Carpathia. The relationship between Lightoller and Ismay, which had been of such interest to Senator Smith, was of no interest at all to the British inquiry, who were concerned only with the question of speed, visibility, and the role the Second Officer had played during the lowering of the lifeboats. Lightoller handled, he later said, ‘sharp questions that needed careful answers if one was to avoid a pitfall, carefully and subtly dug, leading to a pinning down of blame onto someone’s luckless shoulders’. Those shoulders, which had been luckless Yamsi’s in America, were now, Lightoller believed, his. On this occasion he did not mock the court. Lightoller took his inquisition seriously. He ducked and dived and dodged the ‘cleverest legal minds in England, striving tooth and nail to prove the inadequacy here, the lack there, when one had known, full well, and for many years, the ever-present possibility of just such a disaster’. He was proud of his performance, which he called a ‘long drawn out battle of wits’, and he was keen afterwards to let it be known that he held ‘the unenviable position of whipping boy’ for the White Star Line. He defended the company from the accusation that the ship was undermanned when it came to launching the lifeboats; he stated that it was common practice not to slow down in ice regions; if it was considered reckless to head into an ice field at full speed, Lightoller said, then ‘recklessness applies to practically every commander and every ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean’.
Of the ship’s movements after the collision, he repeated what he had told the US inquiry: that the engines had stopped while he was lying in his bunk, he had gone to the bridge in his pyjamas and seen that the ship was slowing down, he had returned to his bed for between fifteen and thirty minutes (he told the US inquiry it was ten minutes) when he was roused by Boxhall, who told him that the water had reached F Deck. By the time Lightoller was up and dressed and on the deck, the engines had stopped completely and the boilers were letting off steam. If he was covering up the knowledge that the ship had previously been going ‘Slow Ahead’ under Ismay’s orders, Lightoller did it without obvious effort. He afterwards said he felt more like ‘a legal doormat than a mailboat officer’, but the man who was appointed as the Titanic’s First Officer to then be demoted to Second Officer, was treated by the inquiry as though he had been the Captain.5
By the time Ismay took to the stand at midday on 4 June he was no longer the most talked-of man in all the world. Talk was now of the royal visit to the zoo and the rain on Derby day, but for Ismay the hours of talk that his jump had generated hung on in the air like an aura. ‘It was clear’, the Telegraph wrote, ‘that the appearance of so important a witness was wholly unexpected by the general public, because the attendance was one of the very smallest which the inquiry has yet brought together.’ A ‘ripple of mild excitement’ went through the hall at the thought that the investigation might at last be ‘lifted out of the severely judicial groove’ in which it had been gently moving, and ‘directed into more or less personal channels’.
This was Ismay’s second chance. The US inquiry had been a dress rehearsal; what mattered was his reputation amongst Englishmen, particularly those in Liverpool who remembered him as his father’s son. Wearing a dark grey suit and black tie, he was, the Daily Sketch noted, ‘visibly nervous’, but he was in marginally better shape than he had been in America. Florence was with him; his London home was a pleasant walk through the park from the Drill Hall, and he had not been required to sit in the audience for the previous month as a great narrative web spun itself around him.
Bruce (smoking) and Florence Ismay with Harold Sanderson, walking to the British Inquiry The American press had described Ismay as a figure of regal imperiousness but no one looking at him today, wrote the Daily Sketch, ‘would have pictured this man as the head of one of the wealthiest and most powerful shipping corporations in the world. He looks and speaks so unlike the commonly accepted type of commercial monarch as could well be conceived. A cultured cosmopolitan if you like, but not a strong ruler of men.’ Often standing with nothing to do as Lord Mersey and his counsel discussed his answers amongst themselves, Ismay folded his arms, clasped his hands behind his back, slipped his left hand in and out of his pocket, and fiddled with an open foolscap envelope. The Telegraph, which thought that Ismay showed ‘no trace of nervousness’, suggested that for a man who ‘claimed no higher status on the Titanic than that of a passenger, he looked just the part’.
