Jack Phillips' final moments

[Arun Vajpey]

Yet when it came to the ice warning sent by the Mesaba which was acknowledged by Phillips, he simply forgot to send it to the bridge (according to Lightoller) and confessed with his dying words about his blunder to Lightoller who happened to be standing next to him on the collapsible. It does sound rather far fetched and something that Lightoller simply made up because the ice warning very likely was delivered to him and he knew he would be the prime target for blame in the disaster because no action was taken to reduce speed or alter course. It would mean the end of his career. Lightoller testified that if the ice warning had been handed to him he would do the following:

"It is customary for the message to be sent direct to the bridge......Captain Smith’s instructions were to open all telegrams and act on your own discretion."

If Lightoller did receive that ice warning I wonder what he did (or failed to do) when acting on his own discretion. He told the lookouts to keep a sharp lookout for ice, but he did not double the lookout, change course, or reduce speed. The haze was also witnessed on the horizon when Lightoller was on duty yet Lightoller said it was clear. It certainly appears that Lightoller was out to defend himself at all costs, so he denied the haze, and shifted the blame for the disaster onto a dead man (Phillips) who could not speak in his own defence. I believe this is why Bride became angry because his mate Phillips in his eyes was a professional and would not forget to deliver a vital ice warning to the bridge.

.

All right. I accept that Phillips and Bride had a share in the responsibility of what happened that night. But it does seem that Lightoller carefully calculated his testimony so that minimum blame (if any) would be placed on him and by inference shift the blame on the radio operators. Although Aaron's statement about Lightoller 'making up' a story that exonerated him is speculation, I think it is hightly likely from the impression one gets of Lightoller's nature.

 

[Julian Atkins]

Hi Arun,

You need to read carefully the Paul Lee website link I posted from half way down then all will become perfectly clear (and also quite staggering)

http://www.paullee.com/titanic/icewarnings.php

Will probably take you a good half hour but it is well worth it to understand what actually went on (I'm quite a quick reader so half an hour is my own estimate).

Very little of this is in Paul's book, but is IMHO a most significant and highly important part of his website and arguable his most significant piece of research and I would urge all forum members interested in this thread to scroll down half way down then start reading and you will be quite amazed as you get further down! A real eye opener!

Cheers,

Julian

 

[Aaron_2016]

Gosh this is getting a bit of speed that I can't keep up with, and I'm off to bed shortly!

Hi Aaron, there is ample evidence that Bride and Phillips deliberately ignored Ice warning messages.

This is also for Arun, who also asked...

(And I've posted this countless times before)

http://www.paullee.com/titanic/icewarnings.php

Scroll down half way down the page then learn all about the failures and mistakes of Phillips and Bride. Well worth reading carefully and in full when Paul starts on examining everything so far as to what Titanic received and what got to the bridge.

See also (as quoted in my earlier post) Bride's final testimony at the British Inquiry when he stated quite clearly he ignored Evans' (on The Californian) message warning of 3 ice bergs seen because he was doing his accounts. Those 3 bergs were only some 14 or 15 (or arguably less) miles away from Titanic as she approached on her course, catching up The Californian at her speed double that of The Californian.

Cheers,

Julian

Bride testified that he was busy when the Californian first sent the ice warning to him and that he heard what they said but did not write it down immediately as he was busy with accounts. When he completed his task about 20 minutes later he said he was about to call up the Californian to get the position of the icebergs so that he could take it immediately to the bridge, but he said he did not have to call them up because he could hear the Californian repeating the same warning to the Baltic and he recorded what he heard them say and sent it directly the the bridge. I personally don't see this as negligence as he was pre-engaged with another task at the time, and was prepared to call up the Californian but did not have to.

When the Californian called up the Titanic again on Sunday night the wireless operator (Phillips) told him to keep out as he was receiving messages from Cape Race. This I believe tells us that the operators did not like to have their current tasks interrupted, however Phillips would have realized that the signal strength on the Californian was very close and he would I believe realize the urgency of the message. He just wanted to finish what he was doing and then he would communicate with the Californian to get their position in the same manner that Bride was about to call up the Californian to get their position.

Bride said Phillips had finished working with Cape Race about 10 minutes before the collision. I believe that is the moment when Phillips tried to hail the Californian. Unfortunately the operator had just gone off duty. If the operator had stayed on duty perhaps 30 seconds more he might have heard the Titanic calling them up. Imagine if the fate of the Titanic depended on one person on the Californian simply staying up a few seconds longer. If there ever were such a thing as time travel they would just have to appear on the Californian and stall the wireless operator for a few seconds longer so that he retired for the night just a bit later.

