Titanic: Ship of Dreams - 11. The Titanic Inquiry

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Bruce Ismay takes the stand in New York. Titanic’s crew members close ranks, dodging difficult questions from the senators. The ‘money boat’ survivors are given a grilling. And as a second investigation gathers pace in London, newspaper editors on both sides of the Atlantic continue the search for heroes and villains... A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Stephanie Barczewski, Jerome Chertkoff, Julian Fellowes, Veronica Hinke, Clifford Ismay, Tim Maltin, Stephen McGann, Claes-Göran Wetterholm. Written by Duncan Barrett | Produced by Miriam Baines and Duncan Barrett | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by Miri Latham | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay, Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann | Nautical consultant: Aaron Todd. Get every episode of Titanic: Ship of Dreams two weeks early and ad-free by joining Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's 10.30 a.m. on April the 19th, 1912. Just four days after RMS Titanic sank to the bottom of the ocean. We're in a conference room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, all floral wallpaper and Corinthian columns. Not a million miles from the elegant interiors now resting on the seabed. At one end of a long wooden table sits a 49-year-old man, fiddling awkwardly with his cufflinks. With his smart suit and tidy mustache, he looks every inch the successful businessman. And a week ago, White Star chairman Bruce Ismay must have felt like the king of the world, steaming across the Atlantic on his brand new state-of-the-art ocean liner. Now, his careworn eyes tell a different story.

At the far end of the table sits a man four years Ismay's senior, Senator William Alden Smith, a white-haired Republican from Michigan. He and the men crowded around him are carrying out the will of the U.S. Senate. Smith reads their official instructions. To investigate the causes leading to the wreck of the White Star Line at Titanic, with its attendant loss of life so shocking to the civilized world. The senator has been granted subpoena powers. He can call anyone he wants to testify,

and the man he wants to hear from first is Bruce Ismay. He begins by swearing in the witness. Ismay promises to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But it's clear from his uncomfortable demeanor that he really doesn't want to be here. After a few preliminary questions, he launches into a rehearsed statement. I would like to express my sincere grief at this deplorable catastrophe. I understand that you gentlemen have been appointed to inquire into the circumstances. So far as we are concerned, we welcome it. We court the fullest inquiry.

We have nothing to conceal, nothing to hide. But when it comes to the sinking of the Titanic, Ismay's testimony is not exactly fulsome. The accident took place on Sunday night, he says. I was in bed myself, asleep. The ship sank, I'm told, at 2.20. That, sir, I think is all I can tell you If Bruce Ismay thinks Senator Smith will be satisfied with that He has another thing coming From the Noiser Podcast Network This is Titanic Ship of Dreams Part 11.

We want to find a smoking gun. Professor Stephanie Barchewski. We want to find a smoking gun. Professor Stephanie Barchewski. We want to find the one thing that happened that makes it make sense, that makes someone culpable for the tragedy, right? I think the Titanic sank. It's quite simple. I mean, I think it hit an iceberg in this very kind of fluky way that, you know, wouldn't happen 999 times out of a thousand. It would not happen in this way. But nothing like this has really ever happened, right? Nothing on this scale has ever happened. Obviously, ships have sunk, but not a ship of this scope and scale, and not a ship of this fame, and a ship of this kind of level of publicity, and then it's its first voyage, right?

It doesn't happen 10 years after the Titanic sets sail. it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal. And just all of the kind of incredulousness of that, it demands explanations, it demands blame, it demands a sense of order on it. Klaus-Johan Wetterholm. We want to have this black and white answer, don't we? We want to find scapegoats. I can't say that Ismay was to blame. He was the perfect scapegoat in 1912 because he was the surviving director.

Julian Fellowes Ismay, you know, the coward of the Titanic who got aboard a lifeboat with a bunch of ladies and went to safety. The temptation at the time was to blame everything on Ismay. But actually, I don't think that's true. By the time Bruce Ismay gives his testimony to Senator Smith on Friday morning, another unofficial inquiry has already begun in the American press. Since news of Titanic's sinking broke four days earlier, journalists have started to ask difficult questions.

