Which message has been altered?

[Julian Atkins]

It is also valid to ask why say the Carpathia and other vessels that went to the rescue and then resumed their course (albeit the Carpathia went back to New York), never recorded seeing the SS Campanello skirting round the ice field or having any wireless communication with it so far as I can recall.

All a bit odd.

 

[Steven Christian]

A question for anyone interested. After reading thru this thread I got curious about the Campanello and started reading what I could find. I ran across Capt Jim Curries article on it here at E.T. Interesting but not entirely clear to me. Most here myself included don't believe the story about the Sampson being the mystery ship. That's been debunked IMO. But does anybody have any thoughts about the Campanello. For or against? It's something I never looked into before but am now curious about it thanks to Julian and others here. Link below to the article from J. Currie. If this should be in another thread I understand and will start or move it to a different thread. Cheers.

Mysterious Waif of the Waves.. MGU?

Unresolved questions regarding the April 1912 voyage of the SS Campanello and the possibility of her involvement in the Titanic disaster.

www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

 

[Arun Vajpey]

But does anybody have any thoughts about the Campanello. For or against?

I personally do NOT believe that there was any "mystery ship" between the Titanic and the Californian and the lights (and in case of the Californian, the rockets) the crew of each saw were of the other.

Like Julian says, Paul Lee has discussed the Campanello in his book and as far I can understand, the only reason this eastbound (New York to Rotterdam) ship is being even considered is because it was considerably north of the usual eastbound lanes. Paul Lee believes that as a 13-knot max ship, the Campanello, which left New York on 12th April 1912, even at full speed throughout could not have reached the spot where the Titanic sank before noon on Monday 15th April; it more likely did so much later. The Dutch newspapers are supposed to have reported that the Campanello was still a day away from the Titanic when it heard of the disaster, something that fits in with Dr Lee's calculations. He believes that the confusion arose because the Campanello reported reaching the pack ice on the night of 14th-15th April and the coordinates were only a few miles from the spot where the Titanic sank. But given the performance characteristics of the Campanello this was simply not possible and so Dr Lee considers the possibility that the Uranium Liner had made a mistake with the date when it reached the pack ice on its eastbound voyage.

 

[Steven Christian]

I personally do NOT believe that there was any "mystery ship" between the Titanic and the Californian and the lights (and in case of the Californian, the rockets) the crew of each saw were of the other.

Like Julian says, Paul Lee has discussed the Campanello in his book and as far I can understand, the only reason this eastbound (New York to Rotterdam) ship is being even considered is because it was considerably north of the usual eastbound lanes. Paul Lee believes that as a 13-knot max ship, the Campanello, which left New York on 12th April 1912, even at full speed throughout could not have reached the spot where the Titanic sank before noon on Monday 15th April; it more likely did so much later. The Dutch newspapers are supposed to have reported that the Campanello was still a day away from the Titanic when it heard of the disaster, something that fits in with Dr Lee's calculations. He believes that the confusion arose because the Campanello reported reaching the pack ice on the night of 14th-15th April and the coordinates were only a few miles from the spot where the Titanic sank. But given the performance characteristics of the Campanello this was simply not possible and so Dr Lee considers the possibility that the Uranium Liner had made a mistake with the date when it reached the pack ice on its eastbound voyage.

Ok thanks for the reply. That is what I found confusing. Muliple dates for when she left New York and conflicting reports to when she arrived in the area. Also I looked at various crossings for her and they varied from 10 to 15 days. But that could be attributed to sea conditions or maybe to steaming slower to save on coal. Not knowing what day it is or the time seems like a stretch to me. Would make navigation pretty hard IMO. Cheers.

 

[Julian Atkins]

Ah, but Paul Lee was unaware of the link Steven kindly provided of the SS Campanello call sign recorded by Adams on the Mesaba at 2.32pm on the 14th in his second copy Marconigram. So, the SS Campanello must have replied to the Mesaba given what Adams testified as to his methodology.

SS Campanello had to have been within range of the Mesaba sending a message and the SS Campanello providing a reply.

Bit more work to do on this one.

I will post a few excerpts from Paul Lee’s book ‘The Titanic and the Indifferent Stranger’, which I much prefer to the article of Jim Currie that Steven has referenced.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

A question for anyone interested. After reading thru this thread I got curious about the Campanello and started reading what I could find. I ran across Capt Jim Curries article on it here at E.T. Interesting but not entirely clear to me. Most here myself included don't believe the story about the Sampson being the mystery ship. That's been debunked IMO. But does anybody have any thoughts about the Campanello. For or against? It's something I never looked into before but am now curious about it thanks to Julian and others here. Link below to the article from J. Currie. If this should be in another thread I understand and will start or move it to a different thread. Cheers.

