Hello again Nadine! How are you? Good I hope. :0)
You wrote:
"Phillips, the senior wireless operator, standing near me, told me the different ships that had answered our call . . . . poor old Phillips did not live to benefit by it. He hung on till daylight came in and we sighted one of the lifeboats in the distance . . . . he suddenly slipped down, sitting in the water, and though we held his head up he never recovered. I insisted on taking him into the lifeboat with us." [Lightoller, pp. 252-3.]
Whiteley said the same thing. Why would they have lied ?"
I certainly do not believe that Lightoller lied, but there is very good reason to believe that his memory was playing tricks on him (or that he was using dramatic license) by the time he wrote that passage in his 1934 book, 22 years after the disaster.
In his 1912 inquiry testimony, Lightoller states that he did not actually see Jack Phillips on
Collapsible B, but that he had been told that he had been there, which contradicts what he said in 1934. Colonel Gracie addressed this very topic in his book, and other sources and him seem to indicate that Harold Bride, and not Jack Phillips was the wireless operator who had told of the other ships which had answered their distress call.
In the end, the only real piece of evidence that I know of that indicates Phillips actually reached
Collapsible B are the statements of Steward Whiteley, who made contradictory statements regarding his fate and what happened to his body (taken onboard the
Carpathia, which is denied by Gracie and Lightoller, thrown overboard, etc.)
All of this is addressed on the webpage that I posted the link to. Here is the address directly to the section of the site. It details all of this in much more detail:
http://home.comcast.net/~georgebehe/titanic/Page13.htm
I hope that this message finds you well, and that you are getting better weather than I am in Ohio. We are getting hit by the winter storm system as I speak.
Kindest regards,
Tad