And many of them come back to the White Star chairman, a man who survived the disaster in which more than 150 women and children died. Clifford Ismay. I think part of the problem with that inquiry was Bruce was tried and judged before he even got to New York because of the American newspapers. On Friday morning, the New York Times publishes its own list of questions for Bruce Ismay.

How far he was responsible for Captain Smith's action and proceeding on his dangerous course after receiving warning of the icebergs. Whether Mr. Ismay was desirous that the Titanic should make a record on her maiden trip, regardless of danger. How many conferences took place on board ship between Mr. Ismay and the Captain on the subject of the ship's course and speed and what was said at these conferences. Two hundred miles away in Washington, Senator Isidore Rainer from Maryland thinks he already knows the answers. On the Senate floor, he launches an excoriating attack on Ismay, who, he says, acted in a

most cowardly manner by boarding a lifeboat. But Rayner goes further. Ismay, he claims, was the officer primarily responsible for the disaster. A man who risked the life of the entire ship to make a speedy passage across the sea. He wants him to face criminal charges. That's a tall order, not least since Ismay is a British citizen and Titanic is, technically at least, a British ship. But Senator Rayner has captured the mood of his fellow countrymen.

The tensions between Britain as the old power and America as this rising new power are very much felt There is a sort of tension of the Americans saying, did you British actually cause this? And did you kill a lot of Americans in the process? When it comes to Senator Smith's inquiry, Ismay doesn't do himself any favors Many of his answers are evasive, and he seems determined to split hairs. When Smith asks if he knew that Titanic was sailing through a region containing icebergs, he replies pedantically, I did not. I knew ice had been reported.

On navigational matters, he claims, I was simply a passenger on board the ship. On Titanic's engines, those are technical questions which can be answered by others. Smith asks how long each lifeboat took to be lowered. I could not answer that, replies Ismay. The senator pushes, can you approximate it? He knows that during his time on the boat deck, Ismay helped launch a number of lifeboats. But Ismay insists, it is not possible for me to judge the time. I think there's a sense of not wanting to say anything that makes these things that already look bad seem worse than they are.

He's an awkward character in general. He's not someone who's particularly kind of beloved by the sort of business establishment or by the press. He's just not a winning character. It may be that Bruce Ismay is just trying to be as precise as possible. This is a man who, to modern eyes, exhibits a number of traits that could be associated with autism. Seemingly socially awkward, with an unusually meticulous attitude to timekeeping. But to Smith and his fellow senators, Ismay's answers seem not only defensive, but borderline contemptuous.

Tim Moulton. Senator Smith had instituted a full inquiry in America, and the British rather resented this because we were a proud, maritime, seafaring nation. And of course, not to be outdone, we had a massive British inquiry later on the same year. I think Ismay was not perhaps as respectful of the American court as he would have been the British court. And of course, he did come across as aloof. But actually, if you listen to his answers, a lot of them are quite sensible. There's also the fact that Bruce Ismay's mental health

has been precarious of late. Just four days earlier on Carpathia, he was under sedation in the doctor's cabin. I think during the inquiries, Bruce was suffering from PTSD, which is something that wasn't really recognized at that time. I think Bruce had this PTSD going on, but he also had this shyness. Suddenly he was thrust into the limelight he had been in the public eye he was still a very shy man even at almost 50 years old and it was thrust into this arena where he was up in front of everyone the press were there taking

photographs making sketches noting everything down bruce knew that every word that he said would be written down as evidence, and I think he had a problem dealing with that. That did affect some of the answers that he gave through the inquiry. I think it was in a very difficult situation. What Ismay seems to want more than anything is to be far away from here. Already newspapers are reporting on his failed attempt to delay the departure of the White Star liner Cedric, so that it might transport him and his officers back to England, a plan ultimately scuppered by Senator Smith. Now, Smith tells reporters he has no intention of letting Ismay leave the country. He will remain here. I have some more questions for him.

When he asks Ismay to describe the circumstances under which he left Titanic, the White Star chairman becomes more defensive than ever. In what way, he asks, coolly, before interrupting when Smith attempts to repeat the question. The boat was there, says Ismay. There were a certain number of men in the boat, and the officer called out asking if there were any more women, and there was no response, and there were no passengers left on the deck. And as the boat was in the act of being lowered away, I got into it. His mistake was that he survived, that he was alive. When you summon the saved people afterwards and you realize that way over 450 seats were unused, it's extremely unfair what he had to face later on.

