This SS Titanic is one of my history obsessions. As such, it showcases so much of humanity and was a pivotal moment in history, It and the Spanish Flu are bookends to the greater tragedy of WWI. The tragic story of the Titanic still fascinates, despite the ship’s loss over a century ago.

Indeed, The RMS Titanic lives on as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when ego and greed overpower responsibility and safety concerns. But intriguingly, the mystery of the ‘mystery ship’ sighted by Titanic crew and passengers also endures. The loss of the Titanic affected many lives but just not those aboard. The involvement of other ships in its rescue affected the crew of those ships too.  Read on for details of these mystery ships surrounding the Titanic.

Yes, the Titanic story is one that keeps on giving. There is so much to fascinate, so many lessons about human nature to appreciate and ongoing mysteries to puzzle. What really happened that night onboard the Titanic and the nearby ships?

What caused the Titanic tragedy?

It is telling of human nature that we are drawn to details of tragedies. Perhaps it is because there is so much to take away and reflect on. The factors that caused the real-life Titanic tragedy are themselves endlessly fascinating. In this instance, there were a myriad of fateful errors both human and natural.

Titanic was steaming ahead in a fateful race with Time itself. Captain Edward Smith confidently ordered her throttled into full steam so she could arrive in New York ahead of schedule. He, along with Bruce Ismay, director of White Star Line, wanted to showcase her capabilities as the biggest ship ever to sail the seas. It was Smith’s last commission at sea, so this would be a fitting end to his career. A timely six day crossing of the Atlantic was important for both men. But thousands of others would have preferred to just arrive.

The Titanic had everything but lifeboats

Neither man seemed concerned by reported ice warnings in the ocean ahead. Nor were they overly mindful of their responsibility to the cargo of 2240 passengers considering the paucity of lifeboats. The Titanic had everything anyone could want on board a ship, except enough lifeboats and a pair of binoculars. Those were missing to from the look-out.

There were only enough lifeboats for 1178 people, leaving 1023 others stranded. That is only if the lifeboats were fully loaded, which was definitely not the case. Many that could take 65 people, left with less than twenty aboard. Some of these fortunate passengers were extremely wealthy and influential women along with children and even first-class men. Most second and third-class passengers went down with the ship.

So many fateful errors

If it were not for the speed, the inattention to ice, the lowered bulkheads, the limited lifeboats, the missing binoculars on the watch deck, the poor-quality steel, the pop rivets, the last-minute attempt to swerve around the iceberg…. So many ‘ifs, so many factors that coalesced to cause tragedy. The mysteries surrounding the Titanic are many.

Then, apart from the ship’s construction, the speed and human factors, there was the bad luck that the only nearby ship, the Californian, turned off its telegram service and retired all staff to bed, even after sighting a flare rocket. ‘We thought it was a just a party,’ the captain claimed in defense. Words that went down in history like those of Captain Smith. ‘I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.’

The mystery ship nearby

Captain Lord of The Californian would become the scapegoat during the British enquiry into the disaster. However, the Californian lay actually 20 miles to the north of the Titanic and may not have been the mystery ship on the horizon seen from the Titanic. Perhaps it was the crew of the mystery ship now identified as the SS Mount Temple who ignored their duty. This ship was also nearby but on the other side of the deadly icefield.

A night of confusion

The SS Mount Temple responded to the Titanic‘s distress signals on 14 April 1912 but its captain, Capt. Moore, stopped short of helping, He later claimed the ice was too thick to safely pass through. Controversy continues as to the exact position of the SS Mount Temple on tht fateful night. Moore’s recollections of his ship’s true speed and distance from Titanic confound conclusions to this day. Some historians claim that Mount Temple was the ‘mystery ship’ seen by officers and passengers aboard the Titanic five to ten miles away, rather than the SS Californian blamed in the British Inquiry.^[1][2]

However, many other experts firmly believe that the ‘Californian‘ was the ship seen from the ‘Titanic‘, and vice versa. This history article is one of many to summarize the findings.

Wrong coordinates for Titanic wreck

One of the most confounding mysteries surrounding the Titanic is why nearby ships did not come to the rescue. Mystery ship, SS Mount Temple stopped to the west of The Titanic disaster site.  The British enquiry overlooked this because the reported disaster site had the wrong coordinates. Only in 1984 when the wreck of the Titanic was discovered were the true coordinates known. Despite being critically damaged by the iceberg, the Titanic drifted, not completely stopping, as first believed. This is one of the mysteries surrounding the Titanic

Quoting Wikipedia, as it explains the matter well,  ‘At a distance of 49.5 nautical miles (91.7 km; 57.0 mi) from the famous distress coordinates of Titanic, and roughly 60 miles (97 km) from the actual location of the disaster, SS Mount Temple was simply too far away to be seen from those aboard Titanic, and for those aboard Mount Temple to see Titanic or her distress rockets. Captain Moore and his crew made a desperate attempt to reach the stricken Titanic but only reached the western side of the ice field that stood between her and the wreck site some 2 hours and 40 minutes after Titanic sank. There was no way that she could have reached Titanic in time to carry out a rescue; she did not ‘abandon’ Titanic.’

