As the Titanic lay mortally wounded, the passenger’s and crew’s hopes for rescue were buoyed by a mysterious ship that lay just a few miles ahead of the dying leviathan. Despite distress signals being sent up the stranger lay still, ignoring the pleas for help. Salvation eventually came from a ship that had steamed for hours through an ice infested area..

Who was this mysterious stranger that left the Titanic to die? Why did she not respond?

The 1912 inquiries pointed an accusing finger at the steamship Californian, under the command of Stanley Lord. His ship had seen a strange vessel and rockets which, superficially anyway, seemed to mirror those desperately sent up by the Titanic. But Stanley Lord always denied and resented the charges that his ship had wilfully ignored calls for assistance. Many people believed him to be criminally negligent in not aiding others pleading for help, and one writer in 1912 called Captain Lord “The Thousand-Fold Murderer”.

The charges were dredged up again by author Walter Lord in the 1950s, forcing many reassessments of Captain Lord’s case. Were he and his ship to blame? Or did an unknown vessel leave 1500 people to die in the frigid North Atlantic waters?

The Californian incident has caused more division within the ranks of Titanic researchers than any other matter. Was Lord to blame, ignoring distress signals and failing to wake up his wireless operator to investigate; or was Lord not to blame, seeing another vessel firing rockets that steamed away – during a time when the Titanic was undoubtedly stopped? Were the Titanic and the Californian in sight of each other?

Subject to divisive debate and inflamed controversy for nearly 100 years, the case of Captain Lord (right) has provoked more ire within the Titanic community than any other aspect of the disaster, excepting possibly the topic of salvage.

Lord and his ship, the sleepy Californian, were accused of failing to respond to the Titanic’s distress rockets and leaving 1500 souls to die in the icy North Atlantic. But now, thanks to recently released Government records and the bequeathed research of two writers intimately involved in the case, the full story can at last be told in “The Titanic and the Indifferent Stranger,” a new book from Paul Lee.

This new book discusses the evidence and accusations, and includes new information obtained from a number of sources, many of which have never before been published.

Dr. Paul Lee obtained a first class degree in Physics from Southampton University in 1993; four years later, he graduated with a PhD in Nuclear Physics from York University. He has held an interest in the Titanic since 1985, when the wreck was found. He has lectured on the Titanic at the White Swan hotel in Alnwick, which housed fittings from the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, when she was scrapped in the 1930s.

This is his first book.