marina_irc
Member
It’s quite clear that Lord fully understood what he had done by sometime that morning. The question is how much understanding he had before that point, and when.
Lights and Californian
- Thread starter James T. Shorter
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- californian lighting
Arun Vajpey
Member
No need to apologize. I was not upset at all. I was just clarifying things.
I think as far as Captain Lord and the Californian is concerned almost all of us agree that there was definite accountability on their part. There might be slight differences in the reasons that could have led to their blunder, that's all.
Arun Vajpey
Member
Yes, that's about the size of it. And Lord made it worse for himself by his subterfuge (regarding letters by Stone & Gibson) and ambiguity during the inquiries.
Samuel Halpern
Member
Add to that his actions upon reaching Boston.
marina_irc
Member
In the modern day, charges might have been brought over the cover-up even if they weren’t over the actual incident, the more I think about it, the more I can’t help but feel that — at least in the modern US impeding an official inquiry is usually a criminal offence.
Arun Vajpey
Member
What I find it difficult to understand is WHY Lord and his crew were so reluctant to properly find out what was happening and take action. They MUST have known that it was a passenger liner possibly in trouble, in which case it meant passengers including children. They might even have had an idea that it was the Titanic, but Stone, Gibson and Lord could definitely not have known that it was sinking over 2 hours and 40 minutes, or 1 hour and 33 minutes after the first rocket. For all they knew, the ship might have been sinking over the next 5 hours, in which case the 19.5 miles distance that Lord claimed between them and the passenger liner had been was an easily reachable distance for the Californian with at least 3 hours left to render whatever assistance they could. So IMO, when Lord made that 19.5 miles claim, the Inquiry Committee should have attacked him more about how he knew that 19.5 miles was "too far away".
Bob Read
Member
It would be easy to accuse them of cowardice but risk averse may be closer to the truth.
Arun Vajpey
Member
You could be right, but how much risk would Lord have been taking if he had ordered his crew to head towards the lights/rockets with due care? Of course he would have achieved nothing, but he would not have known that at the time. As I said, the Titanic might have been sinking over 5 or 6 hours, allowing Lord and the Californian to mount a successful recue operation. By not even trying, Lord must have known that he would be facing an Inquiry from which he could not talk himself out so easily.
Those who argue that Lord did not have his Master's Certificate revoked etc should consider what did happen to himover the years. He might not have suffered too much official sanction but even 111 years after the disaster, his reputation remains mud. We all know how important their name and reputation is important to Marine Commanders and Lord must have known that he was risking that when he chose not to even try to go to help.
Bob Read
Member
Perhaps Lord thought he had plausible deniability of an actual emergency. In that belief Lord has more than a few acolytes. He may have been worried about the repercussions if he tried traversing the ice field only to suffer damage to his vessel and then to find out that there wasn’t any emergency or that it might determined to have been foolhardy to even attempt to traverse the ice field at night. In his mind he probably could think of more negative outcomes than positive ones for himself. Later he may have thought that all the blame would be hung on the Captain and officers of Titanic. It turns out that there has been enough blame to cover even peripheral actors that night.
Arun Vajpey
Member
It would have taken less than 2 minutes to wake-up his W/O and get him to check if there was a real emergency or otherwise.
Samuel Halpern
Member
That would have been highly unlikely. It was well known that there were penalties for using distress signals when vessel is not in distress.
Arun Vajpey
Member
Very interesting Sam, thanks. Hypothetically, if the Captain of a certain shipping line was found to be so guilty, would he have to pay damages out of his pocket or would his employers cover the penalty? Was there any kind of insurance that a shipping line or even individual captains could take out to cover such damage liability?
Bob Read
Member
Sam: I was trying to give Lord a little wiggle room. Do you have any for him or is he a full blown coward?
Samuel Halpern
Member
Bob, IMO, clearly he wasn't thinking very clearly that night. We know what he did or didn't do. What we really don't know is the 'why.'
Arun Vajpey
Member
I agree with Sam. To call Stanley Lord a 'coward' would be bit short sighted IMO. He went to the sea at an early age and to rise to the rank of Captain in one's 30s, he must have been good professionally. Being a sailor in any capacity did involve some risk at the time, especially in the pre-wireless days which was when Lord started his career. An outright coward would never have made it that far.
My personal view is that for all his martinet manner, Lord was not very bright. In fact, his stern and forbidding personality might have been a front to disguise his limitations in lateral thinking. Yes, I know that one did not have to be a rocket scientist to think that a ship firing off rockets at night could be in distress, but Lord's reaction - or the lack of it - means that there was a reason. Lord was probably half-asleep when he was told about the other ship and the rockets and with some people in that state it takes a while to clear one's mind.
Reading Lord's bio, one thing stood out in my mind. Whatever Lord faced or did not face from officialdom after the Titanic disaster and whatever direction his own career took or did not take, he did not really appear to harbour much personal guilt over the matter. At first glance that would seem rather odd because for all his mistakes that night, even his worst detractors have to agree that Stanley Lord was not a bad, heartless man. He had a wife and child himself and so later realization about the extent of loss of life, especially the children, should have made him privately feel very guilty had he come to believe that he could have saved many lives if he had reacted effectively. That suggests that Lord really believed that he had done nothing wrong that night. Of course, he would have felt sorry for the deaths and disruption afterwards but I think he did not privately blame himself too much. His continued quest to clear his name in the following years does point to that.
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