thought to fire rockets... and that taking a few seconds every 5 minutes to fire a rocket on the off-chance of alerting a nearby rescue vessel would be worth the "trouble".
They only had a pitiful few means for calling for help...radio, flashing signal light, and rockets. I think they would have thought of them immediately.

 

[Steven Christian]

The question for me has been why did they have any rockets left save for maybe 2 or 3 in case a ship did show up. They knew they were going down. No need to save any rockets. Should have fired them all.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

The question for me has been why did they have any rockets left save for maybe 2 or 3 in case a ship did show up.

There are many questions that one could be ask, but there is no one around that could give you a good answer. When asked how often they were being sent up, the one who was given the responsibility for sending them up said: "Well, probably five minutes; I did not take any times." When asked how many did he send up, he said: "I could not say, between half a dozen and a dozen, I should say, as near as I could tell."
Of the 36 they had on board, we know that 17 (the one's in that box that held 24) were not fired. We also know that 8 were definitely seen from Californian, but they could have missed seeing a few of them, especially in the beginning. The best estimate we have is that these socket distress signals were being sent up from about 12:45am to about 1:50am Titanic time, about an hour, or thereabouts. My guess is a total of somewhere from 10 to 12 were actually fired off by 4/O Boxhall and QM Rowe.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

By the way, the issue of firing intervals being too long was never raised as an issue during the inquiries in 1912. It has only come up by die hard supporters of Capt. Lord when trying to suggest why those on Californian failed to recognize those signals for what they really were.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

In 1912, rules for the placement of lights were not yet uniform or internationally enforced,

Actually, they had very specific international rules in place in 1912 about the number, the placement, the required range, and the arcs of visibility for the navigation lights that were required.

Firing a rocket that explodes, say, 100-150 feet in the air ....

Regulation socket distress signals that were supplied (by the Cotton Powder Co.) typically exploded around 500 ft high, give or take a few.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Regulation socket distress signals that were supplied (by the Cotton Powder Co.) typically exploded around 500 ft high, give or take a few.

Thanks Sam. I remember you mentioning it somewhere before. That height that the Titanic's rockets could have reached was what made me feel that they would have fired them anyway even if they could see no lights of another ship from the deck, or even the Crow's Nest. Theoretically at least, there was the chance that one or more ships just beyond the horizon would have seen the rockets.

And of course, there was always the hope that the ship would remain afloat longer than what Thomas Andrews predicted. By the time the first rocket went up around 12:47am (was it?), the rate of the ship's trim at the bow had slowed down.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

And of course, there was always the hope that the ship would remain afloat longer than what Thomas Andrews predicted. By the time the first rocket went up around 12:47am (was it?), the rate of the ship's trim at the bow had slowed down.

Yes, the slowing down of the rate of flooding in the damaged compartments would not have been a surprise to Andrew. It is a natural consequence of water rising in the damaged compartments. As the water rises in a compartment from flooding taking place well below the outside waterline, the internal pressure near the bottom of the compartment will increase because of the internal water rise. This will counteract the outside pressure at that level and thereby slow the rate of water ingress into the ship, thus slowing the water rise in the compartments. When the internal level nears the outside waterline level, the rise will become almost indiscernible.
For those interested in the tech details, see here: https://www.titanicology.com/Titanica/SomewhereAbout12SquareFeet.pdf