Californian operator

Real 1912 - "Well, that's me, I'm off to bed." (Titanic tries to call her up to get their position)

Alternate 1912 - (just 10 seconds delayed) - "Well, that's me, I'm off to...wait, who is that? Must be the Titanic again judging by her signal strength. She wants our position. Alright here it is......"

11.35pm - Phillips delivers the message to Murdoch. (Murdoch stops engines and looks for the Californian with his binoculars.) "There she is. She's stopped alright. We better do the same. 'All stop'."

 

[Julian Atkins]

With the greatest of respect Aaron, what you have posted above is complete bunkham!

Evans sent the 'Say old man we are stopped surrounded by ice' message at around 11pm 14th April 1912.

Phillips interrupted the message with 'DDD' as per Chris Burton, Marconi Expert.

Phillips never took a full note of the message or any note at all. He completely ignored it.

Evans stayed up another 35 minutes till 11.35pm (I'm using Californian AST timings which were slightly ahead of Titanic by 12 minutes).

He received no further reply whatsoever from Phillips

And no communication later on from Titanic to Californian was picked up by any other ship despite Durrant on Mount Temple being very observant and scrupulously recording everything (and I take note that he did not overhear - or at least did not record Evans' 'Say Old Man we are stopped surrounded by ice').

Phillips completely ignored Evans' ice warning message at 11pm on the 14th April, same as Bride initially ignored Evans' 'MSG' of the 3 ice bergs seen sent to The Antillian and on Bride's own testimony sent to Titanic.

This was completely scandalous behaviour on the part of the Titanic wireless operators.

Cheers,

Julian

 

[Rob Lawes]

I personally don't see this as negligence as he was pre-engaged with another task at the time, and was prepared to call up the Californian but did not have to.

So what if that message warned of an Iceberg a few miles ahead of their position? Don't tell me that Bride knew the general position of his ship because he didn't.

He clearly states he was called up by a ship with a navigational message relating to an ice warning. He states that the message was an official one for his ship but he ignored it for 30 minutes or so. He then overheard what he assumed to be the same message (but he had no idea for sure) and then copied it down, acknowledged it and handed it to someone but he initially stated it was the Captain and then later in the same line of questioning, it went to the bridge but he didn't know who. He also stated that because this message had not been sent to him directly, even though he guessed it was the same as the official one that he'd ignored 30 or so minutes before, then this message was no longer "official" and did not need to be treated as such.

That is negligence at its finest.

 

[Aaron_2016]

I respectfully disagree. Ice warnings were treated as important in regards to the navigation of the ship, but not to the point that the operator would interrupt what he was doing. He was bound to take for granted that if the ice was dangerously close to the ship the bridge officers would already see it and get out of the way. The previous ice warnings they took were for navigational reasons and posed no immediate danger. I believe the operators would treat the ice warnings in the same manner as derelicts sighted and fog warnings. Their importance would only become apparent after the disaster with the benefit of hindsight as they now realized how great a risk icebergs were.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Phillips never took a full note of the message or any note at all. He completely ignored it.

Do we have any evidence that Phillips did not take any note of the message? It would come in with a bang as the Californian was pretty close.

Bride said:

"As far as I recollect, Phillips had finished working with Cape Race 10 minutes before the collision with the iceberg."

Bride was asked if the logbook had contained the ice warning received from the Californian.

Q - The records of the Titanic are all lost?
A - I had a glance at the log for that evening as I was writing it up at the time of the disaster.
Q - At the time of the disaster?
A - But I can not recollect any communication with the Californian having been noted down.
Q - The Californian's log shows that they sent that message to the Titanic at 11.15 ship's time, or 10 o'clock New York time.
A - I may have overlooked it.
Q - If you had heard such a message as that you would have regarded it as important, would you not?
A - I should have taken it myself; yes, sir. (Taken it to the bridge)
Q - Were you working with Cape Race, or was Phillips, to your knowledge, just before the collision with the iceberg?
A - As far as I recollect Phillips had finished working with Cape Race about 10 minutes before the collision with the iceberg. He made no mention of the fact when I turned out.

As I recall Bride said he had no knowledge of any of the ice warnings received by Phillips. So it makes sense that he would not tell Bride about that one. Member David Brown believes the officers were preparing to alter course just before the collision. This would tie in with Phillips taking the ice warning to the bridge. He would hear the Californian screeching that they were stopped by ice, but he did not take their position. He could have tried to hail the Californian before or even during the collision, or he could have informed the bridge and told them he had received a message from the Californian but he could not get their position, and that she must be pretty close judging by her signal strength and they would thank him and ask him to go back and try to get her position as they observed a stationary ship with binoculars off their starboard bow, and when Phillips tried to hail the Californian the operator had retired. Do we know with certainty that no traffic was overheard which indicated the Titanic was trying to call up the Californian to get her position?