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starting on June 14th and running until July 13th. Sign up now at DAZN.com slash FIFA. That's D-A-Z-N.com slash FIFA. Alongside Smith's Senate inquiry, American journalists remain hard at work making sense of the story of the century. Both inquiries vindicated Bruce of any blame, work, making sense of the story of the century. Both inquiries vindicated Bruce of any blame, but unfortunately the newspapers didn't,

and public opinion didn't, because he was so far ingrained into the minds by the reports in the newspapers. Many of those covering the new Titanic beat are employed by a former friend of Ismay's, now more of a frenemy, William Randolph Hearst. Hearst and Ismay had been very good friends when Bruce was living in New York years earlier, but at one point, Hearst had asked Bruce to become a partner in his newspaper business. Well, Bruce being very shy, he didn't like newspapers very much, and he politely declined the invitation. Unfortunately, Hearst had taken this very, very personally, and they never spoke again.

Hearst is a pioneer of what's become known as yellow journalism. Sensationalistic, moralistic, are not always entirely factual. There are no shades of grey here, no nuance. It's a pantomime of one-dimensional heroes and villains. And with his eminently twirlable black moustache, Bruce Ismay fits the latter role perfectly. This was Hearst's revenge on Bruce. Hearst was condemning Bruce as the coward of the Titanic. Hearst had renamed Bruce J. Brute Ismay. Hearst had suggested that the name of the white star line should be changed to yellow star line. The way he attacked Bruce was way out of order. They just wanted to slander Bruce as much as they could. One of the fascinating things about the Titanic story is how we evaluate the standards of conduct.

I think it's very gendered. Bruce is May. He just takes an empty seat in a lifeboat. And then that poor man afterwards, right, he is just subjected to the most, like, vicious criticism. And these rumors start that he dressed up like a woman to do this, right? And they get to these stories about other people dressing up like women to do it. And apparently some male passengers actually do, which is making them look even more unmanly, right?

That they literally take on female feminine clothes to do this. Again, I think it's something that's interesting, just kind of subverting gender norms. Those men that survived, many of them were stigmatized afterwards and preferred never to speak again about what they had experienced. Never. It was so traumatizing. I think today we don't necessarily assume now that all men should stand aside so that women can survive, right? We believe in women's equality, and so we don't hold men to that kind of strict accountability. But Ismay, he was so strongly criticized for having violated this kind of sense of gender norms of the time. On May the 9th, an affidavit from Titanic's barber, Augustus Weichmann, sheds new light on the story.

According to Weichmann, Ismay was actually ordered into the lifeboat by one of the ship's officers. Ismay's own testimony, however, refutes this. Who, if anyone, told you to enter that lifeboat? Smith asks him, after the inquiry reconvenes in Washington, D.C. No one, sir, Ismay replies. It's hard to know what to make of the barber's testimony. He may have been telling the truth. Some believe by this point Ismay is in such a spiral of self-loathing

that he doesn't want to be let off the hook for the biggest mistake of his life. Equally, the barber may just have been trying to do his boss a favor. After all, he's got a good gig with White Star. He will later be offered a job on Titanic's sister ship, Olympic. Weichmann certainly wouldn't be the only White Star employee whose testimony seems geared towards damage limitation. These are people who still

hope to have a career. It's not just that they work for White Star, right? They know they're not going to work for anybody. They're not going to work for Cunard. If they stand up and say, my employer was terrible, the captain of the ship made all these awful decisions, you know, people behaved horribly, the crew behaved horribly,

they're not going to get another job. And they are definitely looking to protect their employment. The White Star line was very worried about being found negligent in the disaster. So what they did was they wanted to really put a very polished sort of gloss on everything. For Senator Smith and his colleagues, Titanic's crew can be infuriatingly vague,

playing dumb in the face of awkward questions. At times, lookout Frederick Fleet almost seems to be trolling the inquiry. How far away was the iceberg when you saw it? Smith asks him. I have no idea, Fleet replies. How fast was Titanic going? I have no idea. How long before the collision did you ring the bell?

