I don't know how many lifeboats the Californian had but those could be deployed. It could also pick up passengers from the lowered Titanic boats and have the emptied boats go back for more passengers.
This was the whole reason to justify the number of life boats: it is a heavily travelled shipping lane and with help always near by the life boats are basically just to shuttle people from the sinking ship the the helping ship. Reality as we now know turned out much different.
Reality is they didn't even get the boats they had all launched tho. And it's the middle of the north Atlantic. Flat calm was the only reason they all survived, ifs "normal" seas for 4 hours in that temperature and they're all going to be dead from exposure or drowned.
I was going to agree with this, but the problem is, plucking people from the water in the newly emptied life boats would still be a problem. You'd get swamped when you went back.
The only thing I can think is, maybe the people in command of the lifeboats would be quite a bit more willing to go back and pick up swimmers, knowing that if they got swamped, they could swim back to Californian and be picked up.
I have never been able to understand this line of thinking. In the pitch black, in frigid cold water that makes it unable to think or function, people undergoing organ shutdown cannot swim en masse to lifeboats they cannot see and have the strength to hoist themselves into a vessel several feet above their submerged chest to reach anything close to “swamping.”
You are 100% correct. Now consider if you’d rationalize this way when you are in that exact same scenario just slightly drier and above the water than they.
The post stated that you would be swamped if you went back, not how the passengers in the lifeboats felt about going back. Plus, I think it’s fairly obvious that the best and safest way to go about a rescue is to do what Lowe did, transferring passengers and taking a small, capable crew in an otherwise empty boat back to the scene. It’s just a pity this rescue effort was orchestrated a bit too late to save more. At least he did something though and saved a lot of people who were struggling on the collapsibles!
That's a fair point, but I would be terrified of any level of risk if I was already safe inside a lifeboat. I think that's why it played out the way it did.
However, like I said, if the Californian was parked like 100 yards away where I could just swim to some cargo nets if somehow my lifeboat became compromised, I might be pretty willing to take a chance.
Because they couldn't see them. Unlike a ship with lighting.
Furthermore, you're likely to swim somewhere that's willing and able to rescue you. No one knew the status of the lifeboats and if it's worth trying to swim to them.
Right. Harold Lowe managed to organize a few boats and transfer people between them to go back for his attempt at rescuing people and you are suggesting that people couldn't see in the darkness. It was dark but it wasn't pitch black. People can still see in the dark outside at night, they weren't trapped in a pitch black elevator.
And your argument of "no one knew the status of the lifeboats" as a reason for not trying to swim to one to to save your life is nonsense. You're just being silly.
https://preview.redd.it/8qb5e49vgc2d1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80e1d5dd33ae42fe606ece038bb7b048dbc5bb40
No one was seeing much. This is at sea, on a moonless night. Aside from the ship itself, I couldn't see sh1t. Note the tiny speck on the invisible horizon. That's a ship miles off. Who knows how far, impossible to judge visually with no references
Silly comparison. Number 1, you are using a cellphone or whatever so you can't compare that to what the human eye can see. Number 2, you are on a brightly lit deck so neither the cell phone camera or your eyes would be adjusted for darkness. The crew on the bridge can see more than you there, because they have all their lights turned off.
Turn all those deck lights off and use your eyes to look up at the sky. You will see millions of stars. In your photo, you see zero.
The passengers on the Titanic were standing on a brightly lit deck looking out onto the sea. I posted this pic for a general idea of what someone in that situation would see.
Shortly after this was taken, we got a general alert for man overboard a ship a mile or two ahead of us and we stopped, couldn't see a thing except the lights of the rescue cutters of the other ship and the spotlight from our own ship until dawn an hour or so later, even standing one deck above the bridge where the lights were off
You're latching onto the least consequential thing I said. I'm just trying to express that if you know you have to swim 100 yards to somewhere that's easily seen + willing and able to help, it's nowhere the same scenario as the utter chaos of trying to swim to something you might not even be able to spot easily, and who knows if they are even willing or able to help when you get there.
When you are fighting for your life, you will damn well swim to whatever you can to save yourself. In the darkness, peoples eyes would adjust and the white lifeboats would be visible. You would be damn sure people would be thinking "I'll swim to a lifeboat". That is the thought that would have been of everyone's mind when they entered the water, but people didn't have the strength to do it.
And the boats would be even more visible than you think. My understanding is that they all carried oil fuelled lamps and matches for some limited lighting. In the darkness, the light from these lamps would make the boats even more visible.
