Titanic Scandal

As Titanic sank, a 'mystery' ship was spotted some distance away. Rockets were fired but the ship ignored them. The Californian was blamed but was the mystery ship really the Mount Temple?

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From the day she sank in April 1912 to the present, one of the enduring mysteries of the Titanic disaster was the single-funneled, four-masted 'mystery ship', sighted as the White Star liner, outward bound on her maiden voyage, began to slip beneath the calm waters of the iceberg-strewn North Atlantic. The Leyland liner SS Californian has been blamed, but was she the real mystery ship - the one that ignored the distress rockets sent up by Titanic's officers? The ship that was so close that she could have saved the lives of almost all on board the doomed Titanic? Was there another ship in the vicinity? There were many ships close by that night, including ones not fitted with radio, but the most likely candidate, using the circumstantial evidence available at the time, is Canadian Pacific's SS Mount Temple. Journalist Senan Molony, Titanic enthusiast and author of many books and articles on Titanic, gives us the evidence for and against Mount Temple, including cryptic clues given by passengers on that fateful voyage as well as the evidence that many of her officers left the ship at her first port of call after the sinking.