Captain Arthur Rostron

Well, we all know how when a fire alarm goes off in your office, you don't pay it any attention at all. You just carry on with your telephone call on the assumption that someone will deal with it or it's a test or whatever. And when someone actually comes along and says, listen, guys, I'm afraid that's a real fire alarm, it's absolutely astounding. You know, you don't pay any attention.

And at the beginning of the alarm on the Titanic, I'm sure there were plenty of people who said, oh, I don't want to wake the children and I don't want to get up and it's so cold.

The Carpathia had an efficient, disciplined captain with a proper sense of values, and his only limitation was simply the distance he was away. He got there as quickly as he could, but it was too late. The Californian is the example of how not to run a ship. And actually, ironically, it was the Californian that gave rise to the greatest change in shipping rules and laws.

I mean, the fact that after this accident, you could never turn off a ship's radio again because the Californian just turned off their radio when everyone wanted to go to bed. I mean, it sounds incredible to us, but that is exactly what happened. And they didn't even turn it on when they woke the captain up to tell him the rockets were still going off, the alarm rockets were still being sent off.

Captain Lord has had his defenders over the years, but I think they're on a poor wicket, to be honest. I think his behavior is disgraceful and inexplicable. All he had to do was very slowly and carefully travel the five miles that separated him from the Titanic to find out what was going on. And if nothing had been going on, then he could have stopped there and gone back to bed.

But he chose not to do it. He was a shameful figure for the rest of his life. And without sounding too hard, I think he deserved to be. He condemned many men and women and children to their deaths when he could have saved them all. And it really is as simple as that.