Truth about Titanic ‘scapegoat’ accused of abandoning his post revealed

In James Cameron’s Titanic, First Officer William Murdoch draws his revolver on crowds of panicked passengers trying to board the life rafts.

Murdoch, the bribe-taking cowardly officer in charge of the bridge, shoots two passengers during the rush before turning the gun on himself.

To some, this isn’t too far off from what happened aboard the Titanic, with some accusing the ‘Scottish scapegoat’ of abandoning his post.

While some witnesses described a man assumed to be Murdoch opening fire at passengers, his family and crewmates said he saved lives.

But a new documentary has revealed what really happened.

Officer Murdoch died when the White Star Line steamship sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after smashing into an iceberg.

Titanic: The Digital Resurrection saw deep sea scanning company Magellan map a 3D model of the Titanic based on 715,000 photos and millions of laser measurements.

Top historians, engineers and forensic experts then used the 1:1 digital twin to recreate the final moments after the Titanic struck an iceberg.

When the Titanic was torn open by the iceberg at about 11.40pm on April 14, 1912, Murdoch was tasked with evacuating staff on the starboard side.

They found that a davit – a crane used to lower lifeboats – at Murdoch’s station ‘suggests his crew was preparing a launch moments before the starboard side was engulfed’, National Geographic said.

But before he could, as Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the highest-ranking officer to survive the disaster, claimed, he was swept at sea.

Anthony Geffen, the filmmaker behind the documentary, told Metro: ‘You think you’re looking at a ship, but actually there are clues that can be decoded.

‘First Officer Murdoch, in the investigations that followed, was often seen as a bad guy because he didn’t launch the last lifeboat.

‘In fact, Parks Stephenson found what’s called a davit that proved he was trying to launch the last lifeboat but couldn’t.’

The team’s findings ‘add to the evidence exonerating First Officer Murdoch, long accused of abandoning his post’, National Geographic added.

Born February 28, 1873, in the town of Dalbeattie, Scotland, Murdoch was known as a ‘canny and dependable man’ to those who knew him.

With 16 years of experience on the seas, the 39-year-old was the clear choice to help lead the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

He was initially tapped to be the boat’s Chief Officer but the staff were reshuffled to have Henry Tingle Wilde at the top.

The moments when Murdoch was helping evacuate the some 2,200 passengers and crew – 1,500 of which would die – have long been a mystery.

Historians have said Murdoch handled the situation ‘in the most efficient and logical way possible’, including letting men hop on the lifeboats as well we women and children.

Charles Pellegrino, who wrote William McMaster Murdoch, Titanic Hero Unstuck in Time, wrote that ‘all told, nearly 75% of the people who rowed away from the Titanic that night owed their lives to Murdoch’.

Between 12.40am and 2.15am, he helped launch 11 lifeboats. Of the 712 survivors, 436 were on lifeboats.

Yet the survivors don’t need to only thank Murdoch, added Geffen.

‘We know a lot more, and I think that’s great, but to sit and say we know everything isn’t true. There are so many mysteries about it, but I think we’ve solved some quite important mysteries too,’ he said.

‘I think we’ve also shown some people who have never really been given credit, who saved hundreds of lives, and those are the engineers and boilermen who literally knew by going down and working in the boiler room, they were going to die.

‘That’s pretty heroic.’

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