I understand that Ismay led a reclusive life afterward. He felt guilty about something. Or maybe he just wanted to get away from people like me who were ragging on him.
Yes, I think he wanted to get out, and stay out, of the public eye.
I don't know what it was about that Californian crew. Ten miles is pretty far away at sea on a dark night. They saw the white skyrockets launched by the Titanic and they thought they were having a party? Didn't they see the distress light signals coming from the Titanic?
I have to again recommend Dan Butler's
The Other Side of the Night. He makes a compelling case for the fact that the crew of the
Californian were so terrified of Capt. Lord that they didn't push the issue. He was initially informed that a rocket had been sighted, and he gave some lame instruction along the lines of "let me know if you see another." I concur with Butler that Lord likely was a sociopath.
Morons!
Well, in partial defense of Capt. Smith, consider this: The
Titanic's Marconi set was broken for several hours that Sunday. One of the two operators, Jack Phillips, managed to repair it, and by that point he and the other operator, Harold Bride, were extremely backed up. They had a huge backlog of messages to send, mostly social missives from first-class passengers, but also ice warnings from other ships. After the
Californian stopped for the night, that ship's Marconi operator, Cyril Evans, tried to contact the
Titanic to let them know the
Californian was surrounded by ice and thus had stopped. But Phillips, who was overworked and tired, snapped at him and cut him off before the message could be conveyed. So who knows how things would have turned out if that message had in fact gotten through. Also, Evans was so peeved at Phillips's brush-off that he shut down the
Californian's Marconi set for the night, and they never received the Titanic's distress calls.
Yikes, now I really
will shut up.