I have no idea. The senator before the collision did you ring the bell? I have no idea. The senator is getting exasperated. Was it more like five minutes or an hour? He asks the lookout. But it's no good, Fleet tells him. I could not say, sir. When he's asked to estimate the size of the iceberg, he responds, I have no idea of distances

or spaces. It was before the days of witness coaching and things like that. So they were not specifically coached. However, they would have been well aware that they were company men or company women and that they were expected to toe the line. We know now the things that they didn't say. I don't think there's anything that they didn't say that's somehow still hidden. I don't know that they were doing a cover-up of some smoking gun. I think they were being protective of their own futures, of their employers, and I think they didn't want to add to what they felt

could easily become a public misunderstanding of what had actually occurred. That said, they were also God-fearing and would absolutely not have wanted to perjure themselves. I think they were as truthful as possible, with the exception perhaps of Ismay and Lightoller, who were just desperately trying to make sure that no one found the White Star Line negligent. So far, Titanic's second officer, Charles Lightoller, has been spared the kind of suspicion directed at Bruce Ismay. Not least because he remained on board until after the

last lifeboat had been launched. But if anything, Lightoller's testimony at the American inquiry is even less helpful than his boss's. He insists that Titanic didn't split in half, despite other witnesses saying it did. He denies there was any panic on deck, or that passengers tried to force their way into the lifeboats. They could not have stood quieter if they had been in church, he tells the senator. Regarding his time on Collapsible B, Lightoller is understandably reticent. He has little to say about those dark hours before dawn, when he and the other men on the lifeboat, including my great-uncle Jimmy, were pushing away the so-called blokes in the water with their oars, desperately trying to keep the Upside Down collapsible from capsizing.

Was there any effort made by others to board her? Smith asks. Lightoller dodges the question. We took all on board that we could. I understand, says Smith, but I wanted to know whether there was any effort made by others to get aboard. Not that I saw, replies Lightoller tersely. Given what we now know, thanks to other survivors' accounts, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Titanic's second officer has just perjured himself Lighthuddle was extremely clever He was very good at speaking

Which you perhaps might not expect for someone with the sort of background that he has come from But equally there is this feeling that he is trying to keep a lid on what happened So I think he was trying to tell the truth But he was perhaps not always telling the whole truth in order to protect as far as possible his paymasters, the White Star Line. Lightoller's reluctance to be drawn on the story of Collapsible B is understandable. Other witnesses also clam up when Senator Smith asks them about the people dying in the water. Beginning only days after Titanic went down, this inquiry is relying on witnesses who are still processing their trauma.

Third Officer Herbert Pittman is questioned about the noise the dying passengers made. How many of these cries were there? Smith asks him. Was it a chorus, or was it... Pittman interrupts him. I would rather you did not speak about that. But the senator perseveres. I would like to know how you were impressed by it. I cannot very well describe it, Pittman tells him.

Then he repeats, I would rather you would not speak of it. But Smith is insistent, demanding to know how many cries Pittman heard, and for how long they continued. There was a continual moan for about an hour, Pittman tells him. They died away gradually. He then adds bleakly, I would rather that you would have left that out altogether. Smith's questioning may seem callous, but he's grappling with quite a conundrum.

How was it that with 500 empty spaces in Titanic's lifeboats, only a handful of people were rescued from the water? Pickman claims that he actually suggested going back to rescue survivors, but others in his boat talked him out of it. He begs Smith to change the subject, but the senator refuses. I must know what efforts you made to save the lives of passengers and crew under your charge, he tells Pittman. If that is all the effort you made, say so, and I will stop that branch of my examination. That is all, sir, Pittman replies. That is all the effort I made.

