United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic

[1] When news of the disaster reached Senator William Alden Smith, he saw an opportunity to establish an inquiry to investigate marine safety issues.

[3] Despite this, Smith took the initiative and on April 17, 1912 he addressed the Senate and proposed a resolution that would grant the Committee on Commerce powers to establish a hearing to investigate the sinking.

The following day Smith met with President Taft, who had just received the news that his friend and military advisor Archibald Butt was not on the list of survivors.

Taft and Smith arranged additional measures related to the inquiry, including a naval escort for Carpathia to ensure no-one left the ship before it docked.

[3] That afternoon, Smith, fellow senator and subcommittee member Francis G. Newlands, and other officials, traveled by train to New York, planning to arrive in time to meet Carpathia as it docked on the evening of 18 April 1912.

[21] Others called to give testimony included Phillip A. S. Franklin, vice president of International Mercantile Marine Co., the shipping consortium headed by J. P. Morgan that controlled White Star Line.

[26] However, it did not find IMM or the White Star Line negligent under existing maritime laws, as they had merely followed standard practice, and the disaster could thus only be categorised as an "act of God".

[29] Towards the end of his speech, Smith declared: The calamity through which we have just passed has left traces of sorrow everywhere; hearts have been broken and deep anguish unexpressed; art will typify with master hand its lavish contribution to the sea; soldiers of state and masters of trade will receive the homage which is their honest due; hills will be cleft in search of marble white enough to symbolize these heroic deeds, and, where kinship is the only tie that binds the lowly to the humble home bereft of son or mother or father, little groups of kinsfolk will recount, around the kitchen fire, the traits of human sympathy in those who went down with the ship.

These are choice pictures in the treasure house of the affections, but even these will sometime fade; the sea is the place permanently to honor our dead; this should be the occasion for a new birth of vigilance, and future generations must accord to this event a crowning motive for better things.

[30] Rayner's closing words drew applause from the assembled Senators: The sounds of that awe-inspiring requiem that vibrated o'er the ocean have been drowned in the waters of the deep, the instruments that gave them birth are silenced as the harps were silenced on the willow tree, but if the melody that was rehearsed could only reverberate through this land "Nearer, My God, to Thee," and its echoes could be heard in these halls of legislation, and at every place where our rulers and representatives pass judgment and enact and administer laws, and at every home and fireside, from the mansions of the rich to the huts and hovels of the poor, and if we could be made to feel that there is a divine law of obedience and of adjustment, and of compensation that should demand our allegiance, far above the laws that we formulate in this presence, then, from the gloom of these fearful hours we shall pass into the dawn of a higher service and of a better day, and then, Mr. President, the lives that went down upon this fated night did not go down in vain.

[31]Smith proposed three pieces of legislation: a joint resolution with the House of Representatives to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Captain Rostron of the Carpathia; a bill to re-evaluate existing maritime legislation; and another joint resolution to establish a commission to enquire into the laws and regulations on the construction and equipment of maritime vessels.

[32] The inquiry was heavily criticized in Britain, both for its conduct and for Smith's style of questioning, which on one occasion saw him asking Titanic's Fifth Officer Harold Lowe if he knew what an iceberg was made of.

The Morning Post asserted that "a schoolboy would blush at Mr. Smith's ignorance" while the Daily Mirror denounced him for having "made himself ridiculous in the eyes of British seamen.

"[35] The Daily Telegraph suggested that the inquiry was fatally flawed by employing non-experts, which had "effectively illustrated the inability of the lay mind to grasp the problem of marine navigation.

Smith's own antecedents attracted ridicule; the Daily Express called him "a backwoodsman from Michigan", which the newspaper characterized as a state "populated by kangaroos and by cowboys with an intimate acquaintance of prairie schooners as the only kind of boat".

Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, spoke of his contempt for the way the senator had put the blame in a "denunciatory" fashion on the inadequate regulations implemented by the British Board of Trade.

The British Ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, demanded that President Taft should dissolve the committee and refused to recognise its jurisdiction.

The New York Herald published a supportive editorial commenting: "Nothing has been more sympathetic, more gentle in its highest sense than the conduct of the inquiry by the Senate committee, and yet self-complacent moguls in England call this impertinent ...