On 10 April 1912, the world’s largest passenger liner set out on her maiden voyage from Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown to New York. Four days later, she struck an iceberg and sank in under three hours, killing 1514 people. Titanic has been a bittersweet, fascinating news item ever since.

On 26 October the Daily Mail reported British Channel 5 TV production, “Ten Mistakes that DOOMED the Titanic.” If you saw this, please let me know if one of the mistakes named is Winston Churchill. (See below.) We are always watchful for the onward march of invincible ignorance.

Old and new angles

The mistakes the Mail mentions combine old news with conjecture. Yes, the crow’s nest lookouts lacked binoculars. Whether they would have enabled the iceberg to be sighted soon enough to avoid the collision, given sea and light conditions that night, no one knows. Yes, there’s a theory that Titanic’s hull used faulty rivets. But then we have her sister ship, RMS Olympic (mistakenly labeled Titanic in the Mail’s first photo). The Olympic sailed for twenty-four years, enduring wartime service and several collisions. Pretty good for a poorly riveted liner.

A curious new claim by the program is that open portholes hastened the sinking. “Only twelve open portholes would have doubled the iceberg damage to Titanic—of course, there were hundreds of portholes in Titanic’s bow.”  Passengers opened portholes to see what was going on. Thus, “when they went up to the lifeboats, they left the portholes open.” Nobody really knows how many portholes were open, nor is it possible to view hull damage on the wreck. We do know that the collision left six watertight compartments open to the sea below the waterline. That seems a lot more decisive than open portholes, well above the waterline.

A lot of factors came together to cause the Titanic tragedy. (In Belfast, they like to say, “She was all right when she left here—English captain, Yanks in a hurry, and a Canadian iceberg!”) But until recently, no one blamed Winston Churchill.

Churchill did it (of course)

The Churchill Titanic myth began in a 2012 book Who Sank The Titanic?.  reported at the time by The Sun. (This makes a nice bookend with the old charge that he also sank the Lusitania.)  Claimed to be based on three years’ research, the book levied chief blame on young Winston, as President of the Board of Trade:

Churchill had final responsibility for all marine safety when the Titanic was being planned, designed and built…. [He was] fatally distracted by a combination of burning political ambition, wounded pride and the pursuit of his future wife Clementine…. He seems to have washed his hands of the Marine Division. Supervising Titanic‘s construction passed to Francis Carruthers, a poorly-trained and underpaid Board of Trade engineer who failed to spot flaws in the ship’s construction….

By the time the Titanic was finally launched, Churchill had achieved his aim of promotion to Home Secretary and thereby escaped public examination about his role in the Titanic debacle. [But] the ship was first proposed, designed and had its keel laid down on his watch. It is inconceivable that the minister responsible for safety at sea would not have been fully briefed about the construction of what was to be the biggest ship afloat. And he was very aware of the lack of lifeboats.

Whoa, slow down…

Churchill was President of the Board of Trade from 12 April 1908 to 18 February 1910. The Titanic, and her sister Olympic, were conceived in mid-1907. Designers drew plans in late 1907 and early 1908.  Churchill was not then at the Board of Trade.

Churchill was in charge when the Board approved final plans (July 1908). And when the hulls were down (December 1908, March 1909). But Titanic complied with all Board of Trade regulations. Her lifeboat capacity (1178) actually exceeded the requirement (990). If engineer Carruthers “failed to spot flaws” in the ship’s construction, how was it possible for Churchill to spot them?

Earlier researchers have theorized that weaknesses in Titanic’s hull plates and rivets contributed to her rapid sinking. How then did her sister the Olympic manage a 24-year career with such flimsy construction? Surviving several collisions, she earned the nickname “Old Reliable.” Hmm.

True, Olympic received a double hull after the Titanic disaster. Yet tankers five times her tonnage remained single hulled until the Exxon Valdez episode in 1989. To blame Churchill for design defects reminds us of the author who criticized Churchill’s urgent despatch of tanks to North Africa in 1941 before they’d been fully tested. A reviewer commented: “The Prime Minister must also be a mechanic!”

“Prideful accomplishments”

What about the “burning ambition, wounded pride and pursuit of his future wife”? Churchill arrived at the Board of Trade with Cabinet rank in April 1908. He lost the mandatory re-election for new ministers in Manchester, then ran and won a seat for Dundee. His “pursuit” of Clementine was nearing its successful end by July. All these prideful accomplishments occurred before the Board of Trade received the Titanic plans.

Neither was it Churchill’s responsibility personally to review mechanical drawings. Churchill saw his personal role, volume II of the official biography records, “as responsible for the direct defence of Free Trade,” and fostering “the commercial interests of our country, within the limits of state intervention.” It is certainly true that he found those tasks more interesting than rivets and hull plates, which he quite properly assigned to underlings.

