By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 April 2024

James Cameron’s 1997 film, Titanic, has a scene showing First Officer William Murdoch shooting several male passengers who try to force their way onto the final lifeboats just before the ship sinks and then shooting himself. This caused great controversy with the Murdoch family because it picked at a wound that was already nearly a century old. The story of Murdoch killing himself originates from survivor testimony in the immediate aftermath of the disaster in April 1912, and it was denied just as quickly by Charles Lightoller, the Second Officer and most senior crewman to live, who was loading the lifeboats on the other side of the ship.

Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (1955), the account of the Titanic disaster that has dominated the public discussion since publication in 1955 and the major source for Cameron’s film, summarily dismisses the idea of Murdoch’s suicide as a media fabrication, and it is absolutely true that the press appetite for sensationalism created many myths in 1912—some told by survivors, some invented by journalists’ distortions of what survivors said, many of them enduring.

The difficulty is that Lightoller is not a disinterested witness, either: he had an obvious motive to say what he did, to protect Murdoch’s widow. Indeed, Lightoller’s first denial that Murdoch had killed himself was in a letter to Ada Murdoch on 24 April 1912. Lightoller wrote that he was “practically the last man, and certainly the last officer, to see Mr. Murdoch”, before going on to claim he was “practically looking down on your husband and his men” when “the ship dived, and we were all in the water. Other reports as to the ending are absolutely false. Mr. Murdoch died like a man, doing his duty.”

THE EVIDENCE

To try to assess all this, we can turn to On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic (2012), by Tad Fitch, Bill Wormstedt, and J. Kent Layton, possibly the most comprehensive account of the Titanic disaster.

The authors of On a Sea of Glass note upfront that a lot of the witness statements about a crewman committing suicide on deck were “dubious”, and for precisely the reason Lord indicates: “many accounts of an officer’s suicide were fabricated by reporters”; some were even publicly “refuted by the people they were attributed to”. Moreover, a lot of the survivors’ accounts, when examined closely, involve people saying they heard gunshots, and many turn out to be second-hand accounts from people who were told about a shooting.

Some historians have suggested the shots heard in these accounts refer to those fired in the air by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe during the launch of Lifeboat 14 around 1:25 on 15 April 1912, but the On a Sea of Glass authors are sceptical of this, and for good reason. Though “many of the survivor accounts disagree with each other” about exact details, the context of accounts tend to place the shots quite firmly during the endgame after 2:00.

(The final two main lifeboats were launched at 1:50. Two smaller lifeboats, Collapsible Boat C and Collapsible Boat D, were launched at 2:00 and 2:05, respectively. The bow of the Titanic was underwater by 2:10, with the stern lifted out of the water. The hull broke at 2:17 and by 2:20 the ship had sunk.)

For all that, as On a Sea of Glass explains, there are two passengers who claim to have seen an officer shoot himself during the launch of either Collapsible C (launched from the starboard side by Murdoch) or D (launched by Lightoller on the port side): George Rheims from first class and Eugene Daly from third class, who had never met each other before that night and who had no contact after they were back on land. (The only possible contact between the two was during the struggle to free Collapsible Boat A, which was washed overboard at 2:15.) Crucially, Rheims made his claim in private letters to family that were never intended to become public and Daly mentioned it as part of a court case. A refutation would have to posit a reason why both men independently told exactly the same false story.

As to whether any passengers were shot, there is the testimony of Karl Albert Midtsjø, a third-class passenger from Norway: “someone was shot when they tried to push their way into the boats”. This was in a private latter, which adds to its credibility, but it is ambiguous which lifeboats he is referring to—in context it seems to mean Collapsible C or D—and an even more serious problem is that it is unclear Midtsjø is referring to something he personally witnessed.

Then there is another private letter, by Saloon Steward Walter Nichols, who wrote to his sister that while he was sitting “a couple hundred feet away” in Lifeboat 15, he saw “two flashes and heard two revolver reports from near the bridge”. Adding to Nichols’ credibility, he makes no sensational claims, writing: “I did not know what the shots meant.” But Nichols describes this happening when the Titanic “was down a good deal by the head”, with “the propeller … sticking half way out of the water”, at a time when “all the [main] boats had been lowered”. This is in tension with Rheims’ and Daly’s account, since it suggests it was after 2:10, thus after Collapsibles C and D had been launched, and took place during the scrimmage to free Collapsible A.

