This Mystery Ship Watched Titanic Sink

On the night of April 14th, 1912, not long after RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on the North Atlantic, several of her passengers and crew spotted the lights of a mystery ship on the horizon. Tragically, this ship, now thought to be the Leyland Liner SS Californian never responded to Titanic's distress signals. What happened on the Californian that night and did she watch Titanic sink?

Sources:
On a Sea of Glass by Bill Wormstedt, J. Kent Layton, and Tad Fitch

Video sources:

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[BigOldBoats]

Thank you for watching! Fun(?) fact: Both the Californian and the Carpathia were torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats in World War I.

[jetsons]

The crew that stayed below deck keeping the lights and pumps on are heroes. They stayed at their posts knowing they would not survive the sinking, that is a sign of true heroes.

[yudorapetraitis]

possibly the best explanation of the “shut up” incident i’ve seen on youtube. hats off

[daverichmond]

Hey Bob! I don't blame you for not wanting to cover Titanic before this. It's been done so many times it's basically a cliche now, but the angle you took to tell the story was well chosen. It felt fresh and new and engaging.

[Daniel_Huffman]

There was once a time when the _Californian_ herself was a source of excitement: While not a remarkable ship on the world's stage even when she entered service, she was then the largest ship constructed in the Scottish city of Dundee, to the point where her machinery damaged parts of the city's roads and telephone lines while being transported to the ship.

Ultimately, the _Californian_ was just another vessel lost to the First World War. Damaged by a torpedo strike from the _U-34, _ the crippled ship was sunk during an attempt to tow her ashore by the _U-35, _ the most successful submarine to serve in the conflict.

[mithramusic]

Regarding the "rude" message from the Titanic, it's not actually rude at all, it's like nerd speak. These wireless operators were tech nerds of the time. Their tone to one another was always blunt and aggressive. It's more like text speak to friends versus professional business communications.

It's so unacceptable that Californian did less than the bare minimum. They saw a ship that looked strange with lights visible underwater shooting rockets and clearly attempting to communicate by Morse lamp, after they spent ALL DAY SENDING ICE DANGER WARNINGS. We can argue all we want about what Californian COULD have done, but it's not ok that they didn't even try.

[SteelyBud]

I think it shows tactful restraint on your part to go so long without covering the Titanic; and when you finally did, you covered a unique aspect of the tragedy. Very well done.

[philiphumphrey]

A lot can be explained by a thermal inversion caused by calm conditions, cold air over cold water and warmer air higher up. This would have bent the light from the Californian over the horizon and it is quite possible that Californian was 19 miles away or more and still saw the lights from Titanic (and vice versa). It could also explain why the lookouts in Titanic's crows nest failed to see the iceberg in time. A thermal inversion gives a raised misty horizon that would have hidden the shape of a large iceberg until it was too late.

[zeddeka]

There's a huge extra issue regarding the weather conditions around Titanic at the time of the disaster. It's covered in a recent documentary and in historian Tim Maltin's book. There's fairly firm evidence that two phenomena, known as super refraction and thermal inversion, were present that night. Super refraction was also deemed by the additional 1992 British Inquiry to be likely a factor in the disaster (they also considered the position of the Californian - it's interesting that the 1992 British inquiry is so rarely referenced). In short, super refraction and thermal inversion are caused when warm and cold currents meet. It creates a set of conditions which create a false horizon, thoroughly distort visibility, masking things near the horizon (hence the reason the iceberg wasn't seen earlier), and making things further away (which would often otherwise be invisible over the horizon) seem very much closer and smaller. it's highly likely that the ship in question was the Californian, but the visibility distortions made the rockets, morse lamps and actual shape of the Titanic and Californian look completely different to each other. Whatever you think of the theory, there are some amazing pictures online, showing examples of how refraction and thermal inversion thoroughly distort visibility at sea. Any ship experiencing them, especially at night in that era, would have huge problems. As Captain Lord of the Californian said "it was a very deceiving night". *EDIT* the documentary in question can be found at the YouTube link below. Is called "Titanic: Case Closed"

[greenthing]

Thank you. What I enjoyed most about this account of the sad story of the Titanic and the iceberg is that you tread a very careful line between fact and speculation, and avoid overdramatising what was already quite dramatic enough. My grandfather worked all his working life on the Cunard liners, including being part of the crew of the Queen Mary on her epic solo troopship voyages during WW2, protected by nothing except her speed and the guile of her officers.

[OcarinaLink]

The wireless operators were a niche group and most knew each other. The ‘shut up’ message is more or less the equivalent of a joking “bruh, fuck off, I’m busy 💀💀💀” between pals.

[Thesiouxempirepodcast]

I hadn’t watched in a while and you popped back up in my recommended messages yesterday, I spent the whole day binge watching a bunch of your videos. Love your channel. Then this new one drops right in the morning oh man that’s so great.

[TheOfficial]

One of the things that is neat about "A Night to Remember" is they portray the sinking differently because that was what surviving witnesses had disputed based on what had happened in the darkness during the phase after the lightning was lost. Really shows the difference in theories that still cover the final moments before she reached bottom.

