The Titanic Provenance Files: History Through the Evidence She Left Behind
How do we know what we know about Titanic?
The Titanic Provenance Files is a Titanic history podcast that goes beyond retelling the familiar story to investigate the evidence behind RMS Titanic.
Through artifacts, documents, eyewitness testimony, photographs, books, films, and conversations with leading Titanic researchers, host Damon Henrichs traces how the history was discovered, disputed, reconstructed, and remembered.
Each Case File takes one object, source, or story and asks what it can really tell us about the ship, the people aboard her, and the night Titanic was lost.
The story of Titanic, told through the evidence she left behind.
The Titanic Provenance Files: History Through the Evidence She Left Behind
Mark Chirnside on Titanic’s Lost Lifeboat: The Strange Afterlife of Collapsible A | Case File 004
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What happened to Titanic’s Collapsible A after the sinking?
Author and maritime researcher Mark Chirnside joins Damon Henrichs to follow the extraordinary provenance of one of Titanic’s most unusual lifeboats.
Collapsible A was never launched in the conventional sense. As Titanic disappeared beneath the Atlantic, the partially flooded boat floated free, with survivors struggling aboard. But its story did not end on the morning of April 15, 1912.
Nearly a month later, the White Star liner Oceanic encountered the abandoned boat drifting in the Atlantic, with bodies still aboard. Her crew investigated the grim discovery, recovered personal effects, buried the dead at sea, and brought Collapsible A aboard Oceanic.
And then the trail becomes murky.
Using survivor testimony, contemporary documents and other primary sources, Mark and Damon follow the remarkable journey of Collapsible A and ask a very Titanic Provenance Files question:
How far can we follow an object when important pieces of its history are missing?
Along the way, Mark discusses the importance of separating evidence from assumption, returning to original sources, and why reconstructing Titanic history can resemble a million-piece jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing.
Mark Chirnside has written extensively about Titanic, the White Star Line, Cunard and the great passenger liners of the early twentieth century. His latest book is Olympic and Titanic: Triumph and Disaster.
Learn more about Mark Chirnside
Books mentioned / recommended:
Oceanic: White Star's 'Ship of the Century' -
Olympic and Titanic: Triumph and Disaster
Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal
For show notes, source notes, updates, and future case files, visit https://titanicprovenance.com/
The Titanic Provenance Files is hosted by Damon Henrichs. This podcast explores Titanic history, provenance, public memory, and historical evidence. It is not an appraisal service and does not authenticate or value private artifacts.
Because the most interesting question is often not what happened. It’s how we know what happened.
🎙️ Support The Titanic Provenance Files: If you enjoy the show and would like to help support independent research and production, you can contribute here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2627541/support
When you're at sea, you you get used to the you know the rhythm of the ship, the throb of the engines, and you know, all of a sudden it stops, and uh naturally passengers started to come up on deck and see, well, what what is the matter? What's going on? And they of course see that one of Oceanic's own lifeboats has been lowered away over the ship's side because they have to uh leave Oceanic to row over to try and identify this lifeboat, and it's only when that uh oceanic lifeboat returns to the ship, it's collapsible A, and um you know there are deceased people on it.
SPEAKER_01I'm Damon Hendricks. My guest today is author and researcher Mark Chernside, who has written extensively on Titanic and the great passenger liners of the early 20th century, including ships of both the White Star Line and Coonard lines. His latest book is Olympic and Titanic: Triumph and Disaster, which takes a fresh look at the two sister ships, their history, and the remarkable parallels and differences between them. But today, we're narrowing our focus considerably, because our case file is one of Titanic's lifeboats, specifically Collapsible A. Its story begins aboard Titanic, but it doesn't end with the sinking. It survives the disaster, drifts alone in the North Atlantic for nearly a month, is unexpectedly rediscovered by Oceanic, another White Star line ship, and then enters a strange trail of recovery, documentation, legal bureaucracy, and ultimately disappearance. And in following that trail, we get to do exactly what this podcast is about. Take the pieces of evidence they survive and ask what they can actually tell us about what happened. Mark Chernside is the perfect person to help us follow that trail. Mark, welcome to the Titanic Providence Files. Good to be here. Before we start, your your books are amazing. I've I've got your oceanic book here handy. Behind me, I hope you can see the Titanic and Olympic book, which that one I haven't been able to tackle yet, but I'm excited to get started on it. Why don't we start first with just why are Titanic's lifeboats such a valuable piece of evidence for historians?