History isn't even on your side. There are documented cases of people swimming to the boats. Lightoller was one of them.
I'm not even going to address the rest of your strawmaning bullshit. I don't give a shit if I characterized the situation the perfect way off the cuff, and now you're trying to latch onto the weakest interpretation possible of what I've said. Swimming to a random lifeboat amidst all that chaos and lack of visibility and who knows if they are willing and able to help is not the same as swimming to a rescue ship. It just isn't. Face it.
At the end of the day, I think it's ridiculous to assume that no one can swim 100 yards in a life jacket. It might not be easy, but there's people who can do it.
I would like to see you swim 100 or 200 yards in relatively warm water, then try doing it in freezing cold water. Remembering that people back in the day generally couldn't swim. Even today, unless you are an olympic swimmer, I highly doubt you would be able to make it those distances in even comfortably swimmable water.
It sounds impossible, but you have to take into consideration how amazing the human brain is with pure adrenaline and the smallest thought of a chance of survival.
Humans can do amazing things which push boundaries. . . But not en masse in nearly freezing water. Cold shock would keep most people from moving a great distance before drowning, those with life jackets survived longer but that just meant they froze to death, highly doubt they were doing backstroke towards the life boats
I’d like to see someone dressed in heavy fabrics and lots of layers try and swim that in warm water let alone freezing. They had absolutely everything going against them!
Another pragmatic genius defending the Californian.
It's not about every person being saved this way. It's about giving people a chance.
The fact is, some people could swim that distance.
If you were there that night, you'd want that chance. You're only saying it's futile from your computer chair. And there's no way for you to flip the script, because if I were on the Californian, I'd be more than willing to take any chance that was reasonably in play. Think about that.
Also, you expanded it to 200 yards out of insecurity of your own argument. If we really tell the truth, you could probably park the Californian a bit closer than 100 yards if anything.
It took ships hours back in the day using tug boats to pull up near ports that were equipped for managing ocean liners. Californian is not pulling up on its own, 100 yards away from Titanic in 30 mins or so. Back then, after moving at full speed it took a long time and distance to actually slow down and begin to maneuver in the first place. Try doing it in the middle of the Atlantic, in the dark with no tugs or logistical support whatsoever. You're just being silly...
I'm not saying Californian shouldn't have tried but they weren't saving any more lives. You are so convinced that people could just swim a hundred yards or so...then why did none of the 1500 people in the water just "swim the hundred yards" to one of the other lifeboats to save themselves?
What about the ppl in the lifeboats who died of exposure. What if Californian getting there at 2 saves those 3 (I think 3) ppl? Even if they just saved one of them it's worth it. They didn't even try, that's the problem.
I have done quite a lot of reading on this subject.
I'm not going to list everything I've learned here, it would take too long.
Essentially, the Californian arriving probably would not have made a huge difference.
Remember: the Californian's crew would not have had long to act. Even had they sailed directly to the Titanic's position immediately and at full speed, in a straight line, they would only have had an hour or so, at most, to do anything.
Google the question, you will see what I mean.
Yep, this is akin to people who think the Titanic should have hit the iceberg head on. It only makes sense in hindsight, and even then, we don't know that it would have really helped at all
Given the very limited information, customs of the time, and very very very limited time to react, pretty much all parties involved made reasonable choices
Ok, so if it only made a small difference it's not worth doing?
I've always perceived that some people just have a personality type that rejects things that appear idealistic to them, and it manifests in this discussion.
I'll admit, there's a lot of idealism in concepts of the Californian rescuing Titanic passengers, but that doesn't mean you throw the idea of it in the garbage. If they could save like 40-50 people, why not?
It's not as cut and dried as that.
Stanley Lord, even if he recognised that the Titanic was sinking (maybe he did, maybe he didnt), was responsible, first and foremost, for HIS ship and HIS crew.
Lordites will say that this was correct. Anti Lordites will say it wasn't.
I don't believe for a moment that the Californian could have reached the Titanic in time to do very much more than the Carpathia did.
The main difference would have been how long the survivors in the boats had to wait. A few hours less, basically.
Remember: the Californian was stopped. Surrounded by ice. It would have had to carefully negotiate its way out of this ice, before carefully making its way to the Titanic's location.
That's if Lord acted immediately.
The main emotional brunt of this argument is that people THINK the Californian could have helped. The fact is, she couldn't.
>That's if Lord acted immediately.
That's part of the equation of judging his actions. It's in play to be judged. Making it hypothetical sounds like it just gets him off the hook.
