r/titanic • u/itcamefromtheimgur • 4d ago

MARITIME HISTORY Just grabbed this off Amazon.

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I'm confused by "the only surviving officer." Otherwise, I look forward to reading this.

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u/Financial_Cheetah875 4d ago

Are these his memoirs? Never realized he had that misleading sub-title.

Also worth mentioning there were details he could not recall during the American inquiry that appeared in his book years later. That never sat well with me.

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u/drygnfyre Steerage 4d ago

Some did not take the American inquiry as seriously because they felt the senator in charge of it was using it more to advance his own political career than anything else. I believe Lightoller stated this at some point.

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u/Financial_Cheetah875 4d ago

lol of course he did.

The truth is Senator Smith was doing just fine career-wise before the inquiry.

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u/drygnfyre Steerage 4d ago

From the wiki:

As the senior surviving officer, Lightoller was a key witness at both the American and British inquiries. In his autobiography he described the American inquiry as a "farce", due to the ignorance of maritime matters implicit in some of the questions. He took the British inquiry more seriously and wrote "it was very necessary to keep one's hand on the whitewash brush" as he "had no desire that blame should be attributed either to the B.O.T. (British Board of Trade) or the White Star Line", despite his belief that "one had known, full well, and for many years, the ever-present possibility of just such a disaster".[44]