SPEAKER_00I I think really they provide that tangible connection to the to the shipwreck. After the loss of Titanic, really the lifeboats were pretty much the uh the only thing left. There was dawnbreaking on that morning of Monday, 15th of April 1912. Of course, survivors saw themselves surrounded by by ice. And that was all that was left. The survivors, that small fleet of boats, and uh, you know, that uh wreckage from Titanic. So they serve as a tangible link to the shipwreck.
SPEAKER_01I know that we tend to just call them lifeboats, but then there's this sort of subsection where we talk about collapsible boats. For a layperson, what's the difference between just a standard lifeboat and these collapsible lifeboats?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the collapsible lifeboats we're talking about, or semi-collapsible boats, we probably should really say, were Engelhard uh boats. And they differed in the sense that you had to put the sides up. So canvas sides, and that was easier for storage, and you know, they were perfectly uh functional as lifeboats, but you know, they they weren't the rigid, full-bodied uh wood that the majority of Titanic's lifeboats were?
SPEAKER_01So Titanic carried four collapsible boats, but they weren't all stored in the same way. Collapsible C and D were positioned on the boat deck near the Davits, while A and B were stored on the roof of the officers' quarters. Why were A and B placed there, and and how much did that decision contribute to their unsuccessful launch?
SPEAKER_00Well, the interesting thing about the four collapsible lifeboats is that they were not included in the original design. It was only at a pretty late stage of the uh design and construction process that they were added. So Olympic and Titanic were envisaged with 16 lifeboats, which was 14 normal boats and two emergency cutters for each ship. Then as late as May 1911, the White Star Line approved the decision to add four collapsible lifeboats to Olympic. So they had to be ordered uh pretty quickly by Hahn and Wolf from McAllister and Sons, which is in Dunbarden in Scotland. And I think three or four weeks later, those boats were shipped to Belfast and they're installed on Olympic. And there's an interesting difference between Olympic and Titanic. So on the early Olympic, the four collapsible boats were stored on the boat deck. And when the Board of Trade ship surveyor, Francis Carruthers, had to uh sign off all the paperwork, he noted that these four boats had been added and that they were in uh locations which meant they would be easy to launch from uh lifeboat davits. By the time Titanic was being completed early in 1912, uh her uh four collapsible boats were ordered from Dunbarton as well, and uh they were delivered to Belfast in February 1912. But as you say, two of those collapsible boats were kept on the boat deck, and the other two were put on the uh roof of the officers' quarters, on uh one on each side, either side of the uh first funnel. So that was probably more convenient from an operational point of view, but what it did mean was that those comments about the collapsibles being in an easy position to launch, which they were on the 1911 Olympic, but that that by the time of Titanic's completion did not apply to Titanic. And you know, this would cause some quite significant issues uh during Titanic sinking.
SPEAKER_01So when we get to collapsibles A and B, the ones on the uh on the roof, where well I guess when are we in the evacuation of the ship at that point?
SPEAKER_00Well, this is right in the final stages of the sinking. So by the time Titanic's crew are looking to launch collapsibles A and B, all of the other lifeboats have left the ship, including Collapsible C and Collapsible D. And collapsible C on the starboard side was lowered around 2 a.m. And collapsible D on the port side, if I remember rightly, I think was about five minutes later. So the other two collapsibles were lowered right in the final stages of the sinking, and the ship's crew simply ran out of time to launch collapsibles A and B successfully.
