The Great Titanic Conspiracy by Robin Gardiner

Author:Robin Gardiner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Ships & Shipbuilding, Transportation, History
ISBN: 9780711034969
Publisher: Ian Allan
Published: 2010-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

‘Westbound steamers report bergs...’

Sunday 14 April 1912 on the North Atlantic dawned cold and clear. Titanic still headed westwards at better than 22 knots. Less than 200 miles further west and a little to the north the Leyland Line’s Californian was also ploughing along westwards but at less than half Titanic’s speed.

Even before Titanic had left Southampton Captain Smith had been informed that huge amounts of field ice and a great number of icebergs lay along the route he had chosen to follow. The winter of 1911/12 had been exceptionally mild in Greenland and many more than normal massive pieces of ice had broken away from the Disco glacier to become icebergs. The pack ice in those northern latitudes had not frozen anything like as hard as it usually did. As a consequence of this mild weather the Labrador ocean current, which flowed from the north, had begun to move massive quantities of this ice into the shipping lanes weeks before it would ordinarily have done so. However, a little ice did nothing to discourage Captain Smith; in fact, it appears to have had exactly the opposite effect on him.

All the time the ship had been at sea more and more indications that ice lay ahead had been received by wireless. Such messages, regarding the safety of the ship, were supposedly treated as a priority by Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, the Marconi operators, and were meant to be taken to the bridge immediately. In reality the wireless operators used their own discretion in deciding what was urgent and what could wait until a convenient time for them to deliver it to the Captain and his watch officers. This was only a natural attitude for the operators to adopt as many of the navigational signals were merely repeating information that those on the bridge had already received, and were mostly inexact in their nature anyway. On this Sunday, however, all that changed. At 9.00am the first of a series of specific ice warnings was received by Titanic. This message was from the Cunard liner Caronia eastbound from New York to Liverpool, via Queenstown:

‘Captain, Titanic. Westbound steamers report bergs, growlers and field ice in 42° N, from 49° to 51° W. April 12. Compliments, Barr.’

This message, clearly indicating a concentration of dangerous ice in an area directly ahead of Titanic, was taken directly to the bridge and delivered into the hand of Captain Smith. The Captain appears to have had the position of the ice marked on the chart so that all of his officers would be aware of its presence.

A lifeboat drill for the passengers and crew had been scheduled for that Sunday morning, but it was Captain Smith’s usual practice to hold a divine service every sabbath. The Captain, who also had to fit in a full tour of inspection of his ship that morning, decided that there was not the time available for all three, so the lifeboat drill went by the board. Clearly Smith considered the spiritual wellbeing of his passengers and crew to be of paramount importance.

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