Of the public statements about shootings on the Titanic, many tended to be cumulatively embellished; some only included a suicide in later versions. Probably the most credible of the statements to the newspapers comes from third-class passenger Edward Dorking, an Englishman, who said an officer “shot down” several men to enforce the women-and-children-first rule and then turned his pistol on himself once the boat was away. Dorking was open in saying he could not identify who had committed suicide. Notably, Dorking’s story is consistent with Daly and Rheims.

THE VERDICT

On a Sea of Glass offers no verdict: “There is no way of telling for certain whether a shooting/suicide happened.” This is true, and also somewhat evasive. History deals in probabilities, not certainties, and the book’s own evidence points to a conclusion beyond 50/50.

Adding it all together, amid all the confusing and contradictory and sensational testimony, the evidence makes it more likely than not that:

• There was an attempt by men to storm at least one of the two collapsible lifeboats, C and D, and probably both, as they were being launched between 2:00 and 2:05 (the men were probably mostly from third class: a crowd of them, understandably agitated by that point in the evening, had emerged on the deck from below as the flooding took over);
• Shots were fired into the crowd (the evidence is very hazy on whether anyone was killed. Some claimed two Italians were killed. Victor Sunderland, an English passenger in third class, said a Russian was shot dead actually in a lifeboat. Who knows);
• One of the crewman who fired shots then killed himself.

If one concurs with this judgment, the options for the identity of the crewman who committed suicide are very limited.

The launching of the first distress rocket from the deck at 00:45 had changed the mood on board, dispelling for most any illusions about what was happening. The priority of the crew all night was avoiding panic that could lead to disorders that disrupted the evacuation. It was with this in mind that at some point in the next ten minutes or so, led by Chief Officer Henry Wilde, the senior officers went to the munitions cabinet. Wilde took a Webley revolver, pressed one on Lightoller, and Murdoch and Captain Edward Smith took one each. The authors of On a Sea of Glass are emphatic that there is “absolutely no evidence” Wilde distributed firearms to anyone else. The weapon Lowe had was his own, a Browning automatic, and he was off the ship half-hour and more before the events around Collapsibles C and D.

None of the claims of those who say they saw Captain Smith’s death hold up to scrutiny: he probably died on the bridge, going down with his ship, but we simply do not know.

Murdoch is the man “most often mentioned” as the officer who committed suicide in the final moments of the Titanic drama, the authors of On a Sea of Glass note, and this was true from the first moment the stories circulated. Significantly, the stories around Murdoch mentioned him by name, not just rank. There is good evidence that Murdoch fired shots during the loading of Collapsible Boat C, so he was willing to use his weapon. And though Lightoller said Murdoch was swept away while working on Collapsible Boat A, the authors document that Lightoller is the only person to make that claim. Archibald Gracie, for instance, who definitely did work to cut Collapsible A loose, never saw Murdoch. In the confusion, perhaps Colonel Gracie simply did not see Murdoch, or perhaps Murdoch was already dead and Lightoller invented the detail.

Without engaging in too much amateur psychology, a factor that has to be considered is that Murdoch had given the instructions to try to avoid the iceberg, against best maritime practice to hit bergs head-on, and that decision had doomed the Titanic. Murdoch must have known that if he survived, he would be blamed in public for what had happened and his career was probably over. On top of that—as was proved with White Star Line director Bruce Ismay—to survive at all risked becoming a prolonged living death.

It is a glaring omission—the proverbial dog that did not bark in the night—that none of the survivors named Lightoller as among the officers who shot would-be stowaways, despite the fact there almost certainly were shots fired during the loading of Collapsible Boat D and that Lightoller, by his own account, fired some of them. Lightoller told Gracie later he had fired warning shots, and the lack of any claims that go beyond this—notwithstanding every incentive to do so with the newspapers hunting for sensational details—makes it likely this is true.