SPEAKER_01It's an interesting plot twist. I mean, everyone talks about how there weren't enough lifeboats on the Titanic, but what this really suggests is even if there had been more lifeboats, you know, the question is how many more could have actually been launched, since of the 20 that they had, two of them really don't get launched at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I think that's uh I think that's a key issue given the number of crew that they had and the able-bodied seamen. You know, really it's fine to have additional lifeboats, but you also have to have in place additional trained crew that are able to handle those boats and to launch them. And Titanic's deck department, you know, the officers and seamen and so on, was really not much larger than on you know significantly smaller ships about uh 10 years earlier. So White Star's uh Celtic, which was completed in 1901, I think had 64 members of the deck department. Uh, you know, in Titanic's case, there were only a couple more. So uh it's not just a question of having sufficient lifeboats, but also the crew to uh to handle them. And in the you know, the the chaotic final moments of Titanic's evacuation, the crew uh really had uh quite a problem because the intention with collapsibles A and B is that they could be lowered from the roof of the officers' quarters to the boat deck, and then once they're on the boat deck, they could be hooked up to Davits and uh lowered over the ship's side. Now, in order to do this, there were hooks on the guy wires for the funnels, and the necessary tackle and the mechanism, the blocks to to attach them to those wires and then lower them from the officers' quarters to the boat deck couldn't be found because that was in the bosun's store. By that time, that was already underwater. So that presented a significant logistical issue. So before it even came to launching these boats, Titanic's crew had to try and get them off the roof of the officers' quarters, and collapsible B on the port side actually ended up upside down on the uh boat deck, and collapsible A, it was the right side up, but they didn't really have a chance to get the sides of the collapsible up properly. So, you know, this was a precious minute in the final stages of the sinking. Really, they were just running out of time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I mean, at this point, panic is really setting in. We're at we're at the final moments of the sinking here. And so basically you're saying, you know, almost just the boat ends up just getting gets washed off the ship almost.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, essentially, you know, there's a there's a moment in second officer Lightola's testimony, and he was the most senior officer, of course, to survive the disaster. And he was asked, Well, when did you leave the ship? And he said, I didn't. The Titanic left me. You know, he was on the ship until the final moments, and that the ship sank beneath him. Um well, that was exactly the case with these two collapsibles, that you know, they weren't able to be launched successfully, and you know, they uh they simply floated off as the uh as the ship was sinking.
SPEAKER_01So Lightholder was, and correct me if I'm wrong, he was uh directing collapsible B, but who was working on launching or attempting to launch Collapsible A?
SPEAKER_00So the ship's crew involved in uh launching Collapsible A were led by uh first officer William Murdoch, who was also, of course, the officer who was on watch at the uh time of the collision. And that reflected the work that those officers had been doing throughout the evacuation. Uh Lightola essentially stayed on the port side for so much of it and was overseeing the port side boat, whereas uh Murdoch was uh largely on the starboard side. So, you know, that reflected their positions uh from earlier in the sinking.
SPEAKER_01So the boat sinks. We have a boat, a collapsible, that's improperly launched, the sides aren't really up, so it's I guess semi-flooded or fully flooded. What what what do we have here?
SPEAKER_00Well, in in some ways, the situation for collapsible A is a bit better than for collapsible B. You know, least capped collapsible A was upright, whereas B was upside down. But yes, it it was really not in a in a great condition. There was significant water which which entered collapsible A. You know, this wasn't wasn't enough to sink it. I mean, it had enough buoyancy, but really it was in no-fit state to to carry people. And uh although collapsible A, you know, saved a number of lives, there were many people, well, a number of people who got to collapsible A and uh they didn't survive the night because you know they were exposed to that freezing water, which you know it was getting knee deep, I think. You know, reading the accounts, you you start to think, well, you know, they were very lucky that uh collapsible A remained afloat at all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I know when Lifeboat 14, I believe, comes to rescue the survivors of it, they describe that they just saw a bunch of people that looked like they were standing on the water, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, essentially. And you know, with Collapsible A, there was quite a quite a number of different people. So, you know, there were survivors ranging from fireman, John Thompson, there was a third-class female passenger, Rhoda Abbott, and there was a first-class passenger, George uh Reims. So there were quite a collection of different people and different backgrounds, and uh yeah, they spent quite a lot of the night trying to attract attention from you know other lifeboats, and really it must have been an indescribable relief when lifeboat 14, which was under Fifth Officer Lowe's command, came along and uh was able to rescue them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and the key word they're being I mean literally rescued because not everyone survived if they got to the lifeboat, night not everyone even survived the night.