The specific charge that Churchill was warned and ignored the question of lifeboats is addressed in the Titanic chapter of my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality.  The record is clear. Churchill was following the advice of experts, and shipbuilding thinking at the time. Who Sank the Titanic contends that they builders were too cheap to install lifeboats for all aboard. Actually, they constructed davits for sufficient lifeboats for all, but authorities never raised the requirement. (As it was, 400 more people could have been saved had the existing lifeboats left full.)

Also, they built an elaborate system of watertight compartments to keep her afloat in any conceivable accident. Alas they did not conceive of a glancing blow slicing open so much of her hull. And watertight compartments cost a lot more than lifeboats.

Further reading

Ajay Harish on the Simscale blog presents an excellent engineer’s analysis with graphics of why Titanic sank. It is commendably free of the clamor and speculation of popular TV epics.

The King’s Ships: “We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs.”

Irish Sea to Portland: Churchill Connections, 8-12 June 2019

The 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain was a unique opportunity to recall the Churchill saga by passing or visiting key places. These shaped and affected Churchill’s thought and engaged his pen. Concluded from part 2….

Herein we highlight Portland, from which Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, sent the Grand Fleet to its war station in July 1914.

Douglas, Isle of Man (June 7th)

Enemy aliens interred on the Isle of Man in 1940-45. Churchill recognized delicate questions of civil liberties. He had mixed feelings on the question, and tended to advocate leniency and early release. After the war, Winston Churchill was named a Freeman of Douglas.

Liverpool (June 8th) – Holyhead (June 9th) – Dublin (June 10th)

Banished from London society, after a dispute with “a great personage,” Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill moved to Dublin in 1876. There they remained until 1880. Randolph served as secretary to his father, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, conveniently made Viceroy.  Young Winston’s first memories were of Ireland, and Irish affairs were to occupy his time for decades during his political career.

Waterford (June 11th) – Portland (June 12th)

Many cruisers will visit Waterford for its famous crystal, but I hoped to see where John Redmond was sworn in. Redmond represented Waterford for the Irish Parliamentary Party for nearly thirty years, and his son after him.

In the debate over Irish Home Rule, Redmond, like Churchill, favored moderation, conciliation and Irish autonomy. Many years later in the Commons, Churchill said: “I always bear in my memory with regard, John Redmond…of the old Irish Parliamentary Party…pleading the cause of Ireland, with great eloquence and Parliamentary renown… [He expressed] absolute support and unity with this country until everybody said everywhere, ‘The brightest spot in the world is Ireland.’”

Off to the southwest of Ireland is the Old Head of Kinsale, where RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Again, Churchill was among the scapegoats, and my onboard lecture addressed the myth. Further on is Plymouth, scene of some of Churchill’s greatest speeches in peace and war. Finally we stopped at Portland, where dramatic events occurred as World War I broke out. Churchill vividly recalled the scene in The World Crisis (1923)….

Remembering Portland, 1914: “The King’s ships were at sea”

On the 17th and 18th of July was held the grand review of the Navy. It constituted incomparably the greatest assemblage of naval power ever witnessed in the history of the world…. The whole Fleet put to sea for exercises of various kinds. It took more than six hours for this armada, every ship decked with flags and crowded with bluejackets and marines, to pass…

As early as Tuesday July 28, I felt that the Fleet [at Portland] should go to its War Station. It must go there at once, and secretly; it must be steaming to the north while every German authority, naval or military, had the greatest possible interest in avoiding a collision with us. If it went thus early it need not go by the Irish Channel and northabout. It could go through the Straits of Dover and through the North Sea, and therefore the island would not be uncovered even for a single day. Moreover, it would arrive sooner and with less expenditure of fuel….

We decided that the Fleet should leave Portland at such an hour on the morning of the 29th as to pass the Straits of Dover during the hours of darkness, that it should traverse these waters at high speed and without lights, and with the utmost precaution proceed to Scapa Flow. I feared to bring this matter before the Cabinet, the Fleet, lest it should mistakenly be considered a provocative action likely to damage the chances of peace. It would be unusual to bring movements of the British Fleet in Home Waters from one British port to another before the Cabinet. I only therefore informed the Prime Minister, who at once gave his approval….

The Ships to their War Station

We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. -We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs.

We were now in a position, whatever happened, to control events…. If war should come no one would know where to look for the British Fleet. Somewhere in that enormous waste of waters to the north of our islands, cruising now this way, now that, shrouded in storms and mists, dwelt this mighty organization. Yet from the Admiralty building we could speak to them at any moment if need arose. The king’s ships were at sea.” —WSC, The World Crisis, vol. I, 1923