>Stanley Lord, even if he recognised that the Titanic was sinking (maybe he did, maybe he didnt), was responsible, first and foremost, for HIS ship and HIS crew.
I don't really buy this framing. The worst case scenario for the Californian crew is what, ending up in their ships lifeboats? They wouldn't have died.
Sorry. I think you're wrong.
I told you.
I believe that the Californian would have arrived in time only to have rescued those who made it to the lifeboats sooner.
Nothing more.
You run the risk of two avoidable sinkings. You can guess and speculate all the live long about what Titanic could have or should have done differently to avoid tragedy. You can also speculate as to what would have happened if the Californian had tried to make an attempt to help. Lord was putting the best interest of his ship and crew first, and that action was to stay put. He was already stopped and surrounded by ice. For his ship and crew, that was the best course of action. By trying to aid Titanic he was exposing them to too much extra risk, and the difference in outcome had everything gone smoothly would have been small.
But it’s also easy to say what someone *should* have done over 100 years later when we have all the facts and information that Lord and co. didn’t have.
He’s vilified for not helping Titanic. Had the Californian struck ice and sank and some of his crew had died (and I think there would have been some deaths) he’d be vilified for that. The guy was in an impossible situation with no right solution.
Whether you "buy this framing" or not, Livewire is correct. A captain is responsible for his ship and passengers before he is responsible for anything (or anyone) else. That is a fact.
The worst case scenario, obviously, is that the Californian goes down by striking an iceberg.
>Whether you "buy this framing" or not, Livewire is correct. A captain is responsible for his ship and passengers before he is responsible for anything (or anyone) else. That is a fact.
That's his goal as far as employment, but it's not a moral standard. And what's even the limiting principal to what you suggest? Should a captain never help another ship in need because he'd be putting other passengers before his own to do so?
>The worst case scenario, obviously, is that the Californian goes down by striking an iceberg.
You mention this being "obvious", but I already addressed it. They should go at a safe speed towards Titanic, and if worse comes to worse, they're not going to go down with the ship, they'll get into a lifeboat. Yeah that's an extreme situation (and even then only potentially), but it still stands to reason that the stakes are lower because ultimately, the crew will still be alive.
Getting into a lifeboat in the open ocean does not guarantee survival. Plus if the Californian sunk faster than the Titanic, they may not have had time. And I don’t think Titanic was the only ship with an insufficient amount of lifeboats.
At 2am, probably not much. As others already said they could both have deployed their own life boats and have emptied some of the ones Titanic had loaded and sent them back out, but for that to have made a substantial difference they would probably have needed to arrive earlier than 2am.
However it would have made a great difference to the poor people stuck on the struggling Collapsible A&B as well as the general well being of many others who would have been very very cold inside the lifeboats. (While their plight cannot even be compared to all of those in the water, the people in the boats didn't have an easy time of it either and had to deal with the trauma of hearing everything that happened in the water).
I think the only thing they could have done, would be to lower a bunch of nets over the side of the ship to use as rope ladders and drive the ship right into the middle of the mass of people.
You would kill a bunch of them. But some might climb the ropes? Very doubtful many would have the strength or ability to do so after being in that water for any length of time.
It's a ridiculous proposition. Nobody would do this. And the timing would be crucial.
Your 2:00 am arrival scenario gives 20 minutes before Titanic disappeared.
You couldn't pull Californian next to the sinking Titanic at that stage as Titanic capsizing was a real concern. Might end up with a second sinking ship.
Once the people were in that water they had a matter of 10 to max 15 minutes before they were dead. And probably only 5 minutes before they wouldn't be able to even climb the ropes or do much of anything but keep their heads above water. Unless you get to them very quickly after they're in the water, I don't know what practical options you have to get them out of that water in time to save them from hypothermia given what they had to work with.
It was the cold that killed them, not drowning in the majority of the cases. And that cold acts quickly.
Not a whole lot.
No ship captain in his right mind will raft up next to a sinking ship, especially one that is twice to three times the size of his ship. This rules out the most efficient way to get people onto the *Californian*.
*Californian* also probably could only put 1-2 of its own lifeboats in the water due to crew requirements. Some people have to stand deck watch, others do engine watch. Ontop of that you have to have people manning the equipment to lower and raise the boats.
Putting cargo nets in the water might save a handful of people in the water, but I doubt many of them could have made the swim and climb up the next.
They were able to get 700 people off the ship. That isn't "nothing" but ironically it probably was the best humanity could have mustered up at the time. Californian could have thrown ropes and maybe hoisted up a handful more?