SPEAKER_00No, no, absolutely. And you know, by by the time the rescue operations were completed for Collapsible A, you know, the the living survivors were taken on on onto boat 14. And, you know, they were they were really suffering with, you know, frostbite and so on, you know, really not in a a good condition at all. And yeah, sadly they found that quite a number of the uh people who had made it to Collapsible A had uh passed away. They they had simply hadn't survived, you know, that that shock and all that exposure to that cold water. So Fifth Officer Lowe and the crew, you know, they were they were very careful to do do their absolute best, you know, and make sure that there wasn't anyone left with uh any sign of life. But regrettably, a number of people had passed away and their their bodies were uh left on collapsible A. There was nothing more that could be uh done for them.
SPEAKER_01So moving on from surviving collapsible A to sort of the afterlife of collapsible A, Officer Lowe removes the survivors, and then it was essentially just left there in the ocean, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, there was really uh there was really nothing that uh nothing that could be done. So collapsible A was one of a num number of Titanic lifeboats which was left adrift, and you know, that included a number of those deceased uh occupants.
SPEAKER_01So we have a lifeboat that's been left behind, but this one is different than the others in a significant way, in that there are actually people who didn't survive remaining on the boat, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And this this boat, as well as having those deceased people on it, also it was very much uh a wash. So that it was quite possibly an expectation actually that that boat wasn't necessarily going to stay afloat for uh too much longer.
SPEAKER_01So we fast forward a month, and a sister ship, so to speak, another white starliner, the Oceanic, comes across Lifeboat A. What how does that? I mean, was Oceanic looking for wreckage at this point? Or is this happenstance?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so Oceanic, of course. Well, it's really quite an interesting story. I mean, yeah, she she wasn't a true uh sister ship of Titanic, but she was another white star liner and a running mate on the Southampton to New York Express service. And Oceanic had essentially been laid up since mid-March at Southampton, and a number of her officers and crew had connections to Titanic, including, of course, second officer Lightholler, third officer Pittman, you know, so the there were those close connections there between uh quite a number of the crew. And Oceanic was also at the scene when there was that famous near and miss at Southampton when Titanic was leaving port. Oceanic was uh was moored alongside the American mine in New York, and it was New York, New York, sorry, that came loose of the moorings and nearly collided with Titanic. So there was a moment of luck when that collision was avoided, and of course, if Titanic had been delayed then, quite possibly she uh she might not have hit the iceberg, or they might have had to delay the maiden voyage by uh by some amount. We uh we don't know. So Oceanic was involved in that moment of drama, but really she was laid up in uh April, March and April 1912, because Whitestar understandably were prioritizing Olympic and Titanic for coal supplies. They were the more prestigious ships, and they were the ones that they wanted to keep running. So in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster, uh Olympic hadn't uh sailed yet. You know, her first voyage after the Titanic disaster was ultimately cancelled after a mutiny among the crew, and initially it was concerns about lifeboats, but ultimately a dispute about non-union uh men being brought onto the crew as replacements. So Oceanic was making a voyage early in May 1912 from Southampton to New York, and you know, she had over 700 passengers on board, but really it was a routine crossing. You know, she she was not dispatched to look for any wreckage or anything of that sort. And you know, she was proceeding as normal in the middle of the uh North Atlantic Ocean when they uh sighted what seemed to be a boat ahead, and Oceanic's uh captain, who was also Captain Smith, but he was a Captain Harry Smith, and Smith, you know, being a very common uh name, ordered the ship uh stopped so that they could investigate. And actually the location of Collapsible A, I believe it was about 200 miles or so to the southeast. So, you know, it had been it had been afloat for a good uh three weeks or so, I think, by that point, and had been drifting, you know, a good uh couple of miles uh a day. So, you know, really it was a quite a remarkable element of luck that Oceanic's crew sighted the lifeboat and you know later identified it. And uh part of the reason for that as well was that Oceanic was steering a more southerly route, which was what the various Express Lightners were doing after the Titanic disaster. They were diverting further south to uh make sure they were avoiding all possible uh reported ice.
