Harold Bride
Appearances
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
Now, the tragedy for him is that having made that quite rational decision, he then found out at daylight, at dawn, that the biggest ship in the world had sunk with the loss of thousands of lives. And his hair literally went white overnight. And I think in a way, he never really deep down forgave himself for that. But we have to look at him as a puny human, like all of us puny humans.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
And I think he was just making decisions based on the data that was coming in. Unfortunately, that data was extremely unusual and very hard to interpret because of the weather conditions that night.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
Titanic had no, if you like, tannoy system. She had no sort of global system where the bridge could make a message. So in fact, you know, stewards would have been told to get people up, but they didn't want to create a panic. So I think they'd have given the impression that it's a precaution. you know, that we've had some serious damage as a precaution, people should get in the lifeboats.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
They had to walk that tightrope between creating a panic on a ship where there were not enough lifeboats for everyone versus actually getting an orderly evacuation and saving as many people as possible. Not everyone is in the mood to cooperate.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
On the starboard side of the Titanic, Murdoch allowed men to go in with women and children in order to encourage the boats to be lowered more quickly. Lightoller really took the order as women and children only, rather than women and children first. And so he didn't allow, for example, 14-, 15-, 16-year-old boys to travel with their mothers.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
The important thing to remember about Titanic's crew, and particularly her captain, Captain Smith, is that they were Royal Naval Reserves. So Smith was a high-ranking captain within the Royal Navy when he was called up. So he would train with the Navy and he was used to that kind of order and that kind of drill. It's easy to talk about what they did wrong at the time.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
Titanic, there's a lot they did right. When the chips are really down and things are really serious, you behave extremely properly and you just want to do things as safely and efficiently as you possibly can. And I think that's what was going through the minds of the officers and senior personnel on Titanic throughout the tragedy.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
One of the things that came out of the Titanic disaster inquiry was that there should be 24-hour radio watch. In reality, what that meant was that there should be two radio operators on all ships. Now, Titanic was a vast ship, and she did have two radio operators in Phillips and Bright.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
But all the other ships in the area that were smaller, that were responding to these distress signals, they only had one operator. So I think it was hit and miss at that time of night. Had the collision occurred in the daytime, everyone would have been awake and it would have been no problem. In fact, the first distress signal was not sent out until after midnight.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
That was when ships without dual radio operators had no one on radio watch that night.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
Phillips and Bride are tapping away for about an hour and a half after the collision, trying desperately to hope that someone else is going to wake up who's nearer to them and get the message. Unfortunately, most of the replies that are coming in are coming in from ships that they know don't have the speed to arrive in time. Professor Jerome Cherkov.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
They get a heartbreaking reply from the Olympic that says, OK, I've got it. I'm 400 miles away. Are you steering to meet us?
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
They just can't believe this. No one can really comprehend that the Great Titanic really is sinking, and those that can are too far away to be able to help.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
because the horizon was slightly raised behind Titanic, she appeared to be within the horizon. And that meant to sailors that she looked as though she was five miles away, because the horizon's about 10 miles away. So if a ship's hull down over the horizon, it's 10 or 12 miles away.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
If a ship is hull up within the horizon and looking about halfway between you and the horizon, it's about five miles away. And the problem is that because Titanic looked five miles away, they judged that she was 400 feet long and about the same size as Californian. In fact, she was the biggest ship in the world, twice as far away.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
crucial thing there was they knew from their charts of the north atlantic that the only ship near them with radio was the titanic and so the race horizon concluded them to be certain that the ship they were looking at was not the titanic and therefore they did not wake up their radio operator and that's what caused the tragedy otherwise everyone would have been saved so the atmospheric conditions caused the accident and they they turned that into a catastrophe
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
And of course, the inquiry actually tried to trace this ship and they wondered, was it the Samson? Was it this? Was it that? They all tried to think of what is a ship that is five miles between these two vessels.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
And of course, what the miraging discovery made me realize is that the mystery ship was a mirage, if you like. It was the Californian appearing nearer to Titanic than she was, and it was Titanic appearing nearer to Californian than she was. So there was, in fact, no mystery ships. Survivor Eva Hart.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
Partly in desperation, they started more slant signaling to this nearby vessel, which we now know was the Californian. But unfortunately, the messages didn't reach the ships because the ships were in fact further away than each ship thought they were from each other. And then out of even more desperation, they started firing rockets into the air as distress rockets.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
Unfortunately, because the ships were actually so far away, the rockets were exploding in the normally refracting air at about 600 feet up. And of course, at that distance, they were tiny because Titanic was actually about 12 miles away. And so that's why they either thought the rockets were coming from a ship further away, which in some senses is true, if that makes sense.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
But they also may have thought they were some sort of company signals. Unfortunately, it gave Captain Lord the excuse to wait until daylight to go and investigate what was really going on.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
We have the benefit of hindsight and he did not. And we have to remember that the reason that captains are captains is because all of their experience is brought to bear and they look at things and they trust their judgment sometimes more than the judgment of their junior officers because they've got more experience.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
And just as Captain Smith's experience was working against him, so Captain Lord's experience was working against him.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
What I actually think happened was, I think Captain Lord was well aware of what was going on. Now don't get me wrong, he had no idea it was the Titanic and that thousands of lives were at stake. But what he probably did believe is that a nearby vessel, probably a fishing vessel, was in some sort of difficulty, not sufficient difficulty to actually do more slam signals to him.
Titanic: Ship of Dreams
6. Save Our Souls
And what he thought was he was looking after the 50 people on his ship. So what he decided was he would investigate the shenanigans and goings on that he could tell from some rockets going off and things like that on this nearby ship that wasn't signaling to him. He decided that he would investigate that in daylight when it was safe to do so.