Meanwhile, the closest ship, Californian, didn't receive Titanic's distress calls at all. Its wireless operator had switched off his receiver and gone to bed after Phillips told him to shut up. Amateur radio operators also interfered with messages, making it difficult for Titanic to communicate.
As lifeboats aboard Titanic were being lowered into the icy waters, a mystery ship, long believed to be SS Californian, could be seen in the distance by passengers, but did not sail closer to Titanic to offer assistance.
The 1992 MAIB report concluded that Captain Lord and his crew's actions "fell far short of what was needed". The report did concede that even if "proper action had been taken", Californian could not have arrived on the scene until "well after the sinking".
Titanic sank at approximately 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, claiming the lives of 1,500 passengers. With the Californian stopped in the ice before any SOS messages were sent from the Titanic, the ship didn't see the sinking liner's calls for help until dawn, hours after they'd been sent.
Phillips and Bride could only send or receive one message at a time, and their line was repeatedly tied up with the confusion of other operators and irrelevant questions, like an inquiry as to whether the Titanic was headed toward a ship that was 500 miles away.
The Californian was surrounded by icebergs and wireless communication was shut off by Titanic's wireless, so there was still NO way for it to hurry and save Titanic.
After the disaster, Ismay was savaged by both the American and the British press for deserting the ship while women and children were still on board. Some papers called him the "Coward of the Titanic" or "J. Brute Ismay", and suggested that the White Star flag be changed to a yellow liver.
Captain Lord died on 24 January 1962, aged 84, almost half a century after the sinking of the Titanic. He is buried in Rake Lane Cemetery Wallasey.
Captain Arthur Rostron raced to the scene of the sinking saving those mentioned above and transporting them to New York. Exemplary as his actions were though, the Carpathia was simply too far away at the time of the sinking. Hypothermia can kill in as little as 15 minutes.
Then, as Titanic was approached, Californian would have slowed down to avoid accidentally running down Titanic's boats. Taking these maneouvres together it is likely that Californian would have taken at least 1.5 hours to reach Titanic, fifteen miles away.
No such controversy surrounds the demise of the Californian. The Californian fell victim to a torpedo attack by a German U-boat in 1915, and she lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean after having sunk off the coast of Greece; her wreckage has never been found.
After several trips back to the drawing board, it turns out that raising the Titanic would be about as futile as rearranging the deck chairs on the doomed vessel. After a century on the ocean floor, the Titanic is apparently in such bad shape that it couldn't withstand such an endeavor for various reasons.
There are fears that during retrieval, the Titanic wreck would disintegrate into pieces, making it impossible to have something concrete by the time the remains reach the sea surface. There are documented reports that metal-eating bacteria has already consumed most of Titanic's wreckage.
Milton Hershey, the founder of Hershey's, sent the White Star Line a $300 check to reserve a spot on the Titanic, but he ended up sailing home on the SS Amerika instead. Hershey and his wife, Catherine, spent their winters on the French Riviera as they got older.
The Titanic's wireless operators told Californian's operator to "shut up" and they ignored the warning. Later that night the Californian spotted the flares from the Titanic.
It is this final act of leadership that has become the most enduring image of Captain Smith. While we cannot know for sure how he spent his final moments, it is known that Captain Edward Smith perished in the North Atlantic along with 1517 others on April 15, 1912. His body was never recovered.
According to Mr. Cooper, the author of a book on Captain Smith, Smith was not ignoring the ice warnings; he was simply not reacting to them. Ice warnings were just warnings that a ship sent saying that they had seen ice at a certain location (Kasprzak, 2012).
When she first saw the rockets the Californian could have pushed through the ice to the open water without any serious risk and so have come to the assistance of the Titanic. Had she done so she might have saved many if not all of the lives that were lost.
In all only 337 bodies of the over 1500 Titanic victims were found, only one in five. Some bodies sank with Titanic. Winds and currents quickly scattered the remainder.
At 12:38 Frankfurt sent its position to Titanic and was told by Phillips to inform his bridge and come to assistance. At this time the Frankfurt was between 120 and 150 nautical miles away from the Titanic. This already made it difficult for Frankfurt's wireless operator to hear and understand Titanic's calls.
The cause: an insufficient number of lifeboat seats for all passengers and crew. The U.S. Senate and British Board of Trade conducted inquiries in 1912 and mistakenly concluded that Captain Stanley Lord, master of the SS Californian, was within visible range of the Titanic as she sank and failed to render aid.
In 1957 Captain Lord's wife Mabel (nee Tutton) died, and he began to go into decline. The couple had been blessed with one son, Stanley Tutton Lord (1908-1994). Captain Lord died on January 24, 1962, aged 84, almost half a century after the sinking of the Titanic. He is buried in New Brighton cemetery, Merseyside.
Edna Kearney Murray had a ticket for the maiden voyage of the ill-fated Titanic in April, 1912. Little did she know that a coal strike would mean no journey ... and possibly save her life.
Partly thanks to the 1997 film about the Titanic, Molly Brown is arguably one of the most famous passengers to have survived the tragedy. Molly Brown was an American socialite who had just come into a huge amount of money thanks to her husband's success in the mining industry.
Women and children survived at rates of about 75 percent and 50 percent respectively, while only 20 percent of men survived (Takis, 1999). The role of class such that first-class passengers had the best chance of survival, followed by second- and third-class passengers was not necessarily surprising.