Its Bruce iSMAY’S FAULT
J. Bruce Ismay at the time of the disaster, as chairman and managing director of the White Star Line, was held to blame for the loss of the Titanic by the American press; especially those controlled by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate and one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Ismay had met Hearst years before, when he was White Star’s agent in New York. The two men disliked each other intensely and Ismay’s refusal to cooperate with the press infuriated the newspaperman storing up problems for the future. Almost twenty years after their first meeting it was the Hearst syndicated press who prosecuted a vicious campaign against him, a full-page cartoon depicting Ismay in a lifeboat watching the sinking Titanic and captioned, “This is J. Brute Ismay” and “We respectfully suggest that the emblem of the White Star be changed to that of a yellow liver.” The Denver Post, another member of his syndicated press, published the following prose on 19 April 1912
J. Bruce Ismay did not order or put pressure on the commander or chief engineer to make a record passage to New York for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. On the North Atlantic there were defined lanes or tracks which all passenger and cargo liners followed. The northern track, taken during the months of August to December, was approximately 200 miles shorter than the southern, used between January to July. The Titanic was sailing on the southern track, as her sister had done in June 1911. The Titanic, in common with her sister, adopted White Star’s policy of vessels of huge size and moderate speed, affording great comfort to their passengers. All thoughts of Atlantic speed records had been given up decades before, and far from the imagination of a few deluded passengers, speed records in ships not designed for high speed, was a costly venture both in fuel and potential engine damage. Several of the Titanic’s boilers had not been lit and because of the problem of fuel supply connected with the coal strike in Britain, economy was the watchword for this particular voyage. It was, and always had been, impractical for anyone to order the master of a transatlantic liner to arrive at a port ahead of schedule. The time for docking the vessel, supplying coal, water, fresh food and not least the arrangements made for hotel bookings and railway connections by her passengers, would all be upset. Some years ago an interesting collection of letters was discovered written between J. Bruce Ismay and various directors of the IMMC [International Mercantile Marine Company], which reveal that the directors of IMMC in New York wanted the Olympic to arrive ahead of her scheduled date, rather than Ismay, who rejected these moves; proving that White Star’s chairman wished to pursue company policy by keeping the transatlantic service running to its established timetable.
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