Second Officer Herbert Stone

Wow, this last day was really weird. I might have seen the Unsinkable Titanic, said to be the biggest ship of our time on her maiden It all started when I took my turn on the night shift aboard the SS Californian. I walked to the bridge of the ship. I was walking around until I saw a big white flash in the distance. I had no idea what it was. I got my binoculars out and looked to find something.

It was a ship. It seemed to be about 5 miles away. I told Captain Lord about the flash and about a ship in the distance. Like us, it seemed to be stopped, not wanting to be moving at night with icebergs around.

Why would they have sent up a white rocket? Maybe they were trying to communicate to us, or another ship behind us. Then all of a sudden another went up about 3 minutes from the last one. I told the captain about the possibilities of it being a distress signal. He told me to call them on the Morse lamp. I received no reply.

Then, the rockets started going in intervals of 3-4 minutes. My apprentice, Gibson, and I were looking at the ship for about an hour. Then it started seeming that one side of the ship was getting higher than the other. That was really strange.

I asked the captain what we should do. He asked “Are the rockets were company signals.” I replied, “I don’t know?” Then he said, “If they aren’t company signals and you can’t get ahold of them. We are not leaving.” I couldn’t think of a reason why we wouldn’t go and see what

Then at about 1:40 it started to disappear as if it was leaving. I couldn’t see some of the lights I saw before so it must have turned. After 20 minutes. I couldn’t see it anymore. I couldn’t see anything. I told the captain and I went on with my shift. The longer I worked the longer I thought about it. “It could have sunk.” I was thinking. I couldn’t get to sleep thinking about it.

Earlier today I heard about the sinking of the “Unsinkable” Titanic, the most luxurious ship in the White Star Line Fleet. The 1,000+ people who died because of the ship not having enough lifeboats for the 2,000+ passengers it had. That must be one of the greatest losses of life this I witnessed it sinking, and we didn’t do anything about it. I told the captain about the sinking and how that ship that we saw last night could’ve been the Titanic.