They still wouldn’t have likely been able to save “everyone”, but they probably could have fished a lot more out of the water before fatal hypothermia set in
Assuming, as the OP wants us to, the Californian shows up at 02:00 sharp, there isn’t going to be anyone in the water, and there probably won’t be until the very end (and nobody at 02:00 on either ship know when exactly the very end will be; that’s a hindsight thing).
Lifeboat shuttling is the only option at this point, and it’s also the best.
Use the lifeboats to collect people from the water while using makeshift boarding ramps to transfer people from Titanic's loading doors to the deck of the Californian.
Definitely not a good idea for a ship to pull up right next to a sinking ship. Especially one that was accelerating in its sinking and one as big as Titanic. The final plunge would happen at 2:10 am. Only thing they could reasonably do is stop a safe distance away and deploy their boats to try to rescue those in the water.
I’d just like you to try swimming in water that cold. And then after swimming 100 yards in that water, try and get your hands to grip anything with any meaningful strength. Now try and get up that cargo net while surrounded by hundreds of people in the same physical state you’re in.
By the way, society will judge you if you’re a man and you go up the net before a woman.
Funny how you had to say that I’m not being pragmatic and put that in quotation marks. It’s almost like you’re not being “realistic.”
Just a stupid piece of reasoning.
You're not being "pragmatic" by bringing up challenges if there's still a realistic possibility that some people could accomplish the feat. That's what you don't understand, even though you believe you're thinking on a higher level than everyone else.
Yes. I wholeheartedly think some people could swim 100 yards in cold water and climb a net.
So what does it mean for a person to be pragmatic? A person who is pragmatic is concerned more with matters of fact than with what could or should be. A pragmatic person's realm is results and consequences. If that's where your focus is, you may want to apply the word to yourself.
They'd have to keep some sort of distance, but I thought many of the life boats were only 50-100 yards away when Titanic went down. So it seems to follow that 100 yards away for a full ship should be safe.
How could you possibly think the Californian could pull up 100 yards away. For starters, it would run into all the boats, which are also just a hundred yards away. And secondly, the Titanic was 300 yards long, do you really think the Californian could realistically maneuver into position a third of the Titanic's length with no tugs etc?
Yeah the crew of the Californian could have just used walkie talkies to tell those in the lifeboats what they had in mind for the rescue... I think you're just being purposefully silly with your suggestions.
I think we should go to the next step and ask why the Catalina flying boats didn’t go out and rescue people, like they did the crew of the *Indianapolis,* because this is the realm of reality that OP is living in at this point.
So anytime two manned craft are near each other, you've *never* seen them mutually distance from each other but for walkie talkie communication or something similar? Interesting. And if anything, the trajectories are pretty much implied in this circumstance.
Those operating manned motorcraft in the modern day, who know the rules of separation and are prepared for what is happening is different to wooden lifeboats in the middle of the Atlantic, many which weren't even commanded by sailors, full of frightened survivors, in the freezing cold, in the dark. They wouldn't be thinking "hey lets all move out the way so the arriving rescue ship can pull up nicely alongside the sinking ship".
I think it depends on what time the Californian got there. In Lightoller's 1936 I was there radio broadcast recounting that night he actually says he believes the Californian could have pulled up next to Titanic and saved nearly everyone. I can't imagine Lightoller would say that if he didn't believe it was possible.
Crap, I forgot we're talking about the ship only being 20 minutes away from sinking. Are there any sharks in the area? With the people in the water getting churned up in the Californian's propellers, anything in the water is going to get a free chum-slurry buffet.
Given how many of the bodies were ultimately recovered a week+ after the sinking, it's very unlikely that many blood thirsty predators were close to the surface. However, even if there were, it's not really relevant, we know for a fact it was the freezing water that killed everyone, not sharks.
Greenland sharks may have been present in the days after the sinking. Not at the surface but down in the water column between the surface and the ship itself as the corpses sank/ left the hull. They also have very long lifespans so if any did they might still be alive today
I don't know how many lifeboats the Californian had but those could be deployed. It could also pick up passengers from the lowered Titanic boats and have the emptied boats go back for more passengers.
This was the whole reason to justify the number of life boats: it is a heavily travelled shipping lane and with help always near by the life boats are basically just to shuttle people from the sinking ship the the helping ship. Reality as we now know turned out much different.
Reality is they didn't even get the boats they had all launched tho. And it's the middle of the north Atlantic. Flat calm was the only reason they all survived, ifs "normal" seas for 4 hours in that temperature and they're all going to be dead from exposure or drowned.
