Murdoch had used to behave and make decisions in other sailings, indicate that he had the ability to react instantly anticipating all possible scenarios from the current moment. So, feel (just feel) that he might have done it the moment he saw the wave and instantly calculated that he had no chance to survive.
As I said above, as a medical man I can tell you that the above assessment is completely wrong. People like Murdoch and even
Moody, who are able to think and act quickly and professionally under difficult circumstances, are least likely to kill themselves on a spur of the moment decision, especially if they are trying to help other people. The evasive action that the then Second Officer Murdoch took on the
Arabic in 1903 involved overruling the First Officer and is believed to have averted a major accident. Murdoch was praised in his career for his cool head and logical thinking even under stressful circumstances and not at all the kind of man who would snap suddenly.
As the OOW at the time of the accident, Murdoch would have known that he had done his absolute best to avoid an impact and when it became apparent that could not be done, made quick decisions to minimise the effects of damage. As an intelligent professional man he would have known that there would be situations where circumstances were such that it would be beyond human ability to avert a major disaster; after the
Titanic struck the iceberg and started sinking, he would have instinctively known that they had just encountered such a situation and so would not have harboured any feelings of personal guilt. Along with every available colleague, Murdoch would have concentrated to saving as many lives as possible and he did.
I believe that if that could have happened it was in a boat that had been lowered, and it makes me think that everything points to the collapsible boat "D" around 2:05 am.
Highly unlikely IMO. After we filter out the obviously hearsay survivor accounts like Laura Francatelli, Edward Dorking, Soloman Hyman, Mary Davis, Charlotte Collyer etc, we are left with very few witnesses who might be considered in the "likely saw/heard something" category. Note that of those unlikely names, only Francatelli's account was a supposedly 'first hand' one and she was rescued on Lifeboat #1 launched at 01:05am and must have been quite some distance from the sinking
Titanic in its final minutes. The aforementioned 'likely names' include George Rheims, Eugene Daly, Carl Jansson and Richard Williams from their survivor accounts in the aftermath of the disaster and John Collins from my own later research. All of those men were on the higher
starboard side of the sinking ship, Daly and Collins actually quite close to where Murdoch and others were working on
Collapsible A and the other three a bit further aft. All their accounts indicate that the alleged shooting incident occurred on the same side as
Collapsible A (starboard) but a bit further aft and a few minutes before the wave hit at a time when the boat deck was still dry around them.
While Lightoller or Wilde might have fired a warning shot in the air to avert a rush towards
Collapsible D while that lifeboat was being loaded, there are no survivor accounts that mention the "Officer shooting incidence" there on the port side. The officers had formed a semicircular cordon of crew memebers around
Collapsible D and were allowing only women and children through. That was not easy because there was a large crowd of passengers , mostly men, pressing forward toward the lifeboat and only a few could get through; Jane Hoyt, Gertrude Thorne and
Irene Harris were among them and AFAIK they did not mention the shooting incident. Neither did Able Seaman William Lucas, who was in charge of Collapsible D and being already in it, was not able to help some women who could not get through the crowd and into the boat. Edith Evans was very likely one of those and the "two young girls" that Lucas mentioned were stuck in the crowd as the officers gave the order to lower Collapsible D away might have been Martta Hiltunen and Elin Braf.
In summary,
if there had been an incident involving an officer shooting a couple of men and then turning the gun on himself, it happened around 02:12am on the
starboard side, a bit aft of where Murdoch and others were working on Collapsible A. There is no evidence that this happened on the port side near Collapsible D, which was lowered earlier - at 02:05am. (Coincidentally, Fireman William John Murdock was almost certainly one of the rowing crew of Collapsible D)
According to Daly, after the suicide event had occurred, "Then I rushed across the deck, and there was a sort of canvas craft there. I tried with six or seven men to get it out, but we couldn't. It was stuck under a wire stay which ran up the mast. The water was then washed right across the deck. The ship washed the canvas craft off the deck into the ocean. Everyone was rushing around, but there were no boats. Then I dived overboard."
IMO, the key phrase in Daly's statement there is "
after the suicide event occurred"; he goes on to say that he then rushed across (forward) the deck and there was a sort of canvas craft (Collapsible A) there that was not yet free. He also mentions the funnel stay obstructing any progress on positioning the lifeboat and he was washed overboard when the wave hit.
Daly's wording, despite some differences in position and perspectives, tallies with observations of Carl Jansson; the shooting event appears to have been a few minutes before (IMO around 5 minutes) the wave hit.
The real mystery for me will always be who the supposed officer who committed it was. I don't believe for a second that it was Murdoch or Moody, who did everything until the end until the infamous wave swept them off deck.
That is a subject that makes a lot of us uncomfortable, some more than others. But most of us who consider that the event might have happened cannot help but form an opinion about the identity of the officer involved, even if some might be reluctant to say it. If it had not been for the title of this thread, I might also have kept quiet about what I believe but having spent so much time trying to get information on my own and collating that with other sources quoted above, I also feel that it might be an injustice to First Officer Murdoch if I don't offer my views - which like others about this subject will always remain as an opinion and so unprovable.
I also got the impression that George Rheims and Carl Jansson were aft of the activity around Collapsible A and remained there till they were washed overboard by the wave. From that vanatage point Rheims would have been quite close to where the shooting incident happened and could have seen something as he said. Jansson, probably a bit further aft, did not see it if one goes by his NYT interview (which I think is closer to the truth) but he changed it for the
Chicago American 6 days later. Richard Williams and his father Charles were near the bridge when the last saw
Captain Smith but were heading aft when the former said he
heard the shots (but did not turn around) and sometime later they too were washed overboard by the wave.
From statements of Carl Jansson and Eugene Daly it seems like the shooting incident occurred a few minutes before the wave hit and at a spot that was a bit aft of where the crew were working frantically to free Collapsible A. John Collins's American Testimony tallies with the scenario from those other two but at that ime he did not mention any shooting. However, there were a couple of relevant snippets that arose during my own research into Collins - his allusion (with my first source) to the "senior mate - the one next to the Captain" as the officer who stopped Collins and others from entering Lifeboat #16 and years later learning from Collins' daughter that her father believed that the officer who shot himself in the final minutes was the same one he had seen near Lifeboat #16 earlier. Collins was absolutely certain that Murdoch was among the crowd still working on Collapsible A when the wave washed them all overboard and allowed the lifeboat to float free.
So, my analysis from all the collated information, assessing possibilities, considering other opinions including the change in
Walter Lord's line of thinking by the late 1980s leads me to believe that
if the sort of shooting incident involving an Officer of the
Titanic did occur that night, then the man was Chief Officer Wilde. He appears to have crossed over to the staboard side after Collapsible D was lowered but as far as can be made out, was not directly involved with the activity around Collapsible A. Wilde's personal circumstances from the months before the voyage might be considered as possibly contributory but no more.
As many of us have agreed, we will never know for certain.