SPEAKER_01The whole Titanic story is is full of so many coincidences or bits of timing that if it doesn't go just right or just wrong, as the case may be, you know, this wouldn't have happened, that wouldn't have happened. And I feel like Collapsible A is a perfect example of that because it's amazing to me that the boat is there at all after a month at sea. It's it's amazing to me that it hadn't sunk in some way or just broken apart, or and especially that it's there with human remains on board still.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. There was still the three bodies of deceased uh passengers on board. So yeah, it was really uh really quite remarkable that uh that it was there.
SPEAKER_01I know some books that I've read sort of just I don't want to say gloss over, but they'll add a sentence or two and say a month later, Oceanic found collapsible A with the remains of three humans on board and bury them at sea. That seems very much more clean than the reality of what that would have seemed like. Because this isn't something that happens at, you know, 2 a.m. when the Titanic sank. This is broad daylight, if I'm not mistaken, on a passenger, I mean a uh boat full of paying passengers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it it was a little after midday. It was about 1245 by the oceanics uh ship's time. And, you know, in stopping the ship's engines, in stopping the ship, you know, that is something that doesn't go unnoticed. You know, passengers when you're at sea, you you get used to the you know the rhythm of the ship, the throb of the engines. And, you know, all of a sudden it stops. And uh naturally passengers started to come up on deck and see, well, what what is the matter? What's going on? You know, it's natural curiosity. And they, of course, see that one of Oceanic's own lifeboats has been lowered away over the ship's side because they have to uh leave Oceanic to row over to try and identify this lifeboat and and see you know if there are any living people on it. While this is going on, it's potentially a rescue operation, you know, quite quite dramatic. And it's only when that oceanic lifeboat returns to the ship and it was under the command of a fourth officer John Withers, you know, and he reports back, you know, it it's collapsible A. You know, there are deceased people on it. So by that point, they know that there's no one that they can possibly rescue. They know that it's a Titanic boat, and you know, the ship's crew have to then make that decision. Well, what are we going to do with with the lifeboat and uh and with the bodies?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and unfortunately that seems like it would have been, you know, a fairly gruesome task. I mean, it's you have the remains of three people who have been adrift for close to a month. So it sounds like they made the reasonable decision not to bring the remains on board.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Well, uh, you know, they decided that you know that the condition that these three decomposed bodies were in, you know, it simply wasn't appropriate to, you know, to take them on board Oceanic. And uh so the decision was taken that they should be buried at sea. And uh, you know, there was a short service undertaken. So there's you know a graphic account of Captain Smith, his officers, and the ship's crew, you know, lining the lining the rails as um, you know, that service is is undertaken. And uh one of the ship's crew had uh volunteered as well to uh do some work sewing up canvas bags to to put the bodies in so they were you know they were wrapped appropriately before they were buried at sea with that ceremonial.
SPEAKER_01The person you mentioned that was a sailmaker and had the skill to properly sew them up was Bosun Jones. And this is an interesting provenance trail to go down, I feel like, because there's something that we know happened, and then we can try and interpret it from there. You mentioned in your book on Oceanic that Bosun Jones was a few days later, as they get to New York, he's found unconscious in hold number one. And he claimed he'd accidentally fallen down the hatch. And as someone who I would think that's a fairly traumatic experience, I almost wonder: can we speculate that maybe he tied one on a little bit to you know, sort of wipe that experience from his mind for a day?