These men are subjected to this incredible microscope of analyzing their behavior. I think, again, that's a way to try to make sense of the strategy, to try to turn the irrational into the rational, to try to turn the irrational into the rational, to try to turn the random into order. Reading the transcripts of the inquiry a hundred years later, it's hard to ignore the undercurrent of shame that seems to run through Senator Smith's questions. Some of Titanic's officers push back more than others. Fifth Officer Lowe,

the only crewman who did try to rescue survivors in the water, is determined to make Smith understand why he couldn't save more of them. He explains how he calculated the right moment for his lifeboat to return safely. I had to wait until the yells and shrieks had subsided, he says, for the people to thin out. Then I deemed it safe for me to go amongst the wreckage. Senator Smith is incredulous. He can't fathom making such a cold-blooded decision. Three times he asks Lowe to confirm what he's saying.

You lay off a bit until the drowning people had quieted down? And each time Lowe gives the same answer. Yes. One thousand people fighting for their lives in one lifeboat.

We would have been drowned immediately. But you could have tried, Senator Smith said. No, sir, we couldn't. It was suicide. I did my best, he said. My brother, Stephen.

It's one of those primal questions. You don't quite know how you would react. And then I think about Jimmy on that lifeboat. Could I have held out? I don't think I would have. Or maybe I would have tried to get onto a lifeboat in a blind panic. And I say that with all humility. When I read over the reports of the disaster and the days afterwards, I can feel the neediness to feel that it was done properly. It's very interesting. And it gives you a little insight, a little light into their minds, you know,

to try and get into the Edwardian mindset, because what's very important to the British to show the right side. They loved the stories that told them about wild moments of self-sacrifice or courage. This is what we do. If we hand you a rifle and you find yourself in Rourke's drift, this is what you do, and then you're

the best boy in the empire. If you don't, then you know you're condemned. There was a real thing in the Brits to see that it was all done well. Very much all what is told today is filled with wishful thinking. The greatest myth is actually that the majority of the saved were women and children, while in fact, out of those surviving, there were 333 women and 326 men. If you add the children, the girls as women, and the boys as men, the difference shrinks down to six people, six more saved women than men. And it was important in 1912 to tell this story, to say that yes,

we kept up the traditions of the sea. Most saved were women and children. In the last two lifeboats on the Stolbadside, the majority were men. 40 men perhaps in number 13 and 20 women and children. These men could never say, yes, I stepped into a lifeboat. So I don't know how many stories I have where they say, I jumped into the water and swam to a boat. We have about 100 men saying this. They couldn't. They were socially stigmatized in 1912 if they'd said that, yes, I stepped into a boat.

And so instead of, again, trying to grapple with the enormity and the randomness of the tragedy, it becomes it's all Bruce Ismay's fault because he got in a lifeboat and he violated these standards. And if everybody had just upheld these standards, then, yeah, this bad thing would have happened, but there would have been an order to it. There would have been an explanation to it. It would have been something that we can kind of grapple with mentally

it's not just the american senate inquiry in britain too the titanic story raises troubling questions about human behavior perhaps even about human nature just one week after senator smith concludes his inquiry in Washington, the British Board of Trade launches one of their own, on the other side of the pond. This rec commissioner's inquiry is presided over by Lord Mersey, a 71-year-old judge and former Liberal Unionist MP, born and educated in Liverpool. Mersey's inquiry is held not in the conference room of a swaggy hotel, but at an imposing army drill hall in London, 59 Buckingham Gate. This looming, high-vaulted building previously played host to the All England Badminton Championships. Now it's been converted into a grand theatre of justice. Lord Mersey occupies a throne-like chair at the centre of a raised platform. Teams of lawyers beaver away in front of him, seated at desks in the first two rows. Witnesses take the stand in a dock off to one side,

in front of a 20-foot scale model of Titanic. The rest of the hall is filled with row upon row of wooden chairs, occupied by members of the public. Many of the witnesses at the British inquiry have already testified in New York and Washington. Bruce Ismay, Charles Lightoller, Harold Lowe. But this one digs deeper. For a start, it runs twice as long, 36 days compared to Smith's 18. Lord Mersey hears from almost 100 witnesses,

some of whom were never called by the Americans. Most controversial among them, Sir Cosmo and Lucy Duff Gordon of the infamous Money Boat. Like Ismay, the Duff Gordons are fighting a war on two fronts, the formal questioning of the inquiry and the even more brutal court of public opinion. The behavior of the upper-class passengers on Titanic is subjected to a much closer level of scrutiny, and they are expected much more to obey these standards of what is seen as appropriate to their class, what is appropriate to their gender,

what I think in the British case in many ways is appropriate to their nationality. And so the Duff-Gordons, you know, are seen as sort of violating it. So they do come in for criticism. As early as April the 22nd, the Evening Standard carried a story about Titanic's so-called money boat, featuring an anonymous millionaire with a Cootes bank account, who gave away cheques for five pounds apiece to the crew of his lifeboat. It doesn't take long for Sir Cosmo to be fingered as the man with the fivers.

