One Sunday afternoon Grandad was sitting in Mums favourite armchair - as usual - and we started talking about the Titanic. "Did I ever tell you I was on the last ship that saw the Titanic before she sunk?" he asked. I glanced at Mum and she sort of rolled her eyes and got up, realising we were in for another of Grandad's yarns and it was unlikely she'd get her chair back in the next hour or so.

ss Titanic

I'll put the kettle on while you tell the boy's your story," she answered; and Jeff and I settled ourselves, waiting for Grandad to entertain us. I can remember exactly where I was sitting at the dining table while he told the story, but when recently I asked Mum if she could remember too, she had no recollection whatsoever of the incident.

The only part of the story I've never been able to remember was the name of the ship he said he was on at the time - and that has caused me much angst over the years. I had almost given up hope of figuring it out, when luckily my Uncle Bob found his seaman's discharge book which had been up in his attic for years. As soon as he told me he'd found it I asked him to look up what ship Grandad was on in April 1912.

When Grandad had been telling the story he'd started by saying, "I was back on the old such and such, ..."  and whenever I tried to remember the name of the ship, it was something like the "Rangitangi", or the "Rawalpindi". But I knew it wasn't either of these ships which were famous in their own right for other reasons. I could find no reference to a ship with a name like that which was the last ship to sight the Titanic. I had even started to think that maybe the story was one of Grandad's whoppers.

So it was with some excitement that I wrote down the name Bobby read out to me. "On the 1st March 1912, he signed on to the Rappahannock in Antwerp and left her on the 20th April 1912 in London," Bobby read from the old discharge book. "Does that sound like the name of the ship you wanted?"

ss Rappahannock

The name was certainly like what I had been trying to remember and the dates were right, but I could recall no reference to a Rappahannock in any of the articles I'd read on the sinking of the Titanic. So I immediately did an internet search, using Titanic and Rappahannock as my key words. The results astounded me. The first item on the list of references was entitled, "Titanic, the last sightings'! Grandad vindicated yet again!!

The key things he said that I can remember went as follows:

"We were coming back from Halifax in Canada. I was up in the wheel-house after having taken a turn at the wheel, when we saw the Titanic. She was tearing though the water and was a magnificent sight. The mate let us all look at her through the glasses and you could even see the funnels clearly." The way he said it I assumed the ship was some way off close to the horizon and that's why he mentioned seeing the funnels. But I found out that the time of the two ships passing was 10.30pm and the Titanic was ablaze with lights. What he no doubt meant was that there were so many lights on he could even see the funnels. Reports state it was a clear cold night with no moon and the stars were bright in the sky. It was no doubt as he said, "a magnificent sight".

He continued, "The mate then let other members of the crew come up to take a look at her. We had just come through a bad icefield and the ship had been damaged, so we thought she was mad tearing along like that. We sent her a message with the Aldis lamp that she was heading into the ice, but she never slowed down. We never dreamt that a ship like that would be sunk by an iceberg on her maiden voyage"

When he said this I remember asking why they didn't then try to send her a radio message, but he laughed, "Why the old Rappahannock had no radio, only the newer and bigger ships had radio in them days, it had only just come in."

I was so excited when I found out that his story checked out, that I immediately rang Bobby back and I think he was just as excited as I was. It was a great feeling. I even rang Mum, and although she couldn't remember the story, I think she was a little sentimental about it too.

The were a number of other ships in the area at the time but it would seem that the Rappahannock was indeed the last ship to actually see the Titanic before she was lost.

Interestingly, when I obtained a copy of the original Department of Trade Inquiry Report on the loss of the Titanic, there was no mention of the Rappahannock and the warning she sent.  Only the wireless messages from other ships were mentioned although it has later been confirmed that the message from the Rappahannock was certainly sent. There have been many rumours that the loss of the ship was the result of gross negligence - even arrogant disregard for commonsense safety - and I am inclined to believe it. When I read though the findings I could not but help thinking of the Inquiry into the loss of Dad's ship,the Sao Paulo, and wondering what evidence was omitted on that occasion too. Little wonder Grandad had such a contempt for officialdom.

More interestingly, on carefully checking the various references to the sighting of the Titanic by the Rappahannock, some state it occurred at about 10.30pm on Sunday the 14th April 1912, other references - notably the Murdoch website (Murdoch was 1st Officer of the Titanic and his ancestors maintain the site) claim it was on Saturday the 13th April. At 10pm Sunday Murdoch relieved the 2nd officer Lightoller on the bridge of the Titanic. At 11pm the Californian cut in on their radio to say that they were stopped and surrounded by ice, giving a position close to where the Rappahannock had also run into difficulty. It was only about 30 miles from where the Titanic was. The Titanic told the Californian to get off the air, she was busy sending messages for passengers. Sometime around midnight she collided with an iceberg - and we've all seen the movie haven't we.

