About 10 miles away from the sinking Titanic, the Californian was stopped because of the ice for the night. The telegraph operator was off-duty when the Titanic struck the iceberg. Another if-only to add to the long list of things that could have happened to save the Titanic.
A lot of people say the Californian purposely ignored the Titanic's signal rockets. I read in A Night to Remember that the two men on duty informed the captain of all eight rockets fired by the Titanic, but that the captain claimed to be still half- asleep when he was told about all of them but one. Call me crazy, but I don't have trouble believing this explanation. I've had something similar to that happen to me before. For example, I've woken up at 10 in the morning, and no one would be home. When my mom would get back, after I asked her where she went, she would say, "I told you that I was going to Little Rock," or whatever. But she thought I was awake. People say that it hadn't exactly been a rough day at sea, and therefore the captain wouldn't have been that exhausted. I don't think that has much of anything to do with it. Sometimes you wake up when people want you to, other times you don't. Anyway, I really have a problem with people blaming the Californian for the deaths of 1500 people. That was *not* the fault of the Californian. I mean, who knows but what the Californian would have hit an iceberg on the way to rescue the Titanic? What good would *that* have done anybody?
Bria emailed me with this bit of info, too! I thought it was interesting:
"
Later, the captain of the Californian claimed that the ship that had sent
the distress signals had sailed away from him.
"A ship in distress doesn't sail away from you." He said. After the ship was
gone, his ship left, or something. And it turns out that there was *another*
mystery ship that they think Captain Lord saw. It appereared between him and
Titanic, and drew his attention from Titanic. They think now that the
mystrey ship was really a foreign (I forgot which country it was, but some
Great Britian one *I think*) fishing ship that was illegally hunting seals
or some animal and when it saw the Californian and Titanic it panicked and
got out of there ASAP. :-)"