On May 17th, he takes the stand in London. The Attorney General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, asks if it ever occurred to him to go back and try to save the people in the water. It's difficult to say what occurred to me, replies Sir Cosmo. There were many things to think about. No thought entered your mind at that time that you ought to go back and try to save some of these people, pushes Isaacs? No, admits Sir Cosmo, I suppose not. His testimony directly contradicts two other witnesses from Lifeboat One, Charles Hendrickson and George Simons.

According to Simons, the men wanted to go back, but Lady Duffcordon told them not to. Did you hear your wife say that? Isaacs asks Sir Cosmo. No, he replies. Is it not true what the men are saying? It comes to that, of course. The cross-examination then turns to the notorious fivers. I must ask you about the money, says Isaacs. Had you made any promise of a present to the men in the boat?

Yes, admits Sir Cosmo, I did. He goes on to give his own account, that one of the crewmen was complaining that their pay had stopped when Titanic went under, that they'd the crewmen was complaining that their pay had stopped when Titanic went under, that they'd lost all their kit on the ship and had no money to replace it, and that he offered them a present of five pounds each to make up for it. That is the whole of that five-pound note story, he tells the court. Whether they believe him or not is another question. And even if Sir Cosmo's fibers

were a well-intentioned gift and not a bribe, something about the story doesn't sit well. This literal payment for loss, it just seems vulgar in the kind of context of the light bulb at the time

to kind of be already dealing with this in a monetary sense and that they're getting monetary compensation for what happened in a very immediate way. And I think that might also be a sort of perhaps British attitude, right? That it just looks, yeah, it looks vulgar, I think, to a lot of people. Two days later, Sir Cosmo is called to give evidence again. The Attorney General wants to address the discrepancy between his account of what happened in Lifeboat One and that of George Simons. He points out that Simons insisted he gave the order to go back and search for survivors.

I did not hear him, responds Sir Cosmo. It would appear, observes Isaacs, that orders were given which you do not recollect. Sir Cosmo's lawyer, Mr. Duke, interjects. He says he did not hear it, not that he does not recollect it. The Attorney General is not impressed. The distinction, he replies, is a little fine for me. When Lady Duff Gordon takes the stand that afternoon, things go from bad to worse. The celebrity fashion designer is dressed in a black two-piece outfit with a frilly white collar,

an elaborate hat perched upon her head, the brim so wide you can barely see her face. And she seems to have fans in the audience. The galleries of the courtroom are packed with equally well-dressed people who can't resist bursting into applause. Veronica Hinckley When you watch shows like Downton Abbey, Lady Duff Gordon was one of the designers, if not the designer,

who really was the engine behind that book. Huge, voluptuous hats with plumes, ostrich feathers, those wide brims where you can barely see beneath the brim. It's so wide and just a real spectacle. After a few preliminaries, the Attorney General questions Lady Duff Gordon about the cries of the people in the water. I never heard a cry, she insists. My impression was that there was absolute silence.

When Isaacs is finished, a trade union representative, Clement Edwards, begs to question the witness. He produces a newspaper article published in the Daily News the day after Carpathia docked in New York. An article bearing not only Lady Duff Gordon's name, but her signature too. Did you write such an article? he asks. No, she replies. A man wrote it from what he thought he heard me saying. The journalist, she explains, was Abraham Merritt, a great friend of ours. Merritt was one of the group drinking champagne with the Duff-Gordons at the Ritz

on the night of Carpathia's arrival in New York. Half an hour after leaving the party, he called her at the hotel to say that William Randolph Hearst wanted to publish her story the next morning. What did you say? Edwards asks Lady Dove Gordon. I said yes. But the article Merritt wrote hasn't done his friend any favours. Edwards takes her through it, line by line, asking if he quoted her accurately. An awful silence seemed to hang over everything, and then from the water, all about where the

Titanic had been, arose a bedlam of shrieks and cries. I never said that, replies Lady Duff-Cordon. Women and men were clinging to bits of wreckage in the icy water? No. And it was at least an hour before the awful chorus of shrieks ceased, gradually dying into a moan of despair. No, I never said that. I remember the very last cry.