If the officers were in the process of mapping out and changing course further south, and were aware that the Californian was somewhere to the north (by looking at her previous position from her previous ice warning) then they might have told Phillips (who according to Bride looked very tired) not to get her position because she was by their judgement a safe distance away to the north, and told him to go to bed and not worry about it.

 

[Mike Spooner]

Is this the legal department playing games here!
Wireless operations were purely a Marconi commercial business and not a standard requirement from the Board of Trade! The number one priority for wireless operators to send out messages and get paid for it, paying the operators wages with a profit. It's no more than a service the company is offering to keep pace with other shipping companies.
As for any incoming or sending out messages of weather or ice warning was no more that just courtesy calls.
Therefore you can not hold the wireless operators responsible for there action and not been up for 24 hours a day. Ships have sailed successful for hundred of years without wireless to!

 

[Julian Atkins]

Hi Mike,

The standard Marconi contract with shipping companies specified that 'navigation' messages' and Captain to Captain (MSG) messages were to be free up to a certain limit of volume.

Marconi Co Rules in their Rule Book are referred to when Marconi gave evidence at the British Inquiry on day 26, 18th June 1912, as follows:-

"24933. (The Attorney-General.) "Messages relating to navigation" - it is a special Rule - Rule 49?
- Yes.

The Commissioner:
Will you read it?

The Attorney-General:
I will, My Lord. It is "Priority of messages," paragraph No. 49: "In the transmission of radiotelegrams priority must be assigned, first of all, to messages of distress (see section 73.); then to messages of the British Admiralty and other British Government Departments and to the messages of other Governments (see section 74.)

"As between the two communicating stations themselves, the following order should be maintained: -

"(1.) Messages relating to navigation.
"(2.) Service messages relating to the conduct of the Radiotelegraphic Service, or to previous radiotelegrams transmitted by the station concerned.
"(3.) Ordinary correspondence."

24934. (The Commissioner.) It does come to what I was trying to say. Messages connected with or affecting the navigation of the ship take precedence of private messages?
- Yes, My Lord.

24935. The messages of passengers and other people?
- Yes, My Lord.

24936. (The Attorney-General.) That is the order and those are the Regulations?
- That is the order and those are the Regulations. "

TIP | British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry | Day 26 | Testimony of Guglielmo Marconi (Chairman, International Marconi Company)


Mike, I agree these Rules were not imposed by The Board of Trade as such, except that as I understand it for UK ships Marconi needed a licence from the Postmaster General (a cabinet post and in charge of a UK government department), who could impose terms and conditions (hence the Admiralty and Government messages being given priority after Distress calls).

Bride and Phillips repeated ignored navigation status messages and failed to send them to the bridge. In so doing they broke the Marconi Rule book. Some of these failures have nothing to do with prioritising commercial passenger messages. The first Californian ice warning message Bride said he initially ignored because he was doing his accounts, and when he did later acknowledge it, it clearly did not get to the bridge. The later Mesaba ice warning message was acknowledged by Phillips, and yet again was not taken to the bridge.

All these messages (the first from The Californian, and the Mesaba) occurred on the evening of the 14th April when Bride and Phillips had little to do before they got in contact with Cape Cod (land) around 8.30pm, and when Phillips who was now on duty could send passenger messages.

I hope I have provided some clear clarification.

Cheers,

Julian

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I respectfully disagree. Ice warnings were treated as important in regards to the navigation of the ship, but not to the point that the operator would interrupt what he was doing. .

That does not seem to be true. This is an excerpt from that Paul Lee link:

The following point should be mentioned first, even though it is basic common sense. Signor Guglieimo Marconi, the inventor of the Morse telegraphic apparatus that bore his name, told the 1912 inquiries that a hierarchy of importance existed in the wireless traffic between ships, namely:

(1.) Messages relating to navigation.
(2.) Service messages relating to the conduct of the Radiotelegraphic Service, or to previous radiotelegrams transmitted by the station concerned.
(3.) Ordinary correspondence.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that ice warnings are related to the ships navigation and therefore take precedence over any other activity that Phillips and/or Bride might have been engaged at the time. I take that to mean that if Phillips was sending a message at the time to Astor's manager about the former's next land acquisition, it had to be interrupted at once to deal with the ice message and pass it to the proper channels ie the Duty Officer on the bridge.

