Titanic and the Mystery Ship by Senan Molony

Author:Senan Molony
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780752467573
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-08-18T04:00:00+00:00

The speaking tube was to Captain Lord’s own room (7298) whereas Gibson had found him in the next-door chartroom, Lord with his eyes closed, thirty-five minutes earlier. Lord would have had to get up to answer the call. If he indeed answered the call. Stone remembers a complete conversation and says that Lord ‘came and answered it’ (question 7976), implying movement from the chartroom to the captain’s own room. Lord has no recollection of walking or talking, whereas Gibson saw a call being made but heard no conversation.

The idea of Lord sleepwalking to the speaking tube – and back again – is obviously open to high ridicule by his modern critics. Yet it is quite common for some people to appear to function normally in this way and then have no recollection of it in the morning. Lord’s lack of recollection must have been perceived by the Inquiry as perilously close to evasiveness or denial. He could have used his location in his own defence, like so: ‘I ought to remember, because it would have involved me getting up, walking to the tube, walking back again, and going back to sleep’. Lord did not directly pit himself against Stone in that way, even though his evidence at one level seemed to imply a contradiction of the second officer.

Lord thus inhabited the worst of all possible worlds – somewhere between sleep and wakefulness and the two conscious certainties of acceptance or outright denial. He just could not remember. And there is evidence that exactly the same blank forgetfulness happened on the Titanic that very night – and with one of her officers! Fifth Officer Harold Lowe actually slept through a man entering his room and telling him that his ship had struck an iceberg! This is much more dramatic news than the matters reported to Captain Lord! Here is Lowe at the US Inquiry (p.388):

Senator Smith: You were not aroused from your slumber by anyone?

Lowe: No, sir. Mr Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, told me that he told me that we had struck an iceberg, but I do not remember it.

Senator Smith: You do not remember his telling you that?

Lowe: I do not remember his telling me that.

Sen. Smith: That is, while you were [asleep]?

Lowe: It must have been while I was asleep. You must remember that we do not have any too much sleep and therefore when we sleep we die.

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