[kellybreen]

This story about the inability to use the Morse lamps adds to my belief that the weather conditions created a superior mirage. Warm air and cold water causes light to bend. It would explain why the iceberg was not seen until too late.
If you check “superior mirage - images” there is a photo of a thousand foot cargo ship and the hull has disappeared. Only the fore cabin and the tip of the funnel at the stern are visible.
If I were smarter I would figure out a way to attach the image.
It is remarkable.

[NonsensicalNauticalRambings]

So many what ifs in Titanic’s story. So much was destined to happen, and so much was changed. If she had her original departure in March, then she still would have collided with the burg, as her 2nd voyage to New York was on April 10th. Had she of collided with SS New York at Southampton, the voyage would have likely been delayed, or even cancelled. Had the mystery ships near her sent out for help, more could have been saved. But, all we do truly know is the events that happened, as they happened. Fate intervened with a standard voyage, and made it the most famous in the world, alongside Columbus’s famous trip in 1492. Titanic was cursed to sink, but blessed to be remembered. Thank you Bradley for another good video.

[amystubby]

I've been on a binge of your channel lately, absolutely love your videos. You're a natural story teller.

[krisgray]

Here's a postulation to the unidentified ship. It was a group of time traveling tourists who paid handsomely to witness the sinking of the Titanic. They could not assist aid at risk of disrupting the space time continuum. Furthermore a temporal static shell surrounded their ship, ensuring that no interference would be rendered by the tourists. I think Casper Van Dien wrote a treatise on this.

[sirrliv]

A more recent line of speculation that's caught my attention is: What could Californian have done if she *had* picked up Titanic's distress calls? And while it's easy to say "She could have saved everyone! She was so close, surely she could have been there in no time at all, perhaps in time to take people off the doomed ship while she was still above water", when considering Californian's situation and status that night, the reality is a bit more complicated and the truth is more likely that she couldn't have done much at all.

Firstly, consider that Californian was not a speedy liner like Titanic or even Carpathia. She as primarily a cargo ship with a top speed of maybe 12 knots on a good day. She had cabin space for some 47 passengers plus uncomfortable, poorly ventilated bunks for 55 officers and crew. In short, even if she had been at full readiness, Californian wouldn't be "racing" anywhere.

And she wasn't at full readiness when she spotted the mystery steamer that cold April night. Remember, Californian had stopped due to being surrounded by field ice. Although her engineers had been told to remain on standby, her boilers were still kept in only light steam, enough to keep the power running and to be able to be stoked back up to full pressure fairly quickly, but still roughly half working pressure to avoid wasting coal or keeping everyone awake all night with blowing safety valves. If she'd gotten the distress calls from Titanic or understood what the rockets truly meant, it would have taken time to stoke the boilers back to full readiness, and more time still to accelerate from a dead stop and turn back towards Titanic's position. In short, even if Captain Lord had somehow had a psychic premonition the exact moment Titanic hit the iceberg and immediately ordered his crew to head to her rescue, there's no possible way Californian could have gotten to Titanic before her final plunge.

But say Californian *had* made a mad dash to the rescue. We return to the first point with the question: Now what? You're surrounded by desperate, injured, freezing survivors. What do you do with them? Again, Californian was not a passenger ship; she had extremely little if any space to put anybody. Those in the most critical condition might have been put in the empty cabins. But for the majority of people, the only place for all those 760-off frozen people would have likely been the cold, drafty cargo holds, atop a load of cotton bound for New Orleans via Boston. Titanic's passengers would have been stuck for maybe another week as the slower ship plodded its way into Boston. And that's not even getting into unknowns, like how much food and stores the Californian had left for her journey and what medical services would have been available.

The best case scenario I could see if Californian could have reaches the site even shortly after Titanic sank is that she would have picked up as many survivors as she could, her crew obviously doing everything in their limited power to help them without adequate food, drink, or medical supplies for so many. And, upon learning from Titanic's officers that Carpathia was on her way, rather than taking off for New York herself, Californian would simply have waited for Carpathia to arrive and transferred all the survivors she could to the larger, better equipped liner, before returning to her own course for Boston, perhaps with a few Titanic passengers still aboard, those either too injured or too traumatized to move.

But the idea of this ship, so close and yet to far, sweeping in to be the big damn hero that saved everybody is sadly just as far fetched as the opposite notion, that she stood by aloof and did nothing as hundreds died just out of sight. For Captain Lord and the Californian, their legacy was to be placed in a tragic Catch-22 situation; they didn't recognize the distress signals for what they were, but even if they had there wasn't much they could have done. Damned if they did, damned because they didn't.

[MvPruett]

"White stars slowly descended back down to sea" is an amazing line, @BigOldBoats!

[codysnider]

I’ve been looking for a documentary like this about the Californian/mystery ship controversy and am so glad to have stumbled across this one! Very informative — I had no idea that the wireless on the Titanic had malfunctioned and that the rules stated that a ship had to wait until it docked before it could be fixed and how if they didn’t fix it the Titanic story would be completely different! Learn something new every day!

Again, THANK YOU for this wonderful documentary! I wish there were more like this that focused on the Californian and other possible “mystery ships” that were in the area detailing their parts in the Titanic lore. I’d love to see a video like that!