Editing Stanley Lord (section)

=== Night of ''Titanic''{{'s}} sinking ===
Over the course of the night, officers and seamen on the deck of ''Californian'' witnessed eight white rockets fired into the air over a strange ship off in the distance.

Fatigued after 17 hours on duty, Captain Stanley Lord was awakened twice during the night and