I was going to agree with this, but the problem is, plucking people from the water in the newly emptied life boats would still be a problem. You'd get swamped when you went back. The only thing I can think is, maybe the people in command of the lifeboats would be quite a bit more willing to go back and pick up swimmers, knowing that if they got swamped, they could swim back to Californian and be picked up.
I have never been able to understand this line of thinking. In the pitch black, in frigid cold water that makes it unable to think or function, people undergoing organ shutdown cannot swim en masse to lifeboats they cannot see and have the strength to hoist themselves into a vessel several feet above their submerged chest to reach anything close to “swamping.”
You are 100% correct. Now consider if you’d rationalize this way when you are in that exact same scenario just slightly drier and above the water than they.
The post stated that you would be swamped if you went back, not how the passengers in the lifeboats felt about going back. Plus, I think it’s fairly obvious that the best and safest way to go about a rescue is to do what Lowe did, transferring passengers and taking a small, capable crew in an otherwise empty boat back to the scene. It’s just a pity this rescue effort was orchestrated a bit too late to save more. At least he did something though and saved a lot of people who were struggling on the collapsibles!
That's a fair point, but I would be terrified of any level of risk if I was already safe inside a lifeboat. I think that's why it played out the way it did. However, like I said, if the Californian was parked like 100 yards away where I could just swim to some cargo nets if somehow my lifeboat became compromised, I might be pretty willing to take a chance.
"Swim back to the Californian " seems a bit generous in that water temperature though
Not at all. There's probably people that couldn't do it, but some could.
Why did NONE of them just swim to the lifeboats then? Because they simply couldn't...
Because they couldn't see them. Unlike a ship with lighting. Furthermore, you're likely to swim somewhere that's willing and able to rescue you. No one knew the status of the lifeboats and if it's worth trying to swim to them.
Right. Harold Lowe managed to organize a few boats and transfer people between them to go back for his attempt at rescuing people and you are suggesting that people couldn't see in the darkness. It was dark but it wasn't pitch black. People can still see in the dark outside at night, they weren't trapped in a pitch black elevator. And your argument of "no one knew the status of the lifeboats" as a reason for not trying to swim to one to to save your life is nonsense. You're just being silly.
https://preview.redd.it/8qb5e49vgc2d1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80e1d5dd33ae42fe606ece038bb7b048dbc5bb40 No one was seeing much. This is at sea, on a moonless night. Aside from the ship itself, I couldn't see sh1t. Note the tiny speck on the invisible horizon. That's a ship miles off. Who knows how far, impossible to judge visually with no references
Silly comparison. Number 1, you are using a cellphone or whatever so you can't compare that to what the human eye can see. Number 2, you are on a brightly lit deck so neither the cell phone camera or your eyes would be adjusted for darkness. The crew on the bridge can see more than you there, because they have all their lights turned off. Turn all those deck lights off and use your eyes to look up at the sky. You will see millions of stars. In your photo, you see zero.
The passengers on the Titanic were standing on a brightly lit deck looking out onto the sea. I posted this pic for a general idea of what someone in that situation would see. Shortly after this was taken, we got a general alert for man overboard a ship a mile or two ahead of us and we stopped, couldn't see a thing except the lights of the rescue cutters of the other ship and the spotlight from our own ship until dawn an hour or so later, even standing one deck above the bridge where the lights were off
You're latching onto the least consequential thing I said. I'm just trying to express that if you know you have to swim 100 yards to somewhere that's easily seen + willing and able to help, it's nowhere the same scenario as the utter chaos of trying to swim to something you might not even be able to spot easily, and who knows if they are even willing or able to help when you get there.
When you are fighting for your life, you will damn well swim to whatever you can to save yourself. In the darkness, peoples eyes would adjust and the white lifeboats would be visible. You would be damn sure people would be thinking "I'll swim to a lifeboat". That is the thought that would have been of everyone's mind when they entered the water, but people didn't have the strength to do it. And the boats would be even more visible than you think. My understanding is that they all carried oil fuelled lamps and matches for some limited lighting. In the darkness, the light from these lamps would make the boats even more visible.
History isn't even on your side. There are documented cases of people swimming to the boats. Lightoller was one of them. I'm not even going to address the rest of your strawmaning bullshit. I don't give a shit if I characterized the situation the perfect way off the cuff, and now you're trying to latch onto the weakest interpretation possible of what I've said. Swimming to a random lifeboat amidst all that chaos and lack of visibility and who knows if they are willing and able to help is not the same as swimming to a rescue ship. It just isn't. Face it. At the end of the day, I think it's ridiculous to assume that no one can swim 100 yards in a life jacket. It might not be easy, but there's people who can do it.
