Seven decades after Titanic disaster, perhaps it’s time to forgive the shipping executive who took the rap

The fascinating photographic exploration of the sunken Titanic gives me an excuse to reopen my recent account of that disaster and to repair a man’s reputation--what is left of it.

It is impossible, legally, to libel a dead man; but I do not want to damage a man’s memory under the protection of that technicality. I refer to J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of White Star, the British shipping line that owned the supposedly unsinkable Titanic.

Quoting Victor Rosen, a correspondent of mine, I wrote: “Somehow Ismay managed to sneak into one of the lifeboats (supposedly in women’s clothes) and landed ultimately in Ireland, where he lived out his days in a small village in obscurity, dishonor, and disgrace. . . .”

It was the Titanic’s maiden voyage, and Ismay had been aboard as the company’s representative. Among the other rumors that his reputation has borne is that he advised the captain to maintain full speed and hold course, despite warnings of icebergs, because White Star wanted to set a transatlantic speed record.

Rosen held that the rivalry between White Star and Cunard was intense. White Star was determined to wrest the speed record from Cunard’s Mauretania. “Against that background of unbridled competition and inordinate hubris,” Rosen said, “combined with the lust for greater profits and prestige, the Titanic set sail.”

After my account appeared, I received a letter from Harvey J. Quittner, saying that the Titanic was built for “spatial opulence,” not speed; that White Star never intended it to beat the Mauretania’s record, and that, in any case, five of her furnaces were shut down because of a coal strike. “To talk of greed,” he said, “one then must include all shipping lines for it was common practice for the ‘mail boats,’ as they were called, to maintain speed . . . in order to keep the rigid mail schedules. . . . Capt. (Edward J.) Smith and his contemporaries habitually violated the rules of good seamanship and the odds caught up with him.”

Quoting from “The Only Way to Cross,” by John Maxtone-Graham, Quittner said that Ismay’s behavior, while not to be condoned, “was erratic enough to be classified today as an acute stress reaction with periodic psychotic episodes.” Also, “To assume that Capt. Smith would endanger the ship on Ismay’s behalf is absurd. . . .”

Peter Hume of El Toro also wrote to say that Ismay’s hope of setting a record is “a fairy tale that has persisted for 73 years. At best, Capt. Smith was only trying to maintain his schedule.”

I went to the main library before it burned and found a report on the board of inquiry held in London after the disaster. There was no testimony that Ismay told Capt. Smith to hold speed and course, and no allegation that he wore women’s clothing in the lifeboat.

Escape in a lifeboat he did, as did many other men. It is surely dishonorable enough for White Star’s chairman to have left the ship while hundreds of passengers were still aboard, without his having disguised himself as a woman.

“Deservedly or not,” writes Rustie Brown in her insightful book on the disaster, “The Titanic, the Psychic and the Sea” (Blue Harbor Press), “his life was ruined. . . . The poor man might just as well have gone down gallantly with the ship because as things turned out, society made his life a living hell.”

Brown also notes that Ismay told the New York press: “It is absolutely and unqualifiedly false that I ever said to any person that we should increase our speed. . . . At no time did the Titanic during the voyage attain her full speed. . . .”

As wretched a figure as he became in the public eye, Ismay may be disdained only for the one dishonorable act he did commit--and that was leaving the ship before all passengers had left.

As for the allegation he dressed in women’s clothes, Brown writes: “There was never any shred of proof that Ismay was so attired. Some man was discovered with a shawl over his head, but it wasn’t Ismay.”

I cannot restore the man to full honor, but at least I have rectified my libel.

For those who like such things, Rustie Brown’s book is an intriguing study of the strange coincidences, dreams, psychic phenomena and other mysteries and myths that cling to the Titanic story.

She says: “The Titanic encountered so many combinations of circumstances as to make one almost believe there was a clockwork of doom in action. . . .”

In researching her book, Brown talked with several survivors, including Edwina McKenzie, who, long before she had ever heard of the Titanic, had dreamed of being on an enormous ship. The dream was so vivid she had awakened her sister to tell her of it.

“The minute I stepped aboard the Titanic,” she told Brown, “I knew it was the ship in my dream.”

Like most disasters of the sea, the Titanic story is steeped in mysteries that will never be solved by modern technology.

By the way, Brown, who lives in San Pedro, has recently published “The Mariner’s Trivia Book” (Blue Harbor Press), a diverting compilation of words and facts about the sea. It is in the form of questions asked and answered.

For example: Who wrote “to dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, to make love and search the skies for constellations--that’s what people expect of a cruise”?

Answer: Mark Twain.

That’s what the Titanic offered its passengers--dancing, singing and love and the stars.

The Moral Majority may make what they like of that.

God rest Ismay’s soul.