The story you are about to read is told through official testimony,
private affidavits, newspaper stories, interviews, and varied other forms of
supporting documents, all of which is accessible through the Table of
Contents. In this website under the heading US Inquiry and BR
Inquiry you will find the complete 1912 testimony relating to what is known
as "the Californian incident."
Fourth Officer Boxhall, Titanic
"I judged her to be
between 5 and 6 miles away when I Morsed to her, and then she turned around -
she was turning very, very slowly..." BR Inq, Q15409
"Eventually I saw the red light, I had seen the green... I saw the
green before I saw the red." US Inq 933
Captain Lord, Californian
"This man was coming
along... on our starboard side. After midnight we slowly blew around and
showed him our red light." - US Inq 732
George Orwell
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the re-statement of the obvious."
The Californian's Story
"They come across as
energetic, resourceful -- and highly selective in presenting their
evidence."
- Walter Lord, describing Capt.
Lord's many defenders, in The Night Lives On.
At 10:20 p.m. on Sunday April 14, 1912, the Leyland Liner Californian, a cargo ship westbound from England to Boston, stopped at the eastern edge of an impenetrable ice field. Around 11:00 p.m., her Captain and Third Officer observed a light approaching from the east. Third Officer Groves thought she was a passenger liner; Captain Lord thought she was a small tramp steamer, somewhat like the Californian. Captain Lord went below; he later said he had seen her green starboard light while he was on deck. At 11:40 Groves thought he saw the other ship put her lights out and stop for the night; by now saw her red port light, and the ship seemed to be stopped, pointing north toward him.
At midnight, the watch changed, and Second Officer Stone and Apprentice Gibson took over from Groves. While Gibson went below decks on an errand, at 12:45 a.m., Stone saw a flash of light over the steamer, and as he watched he observed several more - white lights in the sky, like rockets. Stone notified Captain Lord. Gibson returned to the bridge and saw three more rockets himself - which like all the others burst into stars. He too notified Captain Lord. However, Lord neither aroused the wireless operator, nor came out on deck to see for himself. Finally, soon after 2 a.m. the other ship seemed to disappear, and at 2:40, Stone notified Lord one last time. When Stone went off duty at 4 a.m., he informed his relief, Chief Officer Stewart, about the rockets as well.
At 4:30 a.m., Captain Lord came back onto the bridge. Stewart repeated Stone's story about the rockets to Lord. "Yes, I know, he has been telling me," Lord answered. At 6:00 they received a wireless message from the Frankfurt, and then the Virginian, "Do you know the Titanic has struck a berg, and she is sinking?" Captain Lord started his engines and headed for the last known position of the Titanic. Within twenty-five minutes, Lord radioed to the Virginian that they were close enough see the rescue ship Carpathia taking on passengers from small boats. About this time, Stewart woke up Third Officer Groves with the announcement, "The Titanic has sunk, and the passengers are all in lifeboats in the water ahead of us." At 6:50 am Third Officer Groves arrived on the bridge and noticed that the Carpathia and the lifeboats were due east - it had taken them less than an hour to arrive at the same latitude as the lifeboats. When they finally arrived alongside the Carpathia, the last of the survivors from the Titanic were just being taken aboard.
When the Californian resumed her course for Boston, her log for
that day omitted any mention of the rockets seen during the night;
nevertheless, Lord privately asked Stone
and Gibson to write
up separate affidavits describing what they had seen and reported to him.
In the end, however, he did not share these accounts with the subsequent
investigations. He also prepared a series of charts and maps illustrating
what he had done and where his ship purportedly had been. Asked in London
why he did this, he answered, "I knew at once there would be an enquiry over this."
After the Californian arrived in Boston, the ship's carpenter, James McGregor, told the story of how the rockets had been seen to an obscure newspaper in Clinton, Massachusetts. In response to rumors about the rockets, Captain Lord told reporters in Boston that his ship had been 20 miles away and that the location was a "state secret." Over the next few days he denied that anyone on his ship had seen rockets, denied that he had asked his Second Officer for a private report, and went so far as to say that Stewart (not Stone) had been on watch at the time. Stone also denied having written a report, even though the document he had signed was by now in Lord's possession.
On the same day, Californian crewman Ernest Gill swore to an affidavit for a Boston newspaper, that he too had seen rockets, and his story caused a sensation. In due time, Lord was summoned first to Washington DC for the US Inquiry into the Titanic disaster, where he conceded that he had been told of one rocket. Three weeks later, in London, he and all of his officers were summoned, where it came out that eight rockets had been seen and reported to him, three times. He agreed that "it might have been" distress signals that were seen, and he had remained in the chartroom. Both Inquiries found him to have been within sight of the sinking Titanic and declared that he had not responded properly to signals of distress.
Although he lost his job with the Californian, Lord soon found work with another shipping line, and life continued for him.
In the 1950s, with the publication of the book and movie A Night to Remember, which re-told the story of the Californian's proximity to the Titanic, Lord enlisted the services of Leslie Harrison, General Secretary of the Mercantile Marine Service Association, to help him clear his name of the 1912 charges. For more than thirty years Leslie Harrison wrote petitions, articles, books and pamphlets with an eye to convince the British government to re-examine the 1912 findings on the "Californian incident." In 1992, after thirty years of petitioning and seven years after the wreck of the Titanic was discovered, the British government formally conducted an investigation into the Californian's involvement in the Titanic disaster.