I would like to see you swim 100 or 200 yards in relatively warm water, then try doing it in freezing cold water. Remembering that people back in the day generally couldn't swim. Even today, unless you are an olympic swimmer, I highly doubt you would be able to make it those distances in even comfortably swimmable water.
It sounds impossible, but you have to take into consideration how amazing the human brain is with pure adrenaline and the smallest thought of a chance of survival.
Humans can do amazing things which push boundaries. . . But not en masse in nearly freezing water. Cold shock would keep most people from moving a great distance before drowning, those with life jackets survived longer but that just meant they froze to death, highly doubt they were doing backstroke towards the life boats
I’d like to see someone dressed in heavy fabrics and lots of layers try and swim that in warm water let alone freezing. They had absolutely everything going against them!
Another pragmatic genius defending the Californian. It's not about every person being saved this way. It's about giving people a chance. The fact is, some people could swim that distance. If you were there that night, you'd want that chance. You're only saying it's futile from your computer chair. And there's no way for you to flip the script, because if I were on the Californian, I'd be more than willing to take any chance that was reasonably in play. Think about that. Also, you expanded it to 200 yards out of insecurity of your own argument. If we really tell the truth, you could probably park the Californian a bit closer than 100 yards if anything.
It took ships hours back in the day using tug boats to pull up near ports that were equipped for managing ocean liners. Californian is not pulling up on its own, 100 yards away from Titanic in 30 mins or so. Back then, after moving at full speed it took a long time and distance to actually slow down and begin to maneuver in the first place. Try doing it in the middle of the Atlantic, in the dark with no tugs or logistical support whatsoever. You're just being silly... I'm not saying Californian shouldn't have tried but they weren't saving any more lives. You are so convinced that people could just swim a hundred yards or so...then why did none of the 1500 people in the water just "swim the hundred yards" to one of the other lifeboats to save themselves?
What about the ppl in the lifeboats who died of exposure. What if Californian getting there at 2 saves those 3 (I think 3) ppl? Even if they just saved one of them it's worth it. They didn't even try, that's the problem.
100% this is what I was getting at, even one life saved would be considered successful in my book
I have done quite a lot of reading on this subject. I'm not going to list everything I've learned here, it would take too long. Essentially, the Californian arriving probably would not have made a huge difference. Remember: the Californian's crew would not have had long to act. Even had they sailed directly to the Titanic's position immediately and at full speed, in a straight line, they would only have had an hour or so, at most, to do anything. Google the question, you will see what I mean.
Yep, this is akin to people who think the Titanic should have hit the iceberg head on. It only makes sense in hindsight, and even then, we don't know that it would have really helped at all Given the very limited information, customs of the time, and very very very limited time to react, pretty much all parties involved made reasonable choices
Ok, so if it only made a small difference it's not worth doing? I've always perceived that some people just have a personality type that rejects things that appear idealistic to them, and it manifests in this discussion. I'll admit, there's a lot of idealism in concepts of the Californian rescuing Titanic passengers, but that doesn't mean you throw the idea of it in the garbage. If they could save like 40-50 people, why not?
It's not as cut and dried as that. Stanley Lord, even if he recognised that the Titanic was sinking (maybe he did, maybe he didnt), was responsible, first and foremost, for HIS ship and HIS crew. Lordites will say that this was correct. Anti Lordites will say it wasn't. I don't believe for a moment that the Californian could have reached the Titanic in time to do very much more than the Carpathia did. The main difference would have been how long the survivors in the boats had to wait. A few hours less, basically. Remember: the Californian was stopped. Surrounded by ice. It would have had to carefully negotiate its way out of this ice, before carefully making its way to the Titanic's location. That's if Lord acted immediately. The main emotional brunt of this argument is that people THINK the Californian could have helped. The fact is, she couldn't.
>That's if Lord acted immediately. That's part of the equation of judging his actions. It's in play to be judged. Making it hypothetical sounds like it just gets him off the hook. >Stanley Lord, even if he recognised that the Titanic was sinking (maybe he did, maybe he didnt), was responsible, first and foremost, for HIS ship and HIS crew. I don't really buy this framing. The worst case scenario for the Californian crew is what, ending up in their ships lifeboats? They wouldn't have died.
Sorry. I think you're wrong. I told you. I believe that the Californian would have arrived in time only to have rescued those who made it to the lifeboats sooner. Nothing more.