A possible rescue?

This seems the consensus of most historians on the SS Mount Temple’s possibility of rendering assistance.

The wireless operator onboard Titanic reported two sets of coordinates, one on either side of the icefield. But not all nearby ships received both as it was very late at night, and some had shut off the Marconi wireless. Smaller ships may not have even had the new innovation of a wireless. Other historians claim it was neither of these nearby ships, the Californian or the Mount Temple, but a northbound Norwegian steamer, named Samson. But this ship was very small and unlikely to be the mystery ship seen that night.

The hope of a rescue was one factor in the reluctance of passengers especially women to board lifeboats and leave the warm comfort of the Titanic. The mystery ship visible on the horizon seemed as if it could come soon to rescue them. The women waited with their men folk and let others board. A lack of urgency led to the boats leaving partially loaded. some with a capacity of 60 left with only a dozen or so, mostly men.

Titanic and its Women Passengers.

Women were also afraid of the drop down to the cold dark sea below. It was 70ft from Boat deck A to the chilly Atlantic. One of the few advantages of being a woman in the Victorian age was chivalry. For those who have no experience of it, chivalry is the social and moral code by which men supposedly, selflessly, respect women. It is definitely a dying art!

In 1912, chivalry dictated that women and children had priority over men, with regards to lifeboats. The problem, of course, was that there were not enough lifeboats, even for the women and children and women were not eager to be in one.

Class onboard Titanic mattered

Sadly, as explained above, most lifeboats left the ship with few onboard and most of these were first-class women and men, and crew. Because, though chivalry was active, class was the dominating decider of who survived.

Third-class women and children had a slim chance of making it on deck, to even try for a lifeboat. There were no lifeboats for third class at all. The rules of the ship restricted third class passengers access to higher decks. This was to avoid mass panic, so the captain maintained, but really it was all about class. James Cameron’s blockbuster, Titanic (1998) portrays this well.

Class and women survivors

The first-class women included the likes of eighteen-year-old Lady Madeleine Astor, the young and pregnant wife of John Jacob Astor. He was the richest man onboard the ship and unlike some first-class men, behaved admirably.  Wealthy Sir and Lady Duff Gordon bribed their way onto a boat and like Bruce Ismay suffered lifelong disgrace.

Rumors abounded that these well-off individuals refused to row back to save others, when the ship finally descended to the icy depths of the Atlantic. The ‘unsinkable Molly Brown’ a nouveau riche society woman tried to influence her fellow passengers in lifeboat 6 to return to help those in the sea.

Most third-class women perished along with their husbands and children, and this was the fate of many second-class women as well. They did not join the ranks of first-class widows who arrived in New York in a state of shock and disbelief. At least they had financial security to continue alone.

Unhappy Survivors

But even these apparently fortunate women who survived, did not live on to have happy lives. The shadow of the Titanic cast a long shadow. The echoes of that night reverberated forever. Many reported that over seventy years later, that they still suffered nightmares and heard the screams from those in the water.  The Shadow of the Titanic follows the ongoing lives of the survivors of that terrible night. Interestingly, most of them lived sad lives and many died young and even quite soon after the event.

The audio memory of the screams of those dying in the icy water, then the silence that followed haunted many survivors.  This was the predominant Some women went insane, committed suicide or just suffered, not only as widows but as remarried women. Many had survivor-guilt and questioned the meaning of life.

Child survivors had similar memories and distress throughout their life. Maybe it was better to drown with your husband and children, than live on as a survivor? Being a third-class widow would have been a difficult role in life in 1912. So many factors compounded to cause the tragedy. There are a lot of ‘if only ifs’ that make this such a human tragedy involving not just nature at work but human nature with all its frailty.

Titanic in Literature

The ill-fated Titanic is the subject of many books such as the definitive A Night to Remember by Walter Lord (1956) and Titanic, An Illustrated History by Don Lynch (1992). The ship features in Stephen Weir’s book, History’s Worst Decisions and is the inspiration for a children’s book called Polar, the Titanic Bear, about the actual teddy bear of a little boy who survived the sinking. The little boy who owned the teddy bear died in a family car crash within a year and is just one example of the long shadow that the Titanic cast over people’s lives. Some folks never recovered from family losses, while others bore survivor’s guilt that prevented their happiness. Because of my obsession with this tragedy, I included the Titanic tragedy in my own historical fiction novel, Whispers through Time, set around 1912.

Follow my history blogs on https://joniscottauthor.com

Joni Scott is an Australian author with five published novels, three historical and two contemporary. https://joniscottauthor.com.