Following the sinking, there were two official inquirys-one in the USA (headed by a US Senator), and another in England (headed by Lord Mersey). The US inquiry was undertaken because the ship was owned by a consortium headed by JP Morgan…and a large number of passengers were US citizens-it was felt that the British inquiry would be a whitewash.
At any rate, what if Captain Smith had survived? He (presumably) would have had to justify what reasoning he used when he:
ignored 7 wireless warnings of ice in the ship’s track
failed to slow the ship when entering an icefield
Would Smith have been revealed to be an incompetent mariner? This is hard to believe-he was the most experience captain in the White Star Line.
Or would he have confirmed what the movie suggested-that Ismay pressured him to run the ship at top speed?
Smith was dead, and attempts to shovel all the blame onto him would have looked like a cover-up (even if it was justified). Lightoller, the senior surviving officer, got quite a hard time at the Senatorial Inquiry. There is a book about William Alden Smith’s inquiry, which I read many years ago, can’t recall what it was called now.
[hijack] Really weird, I read this post and then looked at the user name and somehow read it as “Scapegoatdoa”. The way brains work just baffles me sometimes. [/hijack] + sorry for hijack!
Captain Schettino should have taken a lesson from Captain Smith and gone down with his ship. I think the captain would have been as close to crucified as they could legally make it.
If he had lived I would guess that he would have had his master’s licience revoked. Not sure about the UK department of commerce It could either be perminate meaning that he could not retake the third mates test and if he wanted to sail again it waould be as a unlicienced member of a crew. Or just revoked,which would mean he could resit for a third mate’s licience. And then up grade after meeting the requirements.
As for making him a scapegoat. He was the master. He sailed his ship in a unsafe manner.
The Ships captain is ultimatly responsible. I suspect a lot would have been made of the fact that he was going fast and also not on duty at the time of the accident when they were going through an ice field. He would also be attacked for the lack of binoculars.
I’m not really one for conspiracy theories - but what evidence would you expect there to be?
You don’t really expect a log entry saying (essentially)
“Captian Smith wants to slow down, but owner orders more speed” do you?
or some form of written injunction to go faster?
Unless one of the crew were able to testify to an argument, it really doesn’t surprise me that there is no evidence.
What would be far more telling would be his behaviour in the past, given similar sailing circumstances (which I would think would be easily tracable) - was his behaviour on the fateful night consistent or inconsistent with what he had done previously.
I’d wonder how Smith would have explained his ignoring the radioed ice reports (7 received). I also don’t understand why he would not have been on the bridge that night-he knew the dangers of ice.
For a man who had 40 years at sea, he certainly behaved strangely.
I just recently watch a National Geographic special about who/what was responsible for the sinking. They looked at many factors and laid the final blame on the rivets failing.
There were several things they cleared up about Smith:
There were binoculars on the ship, but due to a mix up they were in a locked cabinet. Plus most lookouts used the binoculars for identifying objects, not spotting them.
Some captains (including Smith) were in the mindset that the best thing to do if you were in an icefield was to quickly get out of it.
The final ice warning from SS Californian was ignored because it interupted broadcasts to the Cape Race relay and didn’t have the prefix saying it was a warning.
Yes, Smith would have suffered majorly and been hated the rest of his life, but I don’t think you came put the blame on him. There were many things that added on eachother to cause the disaster. Heck, now they’re evening blaming the moon!
If he lived he would have taken some of the scorn that was directed at “J Brute Ismay”. I don’t want to be overly cynical about a man’s death but going down with the ship was probably the best career move for him. The immediate effect was that he was a martyr, setting an example of dignity in tragedy.
I guess his testimony would have been along the lines of Lightoller tried to do to protect the company. Emphasize the freak things: no moon, calm waters, more ice than normal in April. The “Titanic” didn’t have enough lifeboats but no ship did, and my understanding is they actually provided space for a higher percentage of passengers then most ships of the era. Try to make Stanley Lord, captain of the “Californian” the real idiot who should be forced to listen to Yoko One records 24/7 (or whatever punishment for truly evil people they used in 1912). Say you were going fast because that is how you find out if the engines are working properly and as others have mentioned, it was S.O.P. at the time-get through an ice field quickly.
Of course he will still look bad compared to Captain Arthur Royston of the “Carpathia” who when he heard of the Titanic distress call, immediately sailed towards her, posted extra lookouts (that were needed), alerted the passengers who were doctors and had Scotty give the engines all the warp power she could, even though the dilithium crystals were glowing red hot. If he wasn’t planning on retiring after the “Titanic’s” maiden voyage, he would have been retired.
Did he really receive all seven warnings? As I recall, the wireless was installed and operated by an independent company for the benefit of the passengers, not the crew. The operators, who were not White Star employees, received some ice warnings but were under no obligation to pass these on to the crew; in fact they didn’t pass many of them on.