It was a man's voice calling loudly, my God, my God. Absolutely untrue. Lady Duff Gordon is adamant that the article bearing her name is a work of fiction. The signature underneath it, she claims, is a forgery. But by now any credibility the Duff-Gordons once had has gone the same way as the Titanic. They might have survived the sinking, but neither of them will ever live it down. In their elite social circle, many of their friends turn their backs on them. Three years later, they'll formally separate. I think they were punished after the Titanic because the Titanic was one of those tragedies

where the public shares them, where all sorts of people feel somehow involved in this particular tragedy, in this particular disaster. I mean, it's that thing that most people can remember where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot or Marilyn Monroe had died or the Princess of Wales had been killed or whatever. There are sort of things where we all are shot in unison. And I think the Titanic was a great example of that.

And because of that, the people who had behaved badly or been seen to behave badly were sort of generally thought badly of. I think every society has standards. Neither of the official inquiries points the finger at any White Star employees. Senator Smith reserves his strictest censure for Captain Lord and the crew of the nearby Californian,

who, he concludes, saw the distress signals of the Titanic and failed to respond to them in accordance with the dictates of humanity, international usage, and the requirements of law. Carpathia's Captain Rostron, meanwhile, receives fulsome praise for his rescue efforts. When it comes to Titanic's captain, Senator Smith paints a more nuanced picture. Committing his report to Congress, he describes him as a man strong of limb, intent of purpose, and pure of character, but at the same time overconfident in the safety of his ship and neglectful of the warnings of his friends. Smith's judgment of Bruce Ismay is qualified. He admits he can find no evidence that the White Star chairman ordered Titanic to go faster, but he believes Ismay's presence on board may have unconsciously

influenced the captain. In Britain, Lord Mersey's conclusions are substantially similar. He goes further than Senator Smith, though, specifically defending the conduct of Bruce Ismay and Sir Cosmodof Gordon. The accusation of bribery against the baronet is ultimately unfounded, he concludes, and he does not agree that Ismay had a moral duty to wait on board Titanic until the vessel foundered. Had Ismay not taken a place in collapsible sea, says Lord Mersey,

he would merely have added one more life, namely his own, to the number of those lost. For Ismay, the two inquiries have been grueling, but Titanic isn't out

of the courts just yet. In 1913, White Star petitions for limitation of liability, essentially a legal judgment that the sinking was an accident, not caused by negligence. The financial implications are huge. The difference between a $90,000 payout and one stretching to $13 million. It's at these hearings that one of the most shocking claims about Titanic's four-day voyage

comes out. The testimony of first-class passenger Elizabeth Lyons, who says she overheard Bruce Ismay ordering Captain Smith to drive the ship faster. She claimed that she'd heard Captain Smith and Ismay talking about getting Titanic into New York at record speed. There's absolutely no evidence, as far as I'm aware, that proves that. I do believe Elizabeth Lyons, actually. I do believe her because I think that both Ismay and Smith wanted to have the headlines. They both loved headlines.

After the inquiries, Elizabeth Lyons was asked to identify Bruce Ismay and she couldn't. I don't think Elizabeth Lyons intentionally set out to deceive anyone at all, but I think there may have been some confusion on the conversation and who she actually overheard speaking. True or not, Lyons' account plays into a popular narrative about Ismay and Titanic. Eventually, after three years of legal wrangling, White Star agrees to an out-of-court settlement to the tune of $665,000. In today's money, that's almost $22 million. The inquiries may not have officially blamed White Star or its employees for what happened

