Titanic's Rockets Timeline

[David G. Brown]

Couda, Woulda, and Shouda. No, not the Three Stooges, just the trio of errors of omission in Stone's account. Sam is absolutely correct that the young officer simply misinterpreted the situation and therefore failed to act properly. It really does not matter if the rockets Stone saw were Titanic's or not. He saw a ship firing rockets for no apparent reason and he failed to get is captain on deck by not properly reporting the events he was seeing.

I also agree with Dave Gittens that better use coulda and shoulda been made of the rockets available. A lot of good distress signals went down with the ship. Boxhall might have better spent his time firing the whole lot.

But, even if Boxhall had set off a 4th of July Grand Finale, would Stone have acted differently?

As far as another ship firing rockets goes, I guess there is no denying the possibility that two ships fired white star shells at the same time withing 10 miles of each other just as one of them--Titanic--was foundering. I suppose I could get hit on the head with a winning lottery ticket. Moses supposes his toeses to be roses. To hell with suppositions, what's the probability of another ship firing virtually identical pyro in the vicinity of history's most famous sinking?

Could there have been another ship in the vicinity that did not fire rockets? another ship that did not respond to Titanic? That's a greater probability considering the number of vessels on the North Atlantic steamer routes that night. But, is the probability high enough to rise to the level of consideration as a possible solution to the mystery of why Stone did not act properly when he saw what appeared to be distress signals?

Stone had no responsibility to wake his captain just because another ship steamed by out of harm's way. Proving that the whole Cunard fleet did maneuvers between Californian and Titanic does not in any respect change the failure that occurred on Californian's bridge.

Rockets fired at intervals were a distress signal. Titanic fired rockets at admittedly ragged intervals. Stone did not properly react. It was not for him to decide whether the rockets were or were not distress signals. His job was to get Captain Lord on the bridge to make a command decision about the situation. Stone failed.

--David G. Brown

 

[Paul Wilkinson]

Hi Dave,

You wrote "What's the probability of another ship firing virtually identical pyro in the vicinity of history's most famous sinking?"

Not only that, but what's the probability of no-one on Titanic noticing?!

Cheers

Paul

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Not only that, but what's the probability of no-one on Titanic noticing?! <<

Effectively zero. Even though most were anything but trained observers, there were still over 2200 of them and 712 made it to the other side of the ocean to tell of what they saw. Quite a few testified to the rockets Titanic fired.

Not even one mentioned so much as a roman candle being discharged from the "mystery steamer" that they reported seeing.

 

[Paul Lee]

Perhaps thats why Stone mentioned low-lying rockets. In his mind, he realised that rockets/flares/roman candles detonating so low in the sky could not have been seen by the Titanic, and could be blamed on another ship.

Similarly with Lord: only being told of one rocket means that his defence could have been "but distress signals are supposed to be fired one at a time, indicating more than one. I only heard of one rocket, so I didn't think it was distress".

 

[Paul Lee]

Hi Sam, Perhaps you can clear something up? At about the time the red light "shut in", the Californian was heading SWxW I believe. If the red light was not visible and only the faintest hint of the mast light was visible, then this would mean that the heading of the so-called mystery ship can be calculated?

I worked this out myself, but I'm not too sure of my numbers!

TIA

Paul

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Hi Paul Lee:

Lord may have telling the truth about being told of just one rocket when Stone called down to him initially. In Gibson's letter to Lord, Gibson wrote that Stone told him that he called down to Lord on the speaking tube after seeing the 2nd rocket because he, Stone, was not too sure about the 1st one, thinking it might have been a shooting star. If that is the way it happened, then I can understand why Lord might not have been too alarmed.

I tend to trust what Stone said about as far as I can throw a stone unless I can find some alternate confirmation.

 

[David G. Brown]

Paul-- A sidelight (red to port; green to starboard) shows through an 112.5 degree arc from dead ahead to two points abaft the beam on its respective side.