Yet it does seem fatal shots were fired as Collapsible D was being filled up. Saloon Steward James Littlejohn said an officer “shot one of the Italian waiters belonging to the restaurant because he got into a boat and would not come out of it when he was told to”. Littlejohn says the shooter was the “chief officer”. Now, there is some ambiguity here, because “chief officer” was used as a synonym for First Officer in some of the survivor testimonies that pretty clearly referred to Murdoch, and there was additional confusion because Murdoch actually had been slated to be Chief Officer, until Wilde was seconded from the Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship. But Littlejohn was a crewman and knew both men: in all likelihood he is referring to Wilde. Other evidence makes it overwhelmingly probable Wilde “at least threatened men rushing Collapsible D with a gun”.

Any effort to reason from Wilde taking the initiative to distribute firearms has to be tempered by the “circumstantial evidence that Murdoch may have asked for the revolvers prior to Wilde’s having done so”. Some suggested Wilde was despondent, even suicidal, because of the death of his wife and two sons about eighteen months earlier from a sudden disease. As against that, Wilde was set to be given his own command after completing the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

The fact pattern, as summed up in On a Sea of Glass, is striking, though: “Wilde’s whereabouts very late in the sinking are curiously absent from survivor accounts. The last confirmed place that he was seen was during the loading of Collapsible D. Lightoller was vague about where Wilde may have gone after he sighted him there … and there is no known evidence that Wilde was seen after the loading of that boat.”

In other words, Wilde disappears from the record at exactly the moment that would be expected if he had committed suicide during the launching of Collapsible D. The legend of Wilde being seen right at the end, smoking a cigarette on the bridge and waving to Lightoller as Lightoller jumped off the Titanic, was overthrown by Lightoller himself, and it is Lightoller who holds the keys to this mystery.

In 1995, German Titanic enthusiast Susanne Störmer published a biography of Murdoch, and in the course of her research she discovered that Lightoller admitted to a friend years later that he “knew someone who committed suicide that night”. Lightoller never said who it was, but from the above the balance of probability is he meant Murdoch or Wilde.

(Sidenote: Störmer caused an uproar in Titanic aficionado circles with her effort to “exculpate” Murdoch and argue that the officer who committed suicide was Sixth Officer James Moody, which does seem to be genuinely mad—the evidence is clear Moody was not armed that night, among other things—but neither On a Sea of Glass nor any other historians have challenged the authenticity of the Lightoller quote.)

In looking for clues about the man Lightoller was referring to, let us conclude where we began: with Lightoller’s public refutation of the reports Murdoch had committed suicide. Admittedly such claims about Wilde were never so numerous, but why did Lightoller never try to counter them? Some mocked the British post-disaster investigation as “censure so light it sounded like applause”, and, though this was unfair, to the extent it was true, a primary reason was Lightoller, who was notorious even at the time for his protectiveness over the reputations of White Star and his officers. So why not a word in “defence” of Wilde?

Was it because Lightoller knew the rumours about Wilde were false, and had confidence the truth would win out on that front, but felt a need to use his prestige to dispel the rumours about Murdoch, since he knew they were true?

Or was Lightoller genuinely enraged that a lie was being told about Murdoch, and his silence about Wilde was a tacit admission?

Richard Edkins, another Murdoch biographer and resident of Murdoch’s hometown, Dalbeattie, in Scotland, offered an interpretation that is indicative of the latter. Edkins acknowledges that Lightoller was a company man with a whitewashing tendency about officers’ reputations, writing that Lightoller’s “evidence can be relied upon where others’ evidence corroborates it … The evidence of the painfully honest Harold Bride, the Second Wireless Operator, corroborates that of Lightoller in regard to Murdoch’s final moments”. Edkins, therefore, concludes, Lightoller’s letter to this effect to Mrs. Murdoch should be seen as demonstrating “impulsive outrage, rather than an attempt to conceal the truth”.

The difficulty is that premise of Edkins’ argument is untenable: it is very clear from Bride’s own testimony in 1912 that he did not know the Titanic officers, neither by name nor by sight, and his ostensible corroboration of Lightoller’s claims about Murdoch’s last moment came more than four decades later.

The evidence, then, is suggestive that an officer did commit suicide on the Titanic, but can only take us as far as saying it was probably Murdoch or Wilde.

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Post has been corrected about Bride’s testimony. Thanks to George Behe in the comments for drawing my attention to the mistake.