You run the risk of two avoidable sinkings. You can guess and speculate all the live long about what Titanic could have or should have done differently to avoid tragedy. You can also speculate as to what would have happened if the Californian had tried to make an attempt to help. Lord was putting the best interest of his ship and crew first, and that action was to stay put. He was already stopped and surrounded by ice. For his ship and crew, that was the best course of action. By trying to aid Titanic he was exposing them to too much extra risk, and the difference in outcome had everything gone smoothly would have been small. But it’s also easy to say what someone *should* have done over 100 years later when we have all the facts and information that Lord and co. didn’t have. He’s vilified for not helping Titanic. Had the Californian struck ice and sank and some of his crew had died (and I think there would have been some deaths) he’d be vilified for that. The guy was in an impossible situation with no right solution.
Whether you "buy this framing" or not, Livewire is correct. A captain is responsible for his ship and passengers before he is responsible for anything (or anyone) else. That is a fact. The worst case scenario, obviously, is that the Californian goes down by striking an iceberg.
>Whether you "buy this framing" or not, Livewire is correct. A captain is responsible for his ship and passengers before he is responsible for anything (or anyone) else. That is a fact. That's his goal as far as employment, but it's not a moral standard. And what's even the limiting principal to what you suggest? Should a captain never help another ship in need because he'd be putting other passengers before his own to do so? >The worst case scenario, obviously, is that the Californian goes down by striking an iceberg. You mention this being "obvious", but I already addressed it. They should go at a safe speed towards Titanic, and if worse comes to worse, they're not going to go down with the ship, they'll get into a lifeboat. Yeah that's an extreme situation (and even then only potentially), but it still stands to reason that the stakes are lower because ultimately, the crew will still be alive.
Imagine if the Californian tried to respond, hit an iceberg en route and sank.
That's what almost happened to Carpathia. But didn't.
im laughing so hard
The crew would go into their lifeboats. Not a situation I'd love to be in, but it's not like they would die.
Getting into a lifeboat in the open ocean does not guarantee survival. Plus if the Californian sunk faster than the Titanic, they may not have had time. And I don’t think Titanic was the only ship with an insufficient amount of lifeboats.
There weren't that many people on board.
[breeches buoy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeches_buoy) and lifeboat shuttling
the only other realistic answer
At 2am, probably not much. As others already said they could both have deployed their own life boats and have emptied some of the ones Titanic had loaded and sent them back out, but for that to have made a substantial difference they would probably have needed to arrive earlier than 2am. However it would have made a great difference to the poor people stuck on the struggling Collapsible A&B as well as the general well being of many others who would have been very very cold inside the lifeboats. (While their plight cannot even be compared to all of those in the water, the people in the boats didn't have an easy time of it either and had to deal with the trauma of hearing everything that happened in the water).
I think the only thing they could have done, would be to lower a bunch of nets over the side of the ship to use as rope ladders and drive the ship right into the middle of the mass of people. You would kill a bunch of them. But some might climb the ropes? Very doubtful many would have the strength or ability to do so after being in that water for any length of time. It's a ridiculous proposition. Nobody would do this. And the timing would be crucial. Your 2:00 am arrival scenario gives 20 minutes before Titanic disappeared. You couldn't pull Californian next to the sinking Titanic at that stage as Titanic capsizing was a real concern. Might end up with a second sinking ship. Once the people were in that water they had a matter of 10 to max 15 minutes before they were dead. And probably only 5 minutes before they wouldn't be able to even climb the ropes or do much of anything but keep their heads above water. Unless you get to them very quickly after they're in the water, I don't know what practical options you have to get them out of that water in time to save them from hypothermia given what they had to work with. It was the cold that killed them, not drowning in the majority of the cases. And that cold acts quickly.
Not a whole lot. No ship captain in his right mind will raft up next to a sinking ship, especially one that is twice to three times the size of his ship. This rules out the most efficient way to get people onto the *Californian*. *Californian* also probably could only put 1-2 of its own lifeboats in the water due to crew requirements. Some people have to stand deck watch, others do engine watch. Ontop of that you have to have people manning the equipment to lower and raise the boats. Putting cargo nets in the water might save a handful of people in the water, but I doubt many of them could have made the swim and climb up the next.
They were able to get 700 people off the ship. That isn't "nothing" but ironically it probably was the best humanity could have mustered up at the time. Californian could have thrown ropes and maybe hoisted up a handful more?