SPEAKER_00That is possible. It's not it's not quite clear if they're the the the same person. They certainly shared that name. Okay. And uh, you know, sometimes with the ship's logs, you know, the the entries are quite brief, so you you don't necessarily know the the full story, but i it it's a possibility. Certainly, I think it's a distress, it must be a distressing emotional experience. I mean, uh, you know, seamen are quite accustomed to the um, you know, to the to the cruel nature of the sea. But you know, three decomposed bodies and you know, sewing up the canvas to uh to to wrap them in, that they're not an everyday experience by uh by any means.
SPEAKER_01Not at all. And of course, and it's it's more than just sewing up the canvas because we do know that they were successfully able to identify one of the bodies of Thompson Beatty. So they did go through some of their possessions or attempted to. So I'm I'm curious, how did they identify the person that of the three remains that were found? How did they identify Mr. Beattie?
SPEAKER_00They searched through his um personal effects, and you know, that was uh that was key in in identifying him. You know, the the descriptions of the the the other bodies, it simply said in Oceanic's log that they were believed to be a fireman and a sailor. So the the description, you know, I'm reading directly from the from the ship's log here, the you know, the that scrawled handwriting is from Captain Harry Smith. Three bodies were found in the boat, but being decomposed and unfit for removal, these were committed to the deep from the boat. Service being read by uh Dr. French, uh, that's uh Oceanic's uh chief surgeon. One presumably was the body of Thompson Beattie, identified by name on the pocket lining of his coat. They also said that they found a fur-lined overcoat in the boat, and letters in the pocket of that overcoat were addressed to uh Richard Williams. There are also two rings welded together as one inscription on the inside of one was uh Edward and Goethe. So, you know, they they kept a careful record of of what was found. And before Oceanic proceeded on her way, which is actually less than two hours later, they had taken on board Collapsible A, and they specifically noted it had a plate on it which is marked number one dead lifeboat certified to carry 47 persons. So that was the certified capacity of the lifeboat. So there's a detailed log entry of exactly what happened, and that's largely what the uh narrative in my uh oceanic book is uh based on.
SPEAKER_01So we're able to identify from the coat Thomas Beattie, but we do have clues. You know, we have letters to Richard Williams, we have, I believe, uh Goethe and Edward, I believe you said.
SPEAKER_00Edward and Goethe, yes.
SPEAKER_01I'm sort of surprised that we haven't been able to go down the provenance trail of that and figure out who that would have been. I mean, if we have a letter to someone, it seems like find finding a Richard Williams back then, or finding if there was a tie between Edward and Goethe somehow. I'm I'm sort of surprised we haven't been able to line that out in some way.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell It's something interesting to look at. I mean, my my speciality is not so much uh Titanic's uh personal history as of the passengers and crew. So it might be that uh others have done research in that area that I can't speak to. But you know, there's certainly some interesting uh information there.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell So Oceanic takes collapsible A. It it survives Titanic, it survives nearly a month adrift, it survives recovery by Oceanic. But from what you're saying, apparently she couldn't survive the New York bureaucracy and the legal aftermath.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Yes, well, uh there's that perennial question: what happened to Titanic's lifeboats? We know that they were in New York until late in 1912. Contrary to popular myth, they were definitely not reused either on Olympic or on Britannic. To this day, there's quite a few people who insist they were reused on Olympic. We know that they weren't. The boats fitted to Olympic were new, they were different in specifications, so you know that that was simply not the case. Uh, we do have some notes on their condition, a report, and you know, essentially a salvage valuation. They were, you know, little of what was left of Titanic. Uh, but yeah, late in 1912, the the trail simply goes cold. We don't know what happened to Titanic's lifeboats, and that includes collapsible A. I think the last time last we hear of it, I believe, is that there is a photo of collapsible A, clearly in a very damaged condition, which was, you know, a photo taken on board Oceanic. You know, there was quite a bit of sensationalised and I would say irresponsible news reporting at the time, you know, suggesting that the fortunate people on the lifeboat had actually been at sea and had starved to death, which, you know, is is simply not the case. You know, the White Star Line had to put out a very quick statement, you know, reassuring, you know, that that was not what happened.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a whole nother rabbit trail to go down. The sheer amount of almost insane reporting that occurred around Titanic in general is sort of astounding.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, and and that was true right from right from the moment of the sinking, really, you know, inaccurate accounts, imposter survivors, was it Lewis Klein? You know, there were so many inaccurate things, or even the initial headlines, you know, saying, well, Titanic's been damaged, but she's safe and is proceeding to Halifax. Uh, you know, that that misinformation is there right from the uh moment of the sinking.