to Titanic, but the swirl of media attention surrounding them ensures that those who fared poorly on the witness stand will never live it down. For Bruce Ismay and Sir Cosmo Doff Gordon, the reputational impact is terminal. I mean, I don't think that society or ours or any other are alone in cancelling people who fall below some kind of general moral position that is shared by most of the population. I mean, those people were seen as cowards. More than a century on, the biggest question about Titanic's sinking remains unanswered,

and perhaps ultimately unanswerable. Who was to blame? I can't answer that question. I remember I did a lecture it's way over 40 years ago. It's one of my first lectures, 45 years ago, possibly. And somebody raised that question and they didn't like my answer because I said the time you couldn't slowly blame the captain or the director because there was a traveling public they wanted faster ships bigger ships they asked for this so everybody is involved it's very very complex so

you can't just say it's his fault or it's her fault or it's because of this and because of that because there are so many things interacting, so many things to consider. We live in a blame culture, and what happened on the Titanic was an accident. Now, accidents aren't really allowed to happen anymore. We do our best to prevent them from happening, but they do happen, and we learn from them when they happen. But Titanic was an accident, and no one was to blame. You know, the bigger the disaster,

then the more there's going to be a search for what was to blame. So to me, it's more just a story of a lot of coincidental what-ifs that it is trying to look for like the one moment in the story where someone did something that was worthy of blame. Almost the clock starts ticking from the time that the ship leaves Southampton, right, that it's going to bring the Titanic into collision with that iceberg, and all these little things have to happen for that collision to actually take place. I think it's very hard to point to one person who, in that long chain of very small decisions, one person whose choice is the fateful one.

I think it's just a cumulative pile of things. Between them, the two investigations called well over a hundred witnesses. The majority of Titanic's survivors, Uncle Jimmy among them, were never called to give evidence. It must have been strange, to say the least, for them to see an event which was seared into their memories, being picked over in the courtrooms and the press, the story told and retold in so many contradictory ways. But even taking into account what we know from all 700 odd survivors of Titanic, piecing together one version of the truth is almost impossible. And not only because their own vested interests affect how people remember their stories, and how they share them, but because a community of survivors processing the most traumatic event of their lives are not exactly the most objective historians.

Disaster psychologist Jerome Chertkoff. All the research on trials where you have eyewitness testimony, people make many mistakes. We like to think that eyewitness reports are good evidence. They're actually some of, you know, they can tend to be very inaccurate, right? And we see in history all the time that people report things very inaccurately. Of course, history, as we call it, is actually only experienced by each individual who was there. Now, the night the Titanic sank,

there were 2,000 people on the ship and they all saw the story slightly differently from their own perspective. So if you like the historian, when they look at all these accounts, they have to make it into just one narrative. The truth is, the night the Titanic sank, there were at least 1,500 narratives.

Each of the two Titanic inquiries is a major undertaking, and expensive to boot. The accounts for the British one run to more than £20,000. That's well over a million in today's money. And those in charge have their own agendas too. They're certainly political to questioning and the United States Senate hearings is by US senators. And we know US senators are not unbiased and politically neutral. The British inquiry, meanwhile, is carried out under the auspices of the Board of Trade, the very same Board of Trade that certified Titanic safe to depart with only 20 lifeboats. The British Board of Trade wanted to exonerate Smith and the officers on the Titanic, and they didn't want to accept blame for too few lifeboats.

Lytola, in his book, Titanic and Other Ships, he actually says that he had to have his hand firmly on the whitewash brush when he was being interrogated. And in fact, this is noticed by the inquiry. Some of the lawyers there, they talk about how polished his answers are. The transcripts of the British inquiry include a conversation between Lord Mersey and Sir Rufus Isaacs, in which they comment on Lightoller's testimony. I think it is right to say, suggests Isaacs, that he gave his evidence very well. He gave it remarkably well, agrees Lord Mersey. Too well, your lordship thinks? Lord Mersey repeats, remarkably well. To be continued... For one senior officer, Titanic is but a chapter in a barely believable life.

Sailors in the North Atlantic search for the iceberg that sank the ship of dreams. And, decades later, descendants of those lost pay their respects. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Titanic Ship of Dreams right now, without waiting, by subscribing to Noisa Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description to find out more. No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express.

Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Oh, excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay, well, you know what? With Specsavers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149.

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