Lightoller BBC interview

[Shea Sweeney]

I see. Thanks for the accent lesson, Stanley. So, figuring that you're British, what exactly is "cockney" then? Most Yanks would assume it is just the accent of all lower class Britons.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Cockneys are working class Londoners, or more specifically East Enders. A South Londoner (like myself) can distinguish East End Cockney from his own local accent, but somebody from further afield would find that difficult. Nobody, however (not even an American), could witness a conversation between a Londoner and somebody from the English north, Midlands or 'west country' and think they were speaking with the same accent, any more than we in England would think that a New Yorker and a Texan spoke with the same accent.

 

[Dave Gittins]

A quick skim through the boiler room crew shows that the majority were born in Hampshire. Liverpool is possibly the next most likely birthplace, but it's well behind. There were a few from London and at least one Dutchman.

I noticed some American paper described Fred Fleet as a Cockney, but that just shows the reporter wasn't familiar with English accents. He obviously wasn't upper class, so call him a Cockney.

My father came from Lancashire and I think I detect the Lancashire accent in Lightoller, though it's not at all strong.

The whole subject of regional accents is quite fascinating. My Geordie mate says he can tell the difference in accents between Newcastle-on-Tyne and North Shields, a few miles away. There are even purely local words. A Belgian mate says the same applies in his country.

 

[Shea Sweeney]

"The whole subject of regional accents is quite fascinating."

I'll say so! USA is substantially larger than the UK yet you guys have so many different accents. Sure we've got a handful but as Dave pointed out some are different even though their speakers may only lived not many miles away from one another. Thanks for the input.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Thank, you Shea Sweeney !-

>>"The whole subject of regional accents is quite fascinating."<<

...One of the things that makes for interesting viewing...watching all the "Britcoms" on the local PBS station in Dallas are the different accents....from "Mr. Molterd" of "Are You Being Served Again" to "Captain Peacock" on "Are You Being Served"...in addition to...of course !...the characters on "The Last of the Summer Wine"...et cetera, et cetera and so forth....ad infinitum.

I say ! Do you blokes in the UK really talk like that ?

Of course...forbid the thought !...you might think of we Dallasites as having a bit of a curious accent. LOL.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

When I suggested that many British seamen of circa 1912 would have spoken with West Country accents I was including the Dorset and Hampshire areas (thinking particularly of Poole and more especially Southampton). Language experts would probably argue that the indigenous people of Hampshire have an “Anglian” accent — but to most listeners, the Hampshire accent has a distinct “West Country” character. It might be worth quoting Thomas Hardy’s description of Tess Durbeyfield’s Dorset accent, with its attenuated vowel sounds:

“The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school; the characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech”.

I believe that American historians and linguists attribute the modern American accent as a development of West Country speech patterns — Drake, Raleigh and many of the other early settlers and explorers having had strong West Country connections.

 

[Jim Currie]

I think the accent sounds very much like coming from just north of Exeter.
Dave, your Geordie friend is spot-on. Students of the UK accents can easily pinpoint towns - never mind counties. It's exactly the same in Scotland. A person born and bred in Glasgow can easily detect a Paisley 'Buddie' even though there's only 8 miles separation between the towns. Ayrshire people are completely different from Edinburgh folks and N. East natives have a dialect of their own. This is not at all strange and should not be to our American cousins either. Think about the difference between the speech of those from the north, south, east , centre or west of their vast country. Actually, the 'Standard', english as wot's talked by posh folks , is not really true. That way of speaking was an attempt to standardise the written and spoken language. I think it came about round the end of Shakespeare's life. Unfortunately Hollywood has a great deal to do with how other's perceive how Brits talk.
As for the origins of the way Americans speak - I suspect the Irish, Welsh and Scots had quite a bit of input there too. I always wondered how George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Paul(Jones)and some of the other famous American Fathers sounded like when they spoke. After all, the War of Independence started not long after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 when huge numbers of prisoners and dispossessed family crossed the Atlantic for a better life.

Returning to Lightholler's BBC interview - it sounded to me he was reading it from a script. However he was reading it. Since he was actually there and we were not - why do so many doubt his recollection of the event. i.e he states categorically that the ship rose vertically and then plunged downward - no sign of a break-up. What would be his purpose in concealing that?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>why do so many doubt his recollection of the event.<<

Because human memory is extremely fallible and in the matter of the breakup, the forensics specifically indicate that it happened and happened at a reletively shallow angle. It's not a question of whether or not Lights was concealing anything or even wanted to. His recollection for the most part may be an honest one, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.

 

[Jim Currie]

Probably!

 

[Inger Sheil]

FWIW, I don't believe Lightoller was being deliberately untruthful about the question of a breakup - like Gracie, I think he was being absolutely sincere, even if other eyewitness accounts and the wrecksite forensics don't bear out his observations. I also tend to give him the benefit of the doubt on many other issues when he is demonstrably innacurate or contradicts himself - as in some of the details he gets wrong in his book. I don't think he was necessarily lying when he gave contradictory accounts of whether or not he saw the engineers on deck, or whether Philips was on Collapsible B. Studies suggest that our memory is not like a rollerdex out of which we pick a card when recollecting specific events, and that many factors can influence our accuracy. The more eyewitnesses you have to an event, often the more you multiply the confusion.

There is always the possiblity he was a bit obfuscatory when it came to his testimony at the inquiries - perhaps not deliberately lying, but possibly not being full or frank. These issues are debatable.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Inger Sheil Quote:

>>FWIW, I don't believe Lightoller was being deliberately untruthful about the question of a breakup - like Gracie, I think he was being absolutely sincere, even if other eyewitness accounts and the wrecksite forensics don't bear out his observations. I also tend to give him the benefit of the doubt on many other issues when he is demonstrably innacurate or contradicts himself - as in some of the details he gets wrong in his book. I don't think he was necessarily lying when he gave contradictory accounts of whether or not he saw the engineers on deck, or whether Philips was on Collapsible B. Studies suggest that our memory is not like a rollerdex out of which we pick a card when recollecting specific events, and that many factors can influence our accuracy. The more eyewitnesses you have to an event, often the more you multiply the confusion.

There is always the possiblity he was a bit obfuscatory when it came to his testimony at the inquiries - perhaps not deliberately lying, but possibly not being full or frank. These issues are debatable.<<

It's also been said that Lightoller was very much a "company man" and treading a bit on thin ice and trying to stay out of hot water in the US and British inquiries. (How's that for a bit of mixed metaphors ? LOL.)

>>The more eyewitnesses you have to an event, often the more you multiply the confusion.<<

It's also been said that there were 129 assassins who fired 43 fatal shots on Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I don't know if Lightoller was so much being a company man as he was protecting his shipmates. That sort of thing tends to be much more important to a mariner then a lawyer's sensibilities. (In my opinion of course.) He knew that the investigators were not his friends.

His testimony wasn't exactly helpful in the Limitation of liabilty proceedings either.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

>>I don't know if Lightoller was so much being a company man as he was protecting his shipmates.<<

Probably trying to protect Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller as well.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

Thinking in terms of the earlier discussion about Lightoller's curious accent, I was interested to see Darrell d'Silva's portrayal of him in the recent television documentary "The Unsinkable Titanic". The accent adopted in the programme was very hard to define, being part-West-of-England and part American - possibly somewhat similar to that of the real Charles Herbert Lightoller?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Probably trying to protect Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller as well.<<

I wouldn't expect anything less. As the senior surviving officer, he had to know that he was a potential target for "The Blame" even though he wasn't on watch at the time.