 

[Julian Atkins]

Just to further clarify, at the time the priority of messages as in the Marconi Rule book were:-

1. Distress calls - CQD or SOS etc.

2. Admiralty or Government messages

3. Navigational status messages

4. Service messages that seem to be a bit unclear to me (Nothing explicitely about Captain to Captain MSG messages)

5. Commercial messages ie those paid for by passengers

Cheers,

Julian

 

[Rob Lawes]

Items 1 and 2 on that list were a legal requirement in accordance with the 1906 Berlin Convention on Wireless Communications.

 

[Mike Spooner]

Julian,
You may be right in what rules say but as a company the profits will always come first!
Mr Giuseppe Marconi is a smart business man and knows too well the rules are for hear say? If Bride broke the rules did he get punished for it? In fact he was well reward for it by selling his story to the newspaper after Mr Marconi gave him permission to do so. So much for company rules! (What than saying rules are made to be broken!)
Looking at the history before wireless on ships from the first one on SS Kaiser Wilhelm in1900. How an earth did they cope with the problem? Well they seem to do quite well and at the time of Titanic there were many other ships out there without wireless.
Never less if Phillips was the senior man in charge and didn't as quite to the rules, you can hardly blame Bride for not following on!
Titanic got warnings of ice ahead. It what happens on the bridge that counts?

 

[Rob Lawes]

Mike, I think Phillips paid for his mistakes in full.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Question is, did Phillips send the vital ice warning to the bridge? Did Lightoller, Murdoch or Captain Smith receive it and act accordingly or dismiss it?

Lightoller denied all knowledge of receiving the message, but the operator on the Mesaba said he had received confirmation from the Titanic's operator (Phillips) that it was acknowledged and received on the Titanic. Problem is, did Lightoller get the message? He told the Inquiry he did not, but this is questionable because his testimony regarding the weather and the speed of the ship is very suspect. e.g.

He testified that the weather during his watch was clear. e.g.


Q - What was the weather that night?
A - Clear and calm.

"We remarked on the weather (him and the captain), about it being calm, clear. We remarked the distance we could see. We seemed to be able to see a long distance. Everything was very clear. We could see the stars setting down to the horizon."


Yet lookout Symons was up in the crows nest during that time and Symons said:

"I remember that although it was a starlit night and clear overhead, that there was a slight low lying haze on the horizon which some what obstructed the view of the skyline and this to the best of my recollection was so during the time I was on watch. At 10 o'clock Jewell and myself were relieved by Fleet and Lee."


Lightoller also said:

"The slightest haze would render the situation far more difficult.....Far more dangerous if there were ice......Captain Smith made a remark that if it was in a slight degree hazy there would be no doubt we should have to go very slowly. "


Q - Did you slow up?
A - That I do not know, sir. (He was the officer on the bridge and was clueless about it? Or was he dodging the answer and did not want to take responsibility by confirming they did not slow down?)

Q - You would have known if it had been done, would you not, during your watch?
A - Not necessarily so, sir. (He would not know if they were slowing down or maybe speeding up?)

Q - Who would give the command?
A - The commander would send orders down to the chief engineer to reduce her by so many revolutions.

Q - You kept the ship on its course?
A - Yes, sir.

Q - And at about the same speed?
A - Yes, sir; as far as I know. (Another hint of doubt of dodging responsibility?)

Q - What did he say?
A - "If in the slightest degree doubtful (hazy), let me know."

Q - What did you say to him?
A - "All right, sir."

Q - You said if the slightest degree of haze was to arise you were to notify him?
A - Immediately; yes.

Q - You were relying at this time exclusively upon the look-out; you were not taking any measures to reduce the speed?
A - None, my Lord.

Q - And therefore you were relying for safety entirely on the look-out?
A - Yes. (Never would imagine an officer on watch would depend entirely on the lookouts. I recall Captain Bartlett said the lookouts are merely there to see anything the officer might miss and are an extra pair of eyes to assist the bridge, yet Lightoller was depending 'entirely' on the lookout?)



Makes me wonder if Lightoller's claim that Phillips had forgotten to give him the ice warning was legit, or simply an excuse to divert blame away from himself? Reminds me of this quote from his book - "In London it was very necessary to keep one's hand on the whitewash brush. Sharp questions that needed careful answers if one was to avoid a pitfall, carefully and subtly dug, leading to a pinning down of blame onto someone's luckless shoulders."

Was he referring to his own shoulders?


.