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.

Northern Britain: Churchill Connections, June 4th to 7th

The 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain offered a unique opportunity to recall the Churchill saga by passing or visiting key places, starting with English Channel and North Sea venues from Southampton to Yorkshire to Edinburgh and the north of Scotland. Such places shaped and affected Churchill’s thought and engaged his pen. Continued from Part 1….

Herein we highlight Scapa Flow and Loch Ewe, where Churchill—First Lord again, twenty-five years later—visited the Grand Fleet in 1939.

Scotland and the Hebrides (June 4th)

From Edinburgh we sail past Dundee, Churchill’s constituency for most of his years as a Liberal MP (1908-22). Next, Invergordon, a naval base, and his preferred site for the July 1945 “Big Three” meeting with Stalin and Truman. (The chosen site was Potsdam, outside Berlin.) In the far north we pass between the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Scapa Flow, Orkney, was one the World War II fleet anchorages in Scotland. Churchill visited both Scapa and Loch Ewe in mid-September, 1939.

U-47 sinks HMS Royal Oak

A month after Churchill’s visit, Lt. Günther Prien, commanding the German U-47, crept into Scapa and sank HMS Royal Oak.  Prien also managed to escape—through a narrow channel cluttered with block ships. It was a brilliant piece of seamanship. The channels were quickly filled with stone blocks, known as the “Churchill Barriers.” Today they serve as motor causeways.

Hosting a Churchill tour in the 1990s, we were accompanied by the late Lord Jellicoe, son of the World War I naval commander. “George” to one and all, he made possible a unique experience. The Orkney pilot boat took us out to the wreck site. On color sonar, we could see the sunken battleship’s outline on the bottom. Like USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Royal Oak is a designated war grave. Every year, Royal Navy divers mount a new White Ensign on her stern.

Glasgow-Greenock (June 5th)

On his 1939 visit, Churchill sailed on HMS Nelson from Scapa Flow to Loch Ewe in the Hebrides. There he inspected the rest of the battle fleet before motoring to Inverness and a train back to London. Our sea route takes us through the Hebrides, passing the Isle of Jura. Churchill never visited this beautiful, barren isle, home to only a few hundred people and much larger numbers of red deer. (And a fine scotch distillery!) Unknown to him, George Orwell would rent a cottage on the northern tip of Jura, where he wrote 1984. His chilling novel of a future totalitarian world claimed Churchill’s close attention. He read it at least twice.

Greenock, near Glasgow, was the main port for Churchill’s wartime transatlantic voyages, 1941-44. The Scottish historian Gordon Barclay has exploded another myth about sending tanks against strikers. Read his piece on the so-called “Battle of George Square.” We look forward to lunching with Dr. Barclay in Edinburgh.

Belfast (June 6th)

Churchill and Ireland intertwined for forty years. In Belfast in 1886, his father, defying Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule bill took the part of unionist Ulster. “Ulster will fight,” Lord Randolph Churchill exclaimed, “and Ulster will be right,” In this same unionist stronghold in 1911, his son Winston defended the Third Home Rule Bill, promising Ulster freedom of choice. Mobs stormed and rocked his car, pelted him with missiles—without scoring a hit!

The numerous myths surrounding Churchill and Ireland are part of one of my onboard lectures. One of these involves Belfast, but not Home Rule. Visitors to the city may take the Titanic Trail, to the birthplace of the ill-fated liner, which Churchill’s negligence is supposed to have sunk. We shall take care of that one at sea. No icebergs are in sight.

Remembering Scotland, 1939:

I felt it my duty to visit Scapa at the earliest moment…. I stayed with the Commander-in-Chief in his flagship, Nelson, and discussed not only Scapa but the whole naval problem with him and his principal officers…. The rest of the Fleet was hiding in Loch Ewe and the Admiral took me there on the Nelson…. It was like the others a lovely day…. On every side rose the purple hills of Scotland in all their splendour.

My thoughts went back a quarter of a century to that other September when I had last visited Sir John Jellicoe and his captains in this very bay, and had found them with their long lines of battleships and cruisers drawn out at anchor, a prey to the same uncertainties as now afflicted us…. An entirely different generation filled the uniforms and the posts….

“No one had been over the same terrible course twice…”

It seemed that I was all that survived in the same position I had held so long ago. But no; the dangers had survived too. Danger from beneath the waves, more serious with more powerful U-boats; danger from the air, not merely of being spotted in your hiding-place, but of heavy and perhaps destructive attack!

I motored from Loch Ewe to Inverness, where our train awaited us. We had a picnic lunch on the way by a stream, sparkling in hot sunshine. I felt oddly oppressed with my memories. “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

* * *

No one had ever been over the same terrible course twice with such an interval between. No one had felt its dangers and responsibilities from the summit as I had, or, to descend to a small point, understood how First Lords of the Admiralty are treated when great ships are sunk and things go wrong.

If we were in fact going over the same cycle a second time, should I have once again to endure the pangs of dismissal? Fisher, Wilson, Battenberg, Jellicoe, Beatty, Pakenham, Sturdee, all gone!

I feel like one

Who treads alone,

Some banquet-hall deserted

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed.

And what of the supreme, measureless ordeal in which we were again irrevocably plunged? Poland in its agony; France but a pale reflection of her former warlike ardour; the Russian Colossus no longer an ally, not even neutral, possibly to become a foe. Italy no friend. Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact and gloriously united, but ill-prepared, unready. We still had command of the sea. We were woefully outmatched in numbers in this new mortal weapon of the air. Somehow the light faded out of the landscape.”  —WSC, 1948

 

Continued in Part 3…