If Grandad was correct in his claim to be on the last ship to see the Titanic, I would have thought he saw her on the Sunday night and, if so, Murdoch would have had no excuse for blaming the Marconi radio operators for not giving him the warning of nearby ice. He was on the bridge and must have seen the message that Grandad's vessel sent. Why did he disregard it? It is even possible that the Rappahannock's message was the mysteriously unexplained flashing lights that various passengers reported sighting about this time.

It would also seem unlikely that the ships passed on the Saturday for the following reason: The Rappahannock was a small ship, only 3,800 tons, and was slow at the best of times - she was built in 1893 and her top speed was 12 knots. When she found she was in an ice-field she proceeded at "dead slow" speed, but nevertheless suffered damage to her rudder and bottom. After she left the ice-field she was still at reduced speed due to the damage she had sustained. She was therefore still proceeding with caution when she saw the Titanic, which was making about 22 knots. The Rappahannock was probably only making about 5 to 7 knots at the time of sighting. If the collision with the iceberg occurred about 2 hours after they passed, then the Titanic would have run into trouble at exactly the spot that two other ships had warned her of danger only several hours before the tragedy occurred. Little wonder that Rappahannock's message was not mentioned at the inquiry.

However, if it was on the Saturday night she saw the Titanic, as Murdoch's ancestors claim, then the Titanic would have still have had about 500 miles to travel in the 24 hours before she struck the iceberg. This would also mean that the Rappahannock must have left the icefield about 500 miles back and sustained her damage about 3 days previously, given that she was travelling at only about one third of the Titanic's speed. Under these circumstances it is unlikely Grandad would have remarked on the foolhardiness of the Titanic's speed, when he saw her, or his emphatic statement that he was on the last ship to sight her before she went down.

Perhaps we have the basis for yet another book on the subject!!??

The 3,800 ton Rappahannock was herself an interesting ship. Originally built in England for the Chesapeake and Ohio Shipping Line in 1893, she was intended to extend the business of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Coy. The Railroad brought cattle from the Prairies to the coast for transportation to Europe for slaughtering. On the return trip back to America, they brought back emigrants! Hopefully they cleaned out the accommodation, though I've heard that some migrants had a pretty rough passage getting to America. From the picture of her, you can see the many ventilators needed to ensure an adequate supply of air for the cattle. Shortly after she was introduced into service, frozen beef from Argentina and Australia made the trade increasingly uncompetitive and she was sold in 1907 to Furness-Withy, a large English consortium.

Interestingly, several years previously, Furness-Withy had been bought out by International Mercantile Marine, who also owned the White Star Line and under who's flag the Titanic sailed. International Mercantile Marine was owned by the multi-millionaire American financier, J. P. Morgan. Morgan also owned Harland and Woolf, the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic. It was strongly rumoured that there were serious deficiencies in the design and construction of Titanic and there may well have been some truth in this, as Titanic was underinsured. It was also claimed that Morgan "got at" the officers of the Rappahannock so that no mention of the message to Titanic was reported to the disaster investigators, and that may be why the incident was not brought up at the inquiry. Given the thoroughly unsavoury character that Morgan was credited with, I can believe this.

Over the years whenever I thought back about Grandad's story, I distinctly remember him saying, "I was back on the old ....." I always assumed this meant he had previously been on the ship prior to this trip and this is likely, but unfortunately I still have some more detective work to do to establish this. I also always wondered if  "the old Rappahannock" meant that another Rappahannock was later put into service, or it was just meant as a term of affection. I subsequently discovered that the Rappahannock was torpedoed in 1916 off the Scilly Isles by U69 on 26/10/1916. All 37 hands, including the master, W. Hanks, who was the master when Grandad served on her, were lost. It was rather sad when I saw this man's signature in Grandad's discharge book. Little did he know that his fate was to shortly to be similar to those unfortunates on the Titanic. Fortunately by that time Grandad had moved on to convoy work going to Archangel, although he had had another spell in the Rappahannock in Jan/Feb 1914. As the name Rappahannock has significance in American history, another, larger, American ship, built in 1913, was renamed the Rappahannock following the loss of Grandad's ship, and this is no doubt was what he meant.

Recently I learnt that the master, W. Hanks, was sick below when the sighting occurred and the ship was under the control of the mate who was acting as master. When in his eighties, in retirement at Norfolk in the late 1960's, he wrote to the magazine "Seabreezes" and pretty well confirmed what Grandad had told me. But by then all the major participants, including Grandad, were long dead.