User Reviews

... outside the courtroom - not so much.

This is a dramatization of the formal inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic, specifically, why the Californian did not go to the rescue of the Titanic after seeing multiple rockets fired that could have meant distress, and after noting that the ship was, at the same time, listing starboard.

I looked for additional material after watching "A Night To Remember" (1958) on the sinking of the Titanic, and I found this. The courtroom scenes are taken from actual testimony, and although the British actors are unfamiliar to me, they give compelling performances.

But outside the courtroom, this thing tries to turn Captain Lord of the Californian into J. R. Ewing of Dallas ("I'm gonna break you Bobby!"). Maybe most of you are too young to know what I'm talking about with that last reference. But I have a hard time believing that seamen cut from the same cloth as those on the Titanic would worry so much about saving themselves and abandoning all honor in the process, hiding the "scrap" log book, and that Lord would turn into a menacing bully, warning each of his officers in turn not to betray him.

9/10 for the courtroom scenes. 4/10 for the overwrought drama outside the courtroom, which the filmmakers, to their credit, say is just a dramatization, not based in any facts.

This is a superb drama related to the role of the Californian in the Titanic disaster. It is true that there was no separate inquiry into the role of the Californian in the Titanic Disaster (this portrayal implies that this inquiry was limited only to the Californian. The fact is that the courtroom scenes depicted here verbatim from the transcripts were actually part of the over-all enquiry done in the United Kingdom). With that said, the scenes of the inquiry are superb and very well-done.

The producers emphasize that the dramatic scenes done outside of the hearing are not taken from any recorded facts. Never-the-less, in my mind they indicate what may very well have taken place.

This drama implies that Captain Stanley Lord didn't express much emotion. I don't know what the real Stanley Lord was actually like, so I can't say whether or not that is true.

Although it is true that the scrap log, of which much is mentioned in this drama, did mysteriously disappear, it was not actually a violation of maritime law to remove pages from scrap logs. That said, it is odd that this particular scrap log was never seen even the next day (April 15th). They knew the Titanic had sunk and they knew that there would be questions. It would have been prudent for them to have kept all logs, scrap log included. However, they didn't keep the scrap log. This drama implies that the scrap log was deliberately tossed overboard or at any rate disappeared so that the Captain could enter false evidence into the main log and thus lie about his ship's position relative to the Titanic. Whether or not that actually happened is not known, but in the Inquiry, they were very concerned about the fact that the scrap log disappeared and they wanted to know why it was mislaid or thrown away, considering the fact that the Californian's crew KNEW that the Titanic had sunk the next morning and that questions concerning the Californian would be asked.

Here is what is known:

Captain Lord, the captain of the Californian, was terminated from the Leyland Line (which owned the Californian). He publicly blamed Herbert Stone ever since, I think that the British Board Of Trade, as stated in this re-enactment, was interested in not taking all the blame over their outmoded regulations regarding lifeboats. The actions, or perhaps inactions, of the crew of the Californian did indeed provide them with a convenient and much needed distraction. They were able to defer some of the blame onto the Californian and its crew.

The bottom line, however, is this: The testimony given by the crew of the Californian was suspect to say the least.

In the testimony in the British Inquiry, James Gibson said that the Second Officer of the Californian told him that the other ship "looked queer out of the water." Gibson testified that the ship they were looking at had a heavy list to starboard. That is in the transcripts of the official Inquiry and it is documented in this drama.

Herbert Stone, the second officer on the Californian testified, as this drama shows, that he did not think that the ship they were looking at was in distress despite the fact that he admitted seeing white rockets and noticing that the ship looked queer in the water. He said "It did not occur to me because if there had been any grounds for supposing the ship would have been in distress, the Captain would have expressed it to me." The Commissioner, Lord Mersey, didn't buy that answer. Neither do I.

Ernest Gill, a donkeyman, reported to the American press that the Californian's officers on duty that night saw the Titanic and watched it sink. In the inquiry, the officers admitted seeing white rockets and knew that white rockets meant distress. They saw a ship appear when the Titanic, the only ship known to be in their vicinity at the time, was in their vicinity. They saw it make a turn at about 11:30. The Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40. They saw white rockets being fired when the Titanic was firing rockets. They saw it disappear shortly after 2am. The Titanic sank at 2:20am (and her lights would have gone out prior to that). Add it all up. What are the odds that the Californian was NOT seeing the Titanic the whole time?

Even though the scenes outside of the hearing are, by the admission of the producers, fictitious, they could very well have taken place as portrayed. The scenes that depict what happened during the hearing are first-rate and verbatim. This is an excellent drama that is well worth watching.