Sir Rufus Isaacs began by questioning Ismay about the relationship between the White Star Line and the IMM. Although these ships, including the Titanic, are registered under the British flag, they are in fact American property? Ismay replied without hesitancy in what was reported to be a ‘low, well- modulated voice’ that he had not the slightest idea. This was an example of what the Telegraph referred to as his disarming ‘modesty’. Astonished to learn that the White Star Line was no longer in any real sense a British company, Lord Mersey then asked the witness to explain the object of an American company managing its affairs through the English laws affecting English companies: Why do they do it? Ismay replied that I am afraid I cannot answer that question, My Lord. I should think, intervened Isaacs, you ought to know. Like Lord Mersey, Rufus Isaacs was familiar with Ismay and his background. The son of a prosperous East London Jewish fruit merchant, Isaacs had left school aged fourteen, became a ship’s boy at sixteen, sailed to Rio and Calcutta, briefly jumping ship mid-journey, after which he read for the Bar and joined the House of Commons as Liberal MP for Reading. His one year at sea left him with an abiding love of the ocean and its traditions. A good friend of Lord Mersey’s, Isaacs was yet to be promoted to Attorney General, Lord Chief Justice, Ambassador to Washington, Viceroy of India, and Foreign Secretary. When he died in 1935, he was Marquess of Reading, the first commoner to receive such a promotion since Wellington. Now aged fifty-two, he was enjoying one of the most spectacular legal careers of his generation. Sir Rufus Isaacs was, according to Margot Asquith, the most ambitious man she had ever known.
Isaacs then asked Ismay about his position on the Titanic : You sailed in her as a passenger? I did, Ismay replied. Did you communicate with the Captain on the fateful evening? No, Ismay said, I never spoke to him at all; I had nothing to do with him at all. You travelled as a passenger because of your interest in the vessel and in the company which owned it? Naturally I was interested in the ship. I mean, you had nothing to do in New York; you travelled because you wanted to make the first passage on the Titanic? Partly, but I can always find something to do. I mean to say that you were not travelling in the Titanic because you wanted to go to New York, but because you wanted to travel upon the maiden voyage of the Titanic? Yes. Ismay’s answers were crisp and clear. Because in your capacity as managing director or as president of the American Trust you desired to see how the vessel behaved, I suppose? Naturally. And to see whether anything occurred in the course of the voyage which would lead to suggestions from you or from anybody? We were building another new ship, and we naturally wanted to see how we could improve on our existing ships. It was all, according to Ismay, in the natural course of things. Later in the day, Lord Mersey asked Ismay to ‘paraphrase “naturally” and tell me exactly what you mean by it?’ Ismay was unable to explain exactly what he meant, but he was using the word to mean ‘logically’, or what could be reasonably assumed. So, continued Isaacs, improving on future ships was the real object of your travelling on the Titanic? And, corrected Ismay, to observe the ship. What I want to put to you is that you were not there as an ordinary passenger? So far as the navigation of the ship was concerned, yes… I looked on myself simply as an ordinary passenger. Did you, intervened Lord Mersey, who called a spade a spade, pay your fare? No, admitted Ismay, I did not. There was general laughter. You recognise, said Sir Rufus Isaacs, that My Lord’s question is one which rather disposes of the ordinary passenger theory, does it not?
The Marconigram from the Baltic, which reported ‘a large quantity of field ice today in latitude 41.51 N., longitude 49.52 W.’, was then read aloud. ‘We attribute very great importance to that particular message,’ said Isaacs, who would turn the Captain’s handing of the Marconigram to Ismay into a cordoned-off crime scene. ‘We think it is of very great importance. Now what I want to understand from you is this — that the message was handed to you by Captain Smith, you say?’ Yes. Handed to you because you are the managing director of the company? I do not know, said Ismay. It was a matter of information. Information, suggested Isaacs, which he would not give to everybody, but which he gave to you… he handed it to you, and you read it, I suppose? Yes. Did he say anything to you about it? Not a word. He merely handed it to you, and you put it in your pocket after you had read it? Yes, I glanced at it very casually. I was on deck at the time. Had he handed any message to you before this one?
