How to Survive the Titanic

the time the wreck occurs, legally.’

But why, wondered Smith, had Lightoller not made this statement earlier?

‘Because,’ Lightoller replied, ‘the controversy in regard to the telegram had not been brought up then, or brought to my knowledge; I mean all this [news]paper talk there has been about this telegram.’

And that is the reason, suggested Smith, ‘that you were prompted to make this disclosure?’

Lightoller replied that he was making the disclosure because he was ‘principally responsible for the telegram being sent’.

‘And you sent it?’ inquired Smith.

‘I did not,’ replied Lightoller.

‘You delivered it to the wireless?’

‘I did not.’

‘Who did?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Did you write it out?’

‘I did not.’

‘Did you speak to the operator about it?’

‘I did not.’

‘Have you spoken to him about it since?’

‘I have not.’

‘But you wish to be understood as saying that you urged Mr Ismay to send it?’

‘I did.’

‘Did you know at that time,’ asked Smith, ‘that an inquiry had been ordered by the Senate?’

‘Certainly not,’ said an apparently appalled Lightoller, ‘or we should never have dreamed of sending the telegram. Our whole and sole idea was to keep the crew together for the inquiry, presumably at home. We naturally did not want any witnesses to get astray.’ In his memoirs, however, Lightoller later wrote: ‘Everyone’s hope, so far as the crew were concerned, was that we might arrive in New York in time to catch the Cedric back to Liverpool and so escape the inquisition that would otherwise be awaiting us. Our luck was distinctly out. We were served with warrants, immediately on arrival.’¹³

Smith then returned to the question of whether the various ice reports had been taken notice of and Lightoller was as uncommunicative on the subject as he had been five days earlier. ‘Did you see’, asked Smith, ‘in the chart room of the Titanic any memoranda in the rack advising that you were in the vicinity of ice?’ Lightoller did not ‘remember seeing anything’.

‘Did you see a telegram from the Amerika?’

Lightoller did not ‘remember seeing any’.

‘Did you see a telegram from the CalifornianV

Lightoller did not ‘remember seeing any’.

‘Did you see any such memoranda?’

Lightoller did ‘not remember seeing any such memorandum’.

‘Was such a notation made on the chart?’

Lightoller did ‘not remember seeing any myself, because I did not look’.

When asked if ‘no one called your attention to any telegram or wireless from any ship warning you of ice?’ he replied ‘Yes’, and fleshed out the story he had told before. ‘I do not know what the telegram was. The commander came out when I was relieved for lunch, I think it was. It may have been earlier; I do not remember what time it was. I remember the commander coming out to me some time that day and showing me a telegram, and this had reference to the position of ice.’

‘A warning to you,’ Smith asked, ‘of its proximity?’

‘No warning,’ said Lightoller, ‘but giving the position — a mere bald statement of fact.’ A mere bald statement of fact: it was the best description of an iceberg the inquiry had yet heard.[3]

Lightoller worked out that the ship would be at the position stated at around 11 p.m. and informed First Officer Murdoch. Since, asked Senator Fletcher, they knew they would be passing an iceberg that night, would it not be a sensible precaution to slow down? ‘It depends altogether on conditions,’ shrugged Lightoller, ‘and it finally rests with the commander’s judgment.’

Senator Smith digested this. Senator Fletcher then asked a vital question: following the collision, ‘What was done then with reference to the ship; was her speed lessened then?’

Lightoller claimed not to know whether the ship stopped after the collision or continued on its course. ‘I was below; I do not know anything about that.’

‘You could not tell that?’ asked Fletcher, surprised that an officer could not tell the difference between a still and a moving ship.

‘I could not tell you officially,’ said Lightoller. ‘I know I came out on deck and noticed that her speed was lessened; yes.’

But, pressed Fletcher, ‘Was she not actually stopped entirely from going forward?’

‘No,’ Lightoller replied, ‘she was not. That is why I said, in my previous testimony, that the ship was apparently going slowly, and I saw the First Officer and the Captain on the bridge, and I judged that there was nothing further to do.’

Lightoller then made a second statement defending Ismay. He had heard from a ‘reliable’ witness that Ismay had been ‘practically thrown’ into the lifeboat by Chief Officer Wilde (who was now dead). ‘Wilde was a pretty big, powerful chap, and he was a man that would not argue very long. Mr Ismay was right there… and Mr Wilde, who was near him, simply bundled him into the boat.’ Ismay, at six foot four inches, was a pretty big powerful chap too and Senator Smith noted that Lightoller had not remembered this incident in his previous testimony. Lightoller replied that while he had unfortunately forgotten the source of the story, he believed it to be true; Ismay, on the other hand, said that it was not true, that the decision to board a lifeboat had been his alone.

There was a transparent, seemingly deliberate, feebleness to Lightoller’s defences of his employer. As a patriot he was damned if he was going to stand by and watch an Englishman savaged in this kangaroo court, but Lightoller’s mockery of Smith served also to undermine Ismay. Lightoller’s biographer, Patrick Stenson, claims that he ‘simply felt sorry’ for the boss, that he was ‘one of those curious creatures’ who went to the ‘aid of the underdog, and certainly there was no dog more under just then than the chairman of the White Star Line’.¹⁴ But Senator Smith did not see it like this. Baffled by the dynamic between the two men, he returned to the question, which Lightoller felt had been exhausted in his last interrogation, of when he had last seen Ismay.

‘As I now recollect your testimony — and I have it here — you said you were not acquainted with Mr Ismay.’

‘I have known Mr Ismay for fourteen years.’

‘You did not speak to him that night?’

‘I did.’

‘You told me you looked at one another and said nothing.’

‘I might have spoken and I might have said “Good evening”.’

‘I mean after the collision.’

‘After the collision, no.’

‘One moment,’ Smith paused. ‘After the collision you saw Mr Ismay standing on the deck?’

‘Yes.’

‘Looking out at sea?’

‘I don’t know what he was looking at.’

‘You were standing out at deck about twenty feet from him?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You say now that you did not say that?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Would that not be true?’

‘I do not think so. I was walking along that side of the deck.’