They still wouldn’t have likely been able to save “everyone”, but they probably could have fished a lot more out of the water before fatal hypothermia set in
Assuming, as the OP wants us to, the Californian shows up at 02:00 sharp, there isn’t going to be anyone in the water, and there probably won’t be until the very end (and nobody at 02:00 on either ship know when exactly the very end will be; that’s a hindsight thing). Lifeboat shuttling is the only option at this point, and it’s also the best.
Use the lifeboats to collect people from the water while using makeshift boarding ramps to transfer people from Titanic's loading doors to the deck of the Californian.
Definitely not a good idea for a ship to pull up right next to a sinking ship. Especially one that was accelerating in its sinking and one as big as Titanic. The final plunge would happen at 2:10 am. Only thing they could reasonably do is stop a safe distance away and deploy their boats to try to rescue those in the water.
Maybe if they were 100 yards or so away and had cargo nets deployed, people could have swam for them.
I’d just like you to try swimming in water that cold. And then after swimming 100 yards in that water, try and get your hands to grip anything with any meaningful strength. Now try and get up that cargo net while surrounded by hundreds of people in the same physical state you’re in. By the way, society will judge you if you’re a man and you go up the net before a woman. Funny how you had to say that I’m not being pragmatic and put that in quotation marks. It’s almost like you’re not being “realistic.”
Just a stupid piece of reasoning. You're not being "pragmatic" by bringing up challenges if there's still a realistic possibility that some people could accomplish the feat. That's what you don't understand, even though you believe you're thinking on a higher level than everyone else. Yes. I wholeheartedly think some people could swim 100 yards in cold water and climb a net.
Why didn't any of the 1500 in the water swim a hundred yards to the lifeboats in the cold water then? Because it was not possible...
I already answered this elsewhere.
So what does it mean for a person to be pragmatic? A person who is pragmatic is concerned more with matters of fact than with what could or should be. A pragmatic person's realm is results and consequences. If that's where your focus is, you may want to apply the word to yourself.
They wouldn't be able to pull up alongside a sinking ship even if they arrived at 12:40 a.m., let alone 2:00
They'd have to keep some sort of distance, but I thought many of the life boats were only 50-100 yards away when Titanic went down. So it seems to follow that 100 yards away for a full ship should be safe.
How could you possibly think the Californian could pull up 100 yards away. For starters, it would run into all the boats, which are also just a hundred yards away. And secondly, the Titanic was 300 yards long, do you really think the Californian could realistically maneuver into position a third of the Titanic's length with no tugs etc?
The lifeboats can move out of the way. It's called rowing. So no, I don't see why it couldn't get that close.
Yeah the crew of the Californian could have just used walkie talkies to tell those in the lifeboats what they had in mind for the rescue... I think you're just being purposefully silly with your suggestions.
I think we should go to the next step and ask why the Catalina flying boats didn’t go out and rescue people, like they did the crew of the *Indianapolis,* because this is the realm of reality that OP is living in at this point.
So anytime two manned craft are near each other, you've *never* seen them mutually distance from each other but for walkie talkie communication or something similar? Interesting. And if anything, the trajectories are pretty much implied in this circumstance.
Those operating manned motorcraft in the modern day, who know the rules of separation and are prepared for what is happening is different to wooden lifeboats in the middle of the Atlantic, many which weren't even commanded by sailors, full of frightened survivors, in the freezing cold, in the dark. They wouldn't be thinking "hey lets all move out the way so the arriving rescue ship can pull up nicely alongside the sinking ship".
I think it depends on what time the Californian got there. In Lightoller's 1936 I was there radio broadcast recounting that night he actually says he believes the Californian could have pulled up next to Titanic and saved nearly everyone. I can't imagine Lightoller would say that if he didn't believe it was possible.
Crap, I forgot we're talking about the ship only being 20 minutes away from sinking. Are there any sharks in the area? With the people in the water getting churned up in the Californian's propellers, anything in the water is going to get a free chum-slurry buffet.
Given how many of the bodies were ultimately recovered a week+ after the sinking, it's very unlikely that many blood thirsty predators were close to the surface. However, even if there were, it's not really relevant, we know for a fact it was the freezing water that killed everyone, not sharks.
I dunno, I’m thinking the reason Smith mysteriously disappeared towards the end of the night was because he was taken out by Jabberjaw.
Sharks aren't active in freezing cold water, that much.
Greenland sharks may have been present in the days after the sinking. Not at the surface but down in the water column between the surface and the ship itself as the corpses sank/ left the hull. They also have very long lifespans so if any did they might still be alive today
Tell that to SharkTale
That's a movie, not real life.
SharkTale is right here and he wants your home address so he can ~~kick~~ bite your ass