A masthead light shows through an unbroken arc of 225 degrees from two points abaft the beam on one side to the same on the other side.

The combined sidelights cover the same arc of visibility as a masthead light. The remaining 135 degrees of the circle are filled in by the white stern light. This means that a power-driven vessel (PDV) shows white light all round the horizon. The colored sidelights are only seen by other vessels in a meeting or crossing situation.

As has been noted countless times on this forum, in Titanic's day all PDVs were required to show at least one masthead light, but were authorized to show an additional masthead light aft and higher than the required light. Today, all PDVs over 50 meters in length must display an after masthead light.

Sailing vessels do not show masthead lights, just sidelights and stern lights. This is why in sailor jargon masthead lights are often called "steaming lights," because only vessels under steam (power) display them.

Be extremely careful about using the cutoff angles of light sectors to compute the relative positions of ships. The sidelights and masthead lights are carefully positioned, but are never quite perfectly aligned. The Rules of the Road caution mariners about this "real world" problem.

Regarding events on Californian's bridge, I have been privileged to have Sam share some of his research and findings in private conversation. He has pretty much convinced me that his approach can unravel the tangled web that has obscured the Californian story. Sam's focus on Stone as the man where things broke apart makes perfect sense.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Sam's focus on Stone as the man where things broke apart makes perfect sense.<<

That would be consistant with something that occurred to both Tracy Smith and myself six years ago when we were doing the research for our part of the Californian Reality Check article. We started referring to both Gibson and Stone as "The Two Stooges" and not because they were good comedians either. Gibson at least has some excuse in that he was an apprentice officer, but what was Stone's excuse?

What struck us was the fact that he saw something out of the ordinary and utterly failed to convey any sense of urgency whatever to the skipper. One could argue that Captain Lord should have seen the red flags fluttering in the breeze and I won't quibble with that. Any way you slice it, the ultimate and final responsibility of the Captain never goes away. Nevertheless, I think Stone's lackluster response to something he had to know demanded closer attention is the core of this whole sorry episode.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Hi Paul Lee:

Assuming we believe what Stone said about a mystery ship turning around and heading off to the SW, then we cannot find her course heading based on the disappearance of the port sidelight. The reason is that he never saw the green light. The only way for that to happen is for the ship the port around; i.e., make a starboard turn so the red light shuts out leaving just the stern light showing. And then she would continue that turn until on her course toward the S and SW. We can put approximate limits on this, but you really can't get its actual heading. The pointing direction of the Californian itself is irrelevant.

By the way. If the stern light was visible and the mast light just a faint hint, then there should have been a fain hint of a green light too since, as Dave Brown showed, the sidelights and mast lights shut out at the same angle assuming no alignment errors. There was no mist or haze in the air that night since they were under a cold arctic high pressure system that came off of Newfoundland. There would be no glow around the lights. That's why, with the calm seas and a moonless sky and black sea, the lights of a ship looked so misleadingly bright causing people to generally underestimate distances.

BTW, if anyone is interested, there was an article on Titanic's weather written by Kilian Harford and meteorologist Gerry Murphy in the ITHS's White Star Journal in Aug, 2006, with weather charts reproduced from the British Meterological and Magnet Year Book for 1912.

 

[Paul Slish]

Greetings All. I desire to clarify a few things.

1. Just because I brought up the possibility of a ship between the Californian and the Titanic does not mean I intend to exonerate Herbert Stone in anyway. I never wrote that Stone is exonerated. The British Marine Accident Investigation Board in its 1992 Reappraisal provided its analysis of Stone's responsibility. I don't feel any need to repeat their work.

2. I never wrote that I believe there was another ship that fired eight rockets or signals of some sort. I only commented on the fact that some estimates of the number of rockets (technically socket signals) that the Titanic fired ranged as low as six or seven. I then commented that if the Titanic had only fired six for example, then some other ship had to fire at least two. Most commentators believe the Titanic fired at least eight.

