The closest ship to the Titanic stood by and did nothing
One of the biggest questions from the night of the sinking comes not from what was happening aboard the RMS Titanic, but what was happening aboard the ship nearest to her: the SS Californian. After warning Titanic about entering an ice field, the Californian’s crew decided to shut off wireless communications and pack in for the night. Titanic would strike the iceberg just ten minutes later. Californian’s crew then proceeded to stand by, watching her fire distress rockets but deciding not to respond. Only after she had sunk, and the Carpathia was fishing out the last of her survivors, did the Californian arrive on the scene.
As already touched upon, conspiracy theorists have suggested that the Californian was part of an elaborate insurance scam. It’s true that nobody to this day has worked out what drove Captain Lord of the Californian to steam into the middle of the North Atlantic without any passengers and with a curious cargo of 3,000 jumpers and wooly blankets. Testimony from some of Titanic‘s surviving passengers seems to implicate her in this; Edith Russell was adamant in later interviews that during the sinking Titanic‘s officers repeatedly assured her the Californian was on its way. Could it be, as some have suggested, that the Californian was meant to pick Titanic‘s passengers up but simply got the wrong coordinates?
Whatever the reason for the cataclysmic Californian’s failure, her captain Stanley Lord failed couldn’t escape public scrutiny. Despite arriving into Boston unnoticed—the country very much distracted by the loss of the Titanic—he was immediately summoned to appear at the American Public Inquiry launched on April 19. And his performance there was far from convincing: not only did he contradict his crew in saying he was 10 miles further away from Titanic than originally thought, but when pressed he refused to divulge his exact coordinates, citing them as “a classified state secret.”
He also gave conflicting accounts about why he had turned his wireless off, changed his mind about ever seeing the Titanic fire emergency rockets (at first he said he hadn’t, then he said he’d seen them from a third ship—probably the Carpathia) and—most incriminatingly of all—he conveniently misplaced the Californian’s scrap log, which documented everything from the night of Titanic’s sinking to the Californian’s arrival in Boston. After more than 100 years, the contemporary verdict remains unchanged: Stanley Lord’s ship probably was closer than the 20 nautical miles he claimed, and therefore was in a position to help.
Lord was held accountable by the American and British inquiries; his failure to act costing an untold number of lives. There was, however, a silver lining: International Maritime Law mandated 24-hour manning of wireless communications and introduced the standardization of rockets. No criminal charges were ever filed against Stanley Lord. But he was branded a coward and publically vilified. His career and personal life in tatters, he lived for another 50 years, at least surviving the Californian, which was sunk in World War One (and, fittingly, never found). He received occasional commissions from shipping companies, but nothing substantial. Still full of regrets, he died on January 24, 1962.