Mysterious Waif of the Waves.. MGU?

Unresolved questions regarding the April 1912 voyage of the SS Campanello and the possibility of her involvement in the Titanic disaster.

www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Another attempt to get Capt. Lord off the hook by a former Forum member.
Think about it. If the mystery ship was Campanello, then she had to have stopped and seen Titanic's distress signals close up, watched for over an hour, then turned around and went away. Furthermore, she had wireless, and like Capt. Lord, her captain didn't bother to find out what was going on. And furthermore, her entire crew and anyone else on board kept their mouth shut as to what they saw.

 

[Julian Atkins]

page 109 of ‘Indifferent Stranger’ (Paul Lee) quotes ‘The Shipping Gazette and Lloyds List’ states the SS Campanello “between April 14th and 15th, she encountered heavy pack ice, large bergs and field ice, in position 41 10N to 42N, 49W to 50 16W drifting south”

On page 283/4 of the above we have in essence a further repeat and a not very good diagram ‘illustration 72’.

Even if the SS Campanello arrived a bit late - which seems rather odd from what was admitted at the time - it clearly ought to have been seen on the 15th by various other vessels surely?

It could even be the small tramp steamer seen bow end on by Groves with a black funnel as per the Uranium Line which being bow end on would possibly hide it’s larger size and being further away than Groves thought at the time?

(The SS Campanello wasn’t a small tramp steamer).

 

[Julian Atkins]

There is something a bit odd about the SS Campanello. Adams’ ‘MGU’ is thought by Counsel when questioning Turnbull to be an error for ‘MGY’ Titanic though as I have repeatedly said the timing is ‘out’ and someone ought to have double checked this and looked at the call signs. Turnbull ought to have to hand all the call signs of the Marconi Co. as ought Counsel to the Inquiry.

It does seem to me to be a blatant error on the part of the British Inquiry.

And the British Inquiry had 5 weeks before Adams was called to testify, and he wasn’t asked a single question on all of this.

It was left to Robertson Dunlop on behalf of the Leyland Line to potentially implicate the SS Campanello, and even at this late stage (and probably because he hadn’t heard of the subsequent evidence) he also didn’t ‘join up the dots’ between the copy Mesaba Marconigram presented by Turnbull with its added embellishments and it’s list of call signs.

Robertson Dunlop never made the connection in 1912, and neither did Paul Lee in his own research for ‘The Titanic and the Indifferent Stranger’ despite Paul looking at what must now be considered only part of the Marconi Archive at Oxford, and clearly being oblivious to Booth’s book ‘Signals of Disaster’ which contains significant examples of primary source documents missing from the Marconi Archive at Oxford.

 

[Steven Christian]

There is something a bit odd about the SS Campanello. Adams’ ‘MGU’ is thought by Counsel when questioning Turnbull to be an error for ‘MGY’ Titanic though as I have repeatedly said the timing is ‘out’ and someone ought to have double checked this and looked at the call signs. Turnbull ought to have to hand all the call signs of the Marconi Co. as ought Counsel to the Inquiry.

It does seem to me to be a blatant error on the part of the British Inquiry.

And the British Inquiry had 5 weeks before Adams was called to testify, and he wasn’t asked a single question on all of this.

It was left to Robertson Dunlop on behalf of the Leyland Line to potentially implicate the SS Campanello, and even at this late stage (and probably because he hadn’t heard of the subsequent evidence) he also didn’t ‘join up the dots’ between the copy Mesaba Marconigram presented by Turnbull with its added embellishments and it’s list of call signs.

Robertson Dunlop never made the connection in 1912, and neither did Paul Lee in his own research for ‘The Titanic and the Indifferent Stranger’ despite Paul looking at what must now be considered only part of the Marconi Archive at Oxford, and clearly being oblivious to Booth’s book ‘Signals of Disaster’ which contains significant examples of primary source documents missing from the Marconi Archive at Oxford.