My opinion is that the rockets observed by Stone and Gibson came from the Titanic.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I only commented on the fact that some estimates of the number of rockets (technically socket signals) that the Titanic fired ranged as low as six or seven.<<

The key word in this instance is "Estimate." It's an easy enough mistake to take some of the numbers as absolutes when the fact was that nobody was standing by with pencil and paper ticking off the number of socket signals that were fired. They had more pressing concerns.

The fact that 712 surviving witnesses noticed these signals being fired by Titanic and noticed none being fired by any other source tends to indicate there was no other source.

 

[Tracy Smith]

>>Sam's focus on Stone as the man where things broke apart makes perfect sense.<<

That would be consistant with something that occurred to both Tracy Smith and myself six years ago when we were doing the research for our part of the Californian Reality Check article. We started referring to both Gibson and Stone as "The Two Stooges" and not because they were good comedians either. Gibson at least has some excuse in that he was an apprentice officer, but what was Stone's excuse? *****

Has it been THAT long since we wrote that article? Time flies.

And I'm still of the opinion that the Californian's lack of proper response hinges largely on Stone's failure to properly convey what he saw that night.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Absolutely Tracy. I think we all are in agreement on that.

Bill, I understand what you said about the "if the Titanic had only fired six," but disagree on your conclusion that followed. If your "if" were true, someone else might just as easily conclude the Stone miscounted the first 5 he saw. Once again, there is no need to interject mystery ships in between to account for the missing two under that assumption since nothing of the sort was observed from the Titanic.

I agree with your expressed opinion that the signals seen by Stone and Gibson came from a stopped Titanic.

 

[Paul Slish]

Thank you for all the comments. I was planning on writing up some more detailed explanations of my interpretations of the evidence.

As I wrote some time ago on the "Introduce Yourself" thread, I'm most interested in what happened in relation to the various ships in the area of the sinking Titanic. I'm not as much interested in the "why" as that gets much more into the psychology of how people think and act.

For instance an event could be analyzed on three levels.

1. What did the person observe or think he observed?

2. What did he then think about it? How did he interpret it?

3. How did he then react? That is what did he do?

I'm most interested in number 1 in relation to the Californian. To some extent I would then need to delve into numbers 2 and 3.

Another way of looking at it is: A person could correctly observe something, but not properly interpret or react to it.

I planned on writing up detailed responses to the points Sam made in regard to my post about Gibson's statement about "private signals." Also I want to go into great detail about the observations about the lights on the other ship as observed by Stone and Gibson. Sam and Captain Dave made some comments about that.

But it is hard to write up detailed analysis on the threads because it is just one long column.

So what I'm going to do is to write up a series of articles. I can then print them off, really pore over them, and get them into a form I'm satisfied with.

The first one will be published later this month. Hopefully some folks will find them of interest.

Studying the Inquiry transcripts and the various books on the Californian is interesting and worthwhile for those who are concerned with this one episode in history.

I have been researching other 1912 source material which has proven quite fascinating. It is a slow process, and I have only completed about 10% of what I hope to eventually accomplish.

I was already familiar with the arcs masthead lights, side lights, and stern lights are supposed to cover. But I do want to compliment Sam Halpern on the very nice article he referred me to. It puts it all together nicely and the color diagram was quite clear.

I have no need for an intervening ship between the Californian and Titanic. It is not as though I have some kind of psychological thirst for it. What I am interested in is what actually happened out there. Was there actually an intervening ship or not? If there was (and again let me emphasize I am writing "if") it is not prudent to try to reason away a historical reality no matter how intelligently done. "If" there was not, the same principle applies.

I've researched considerable 1912 shipping records. There was regular traffic along the 42nd parallel after ships turned the "corner." To have several ships a day passing along that parallel to the USA east coast was common in 1912. And not all eastbound ships took the southern track either. I've got plenty of evidence of that, including White Star.

So I hope to have more to contribute to the analysis of the Californian and Titanic event in history.

Best Wishes

 

[Tracy Smith]

I look forward to see what you come up with.