SPEAKER_01So Collapsible A's last piece, last evidence piece would be a photograph on Oceanic, basically. What about the rest of the lifeboats? Do we what would be the last piece of evidence that we know what happened?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, we have accounts of um, you know, which boats were taken aboard uh Carpathia. I believe it was 13 of them, if I remember rightly. So, you know, there were a number that you know couldn't be taken on board uh Carpathia, which were left adrift. And we do have photos of Titanic's lifeboats at New York. Carpathia came into New York and she was approaching that uh line of piers. So White Star Pier was at 59, the Kunard Pier that Carpathia was uh using was number 54, and Carpathia stopped at 59 to uh offload the Titanic lifeboat. And we've got photographs of that happening, and uh, you know, the the boats when they're afloat in the water in the uh immediate days after the sinking. But yeah, what subsequently happens then it goes cold?
SPEAKER_01It's amazing to me that yeah, that it just the trail disappears.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it would be nice to know for definite what happened to the boats. Maybe one day we will uh we will learn something, but uh yeah, it's uh one to uh speculate on at the moment.
SPEAKER_01So stepping back a little bit from the details, why does collapsible A matter so much to the historians?
SPEAKER_00I think really, you know, it's it's got its own, you know, interesting story. And I I think for me personally, I just find such a a sadness there that you know there were people who were able to make it to the lifeboat, but then were unable to survive the night, you know, simply because of the poor condition the boat was in and the uh the amount of water that was on board. So, you know, really that's you know, just one of those uh many unfortunate aspects of the Titanic story. You know, if Collapsible A had been able to be launched in an undamaged condition, it could have taken more than 40 people. You know, we know its rated capacity was 47. You know, there could have been quite a number of uh extra survivors.
SPEAKER_01Mark, I want to thank you for taking some time to talk about Collapsible A. I think it's a neat story of provenance in the context of the Titanic story. I close my interview with all my guests with one final question. If you were to meet someone who has expressed interest in the Titanic, what would you put into their hands? Either a book, a piece of evidence, a newspaper clipping, what would you put in their hands to encourage them to learn more about Titanic?
SPEAKER_00This is a really difficult question to answer because there's potentially so many things that you might want to choose from. We're talking essentially about primary sources, and I guess the example I'm gonna use is relevant because you know there's a lot of crossover into other areas. So for me, and I'm a bit of a rivet counter, so I'm you know interested in the technology, the shipbuilding, and technical details, and you know, the remarkable feat of engineering that was represented by uh Titanic and her sisters. But I think it would be a small reddish-colored notebook, which is in the Harland and Wolf archives at Prony, which is Public Record Office Northern Ireland in Belfast. Now it's a very small notebook, it's all uh neatly handwritten throughout. It looks very innocuous, and it's just got very, for the most part, very boring, dry technical detail, you know, how how long each ship was, what the specifications were of the engines, propellers, and so on. So it's the kind of thing that a technical researcher is very interested in, but less so if you research the passengers and crew. And it's one of uh five notebooks which the shipbuilder kept, and they basically documented these specifications for hundreds of ships that Hond and Wolf built over the years. And the reason I mention it as an example is that the Titanic entry in that notebook taught me quite a lot or just reinforced certain convictions. I first found out about that notebook way back in I think it's 2007, when I was doing research in those archives, and I was being assisted by a local researcher, Jennifer Irwin, who was helping me to access the files, and I knew it had potential Titanic information in, which is why I looked in it. And it turned out from the entries in that notebook that we had documentation from Hand and Wolf that Titanic's propeller specifications were different to what had been previously assumed. And, you know, for me, it it's a it's a pretty minor thing, you know, that there's no suggestion that it changes any major aspect of the Titanic uh disaster. You know, significance is simply if you're interested in those details, if you're interested in the history, you may as well get the detail right. For me, there is so much crossover there in using that as an example of a primary source, an original document, which has been put together from people