This has turned out to be an interesting thread. Thanks to all posting. It seems that Oxford has digitized much of the Marconi records. Don't have time to go thru it now but will soon. Cheers all.

https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/marconi/collection/search.php

 

[Steven Christian]

Just a side note: According to the data tables the radio on the S.S. Campanello had an effective range of 200 nautical miles and The Mesaba had an effective range of 150 nautical miles according to inspections carried out on their radio's. Both ships only had one operator. They were relative low power sets when compared to the Lusitania and the Olympic which came in at 650 and 700 nautical miles respectively. According to the data sheets that is.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

page 109 of ‘Indifferent Stranger’ (Paul Lee) quotes ‘The Shipping Gazette and Lloyds List’ states the SS Campanello “between April 14th and 15th, she encountered heavy pack ice, large bergs and field ice, in position 41 10N to 42N, 49W to 50 16W drifting south”

Yes he does, but at the bottom of p283 he states that given her date/time of departure from New York, even at full speed the Campanello could not have reached that position before noon on Monday 15th April, by which time the Titanic had been at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for several hours. Paul Lee then speculates whether the Campanello made a mistake about the actual night on which it encountered "heavy pack ice and large icebergs"; as you say, the recorded date for that encounter is the night of April 14th-15th - the same night the Titanic went down - but Dr Lee wonders if it could have actually been the following night, April 15th-16th. If so, it ties in with reports that the Campanello was still a day away (west) from the Titanic's stated position when it heard about the latter ship's accident.

Campanello had an effective range of 200 nautical miles and The Mesaba had an effective range of 150 nautical miles according to inspections carried out on their radio's. Both ships only had one operator. They were relative low power sets when compared to the Lusitania and the Olympic which came in at 650 and 700 nautical miles respectively.

Why is that a problem? If the westbound Mesaba was between the Campanello (which was significantly north of its eastbound track) to its west and Titanic to its east, could that not place the Atlantic Transport liner within the effective wireless range for both the other ships?

 

[Steven Christian]

Yes he does, but at the bottom of p283 he states that given her date/time of departure from New York, even at full speed the Campanello could not have reached that position before noon on Monday 15th April, by which time the Titanic had been at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for several hours. Paul Lee then speculates whether the Campanello made a mistake about the actual night on which it encountered "heavy pack ice and large icebergs"; as you say, the recorded date for that encounter is the night of April 14th-15th - the same night the Titanic went down - but Dr Lee wonders if it could have actually been the following night, April 15th-16th. If so, it ties in with reports that the Campanello was still a day away (west) from the Titanic's stated position when it heard about the latter ship's accident.


Why is that a problem? If the westbound Mesaba was between the Campanello (which was significantly north of its eastbound track) to its west and Titanic to its east, could that not place the Atlantic Transport liner within the effective wireless range for both the other ships?

It wasn't a problem. I was just relaying the capabilities of those ships radios. Somebody might have had questions about that like I did.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Thanks. By the way, I meant their relative positions on the night of Sunday, 14th April 1912, leading up to the Titanic's fateful encounter with the iceberg.

What would be interesting is clarification of how and when the Campanello heard about the Titanic disaster; presumably, it must have been through wireless messages received and so there might be a record of them somewhere. From that we can perhaps work out where the Campanello was at the time, which, going by Paul Lee's conjecture, would be still 16 to 20 hours sailing time (of the Campanello) west of the spot where the Titanic had foundered.

 

[Steven Christian]

Thanks. By the way, I meant their relative positions on the night of Sunday, 14th April 1912, leading up to the Titanic's fateful encounter with the iceberg.

What would be interesting is clarification of how and when the Campanello heard about the Titanic disaster; presumably, it must have been through wireless messages received and so there might be a record of them somewhere. From that we can perhaps work out where the Campanello was at the time, which, going by Paul Lee's conjecture, would be still 16 to 20 hours sailing time (of the Campanello) west of the spot where the Titanic had foundered.

Yes that would be interesting. I'm curious about the Campanello and the other ships that Julian mentioned. I never really looked into them before. I've read the ice messages, the Mesaba, Carpathia, Californian, Cape Race traffic and of course Titanic. But not much on the other ships that were in the area that night. Since most of them only had one operator they probably had their sets switched off like Evans did when Titanic smacked the berg. I will dig into more though because I don't that for for sure. Cheers

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I'm curious about the Campanello and the other ships that Julian mentioned. I never really looked into them before. I've read the ice messages, the Mesaba, Carpathia, Californian, Cape Race traffic and of course Titanic

There were the Mount Temple and the Parisian too in the mix. and many other lesser known ships some of which - like the Campanello - have been considered as the "mystery ship" that was supposedly between the Titanic and the Californian. It is usually an attempt to exonerate Captain Lord and the crew of the Californian.

I suggest checking the links in Paul Lee's Titanic page: http://www.paullee.com/titanic/index.php . In particular, the recently updated Ice Warnings Received by the Titanic and A Complete Record of Wireless Messages.