directly involved in those events. And it illustrates in so many ways that the dangers of assumptions. You know, it was assumed Titanic's propeller configuration was the same as Olympics. We've now got evidence that that was not the case. You know, it shows the danger of all those Olympic photos which were miscaptioned as Titanic and passed off. It was just an assumption about propellers that was just passed down the years and accepted as fact. Now I think what it tells us is all what it got me thinking about was well, how many other things do we think we know about Titanic that have just been repeated down the years and are actually simply assumption? So I think it's a good case study for someone getting interested in the subject, it really highlights the importance of looking at the original documents, the the the primary sources to get as close as you can to the detail as possible, you know, and and also that critical thinking. You know, what evidence do we have available? What is it telling us? How do we interpret that information? What is the significance of it? So, yeah, it's a pretty weird example in some ways. I could maybe have uh thought of uh of another one, but I think that really ties into quite a lot of the themes that as a historian, as a researcher, I'm always banging on about, you know, that that need for those original sources, whether it's original documents or artifacts, whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_01I think that ties in so well to what this show is about. One of the points that I'm gonna be making in the first episode that we release, I guess that I will have made in the first episode because by the time this releases, it will already be out. The point of the show is how do we know what we know? And we don't usually get something that says, well, here's exactly what happened, right? We get this piece that tells us one part of the story and another piece that tells another part of the story. And as researchers and historians, we have to tie those into a narrative that makes sense and is plausible and and hopefully the best plausible explanation of what actually happened. But we don't usually get full pieces of evidence, we get partial pieces of evidence that we use to tell a story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I mean, really, Titanic's uh history, I suppose it's a million-piece jigsaw, and the majority of those pieces in some cases are missing. You know, the the death toll tragically was so high, and essentially two out of three people who were on that ship, you know, who experienced the voyage, who experienced the disaster, they lost their lives in the disaster. So if you simply look at the you know, the weight of numbers, you know, there was so much uh direct information missing because the people that experienced those events tragically lost their lives and were were no longer here to uh to give their account, to give their stories.
SPEAKER_01Well, I want to thank you for coming on again. I want to encourage everyone to seek out Mark's books. You can find them on anywhere books are sold. And you can also find them on Mark's website, which is markchurnside.co.uk. The books themselves are just beautiful. They're so they're so full of pictures and, of course, uh excellently researched and well written. But the pictures that you show, not just of the ships, but of other paraphernalia uh postcards and things like that, it really shows just how beautiful these ships were. Your books are truly love letters to all of these ships. So I definitely encourage everyone to check them out. They are great. And of so many of them say that they're in your personal collection. I that would be like touring a museum in itself, I feel like.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, thank you. Thank you. It's really quite a privilege to be in a position to, you know, write uh write this history. And you know, it's great to be able to make that contribution. And you know, thanks so much, Damon, for having me uh here with you today. It's been uh great to uh talk Titanic.
SPEAKER_01My thanks again to Mark Chernside for joining me and for helping us follow the remarkable trail of Collapsible Boat A. From Titanic's boat deck to the open Atlantic to Oceanic, and ultimately to the point where the surviving evidence simply runs out. Mark's latest book is Olympic and Titanic, Triumph and Disaster. If you'd like to learn more about Mark's work or pick up a copy of the book, I've included links in the show notes below. And coming up next on the Titanic Providence Files, we'll open case file 005 with author and filmmaker Steven Schwenkert. Steven is the creator of The Six, which uncovered the largely forgotten story of Titanic's Chinese passengers. We'll start with one deceptively simple piece of evidence the passenger list. And follow what happens when six surviving names lead us into a story that remained hidden for more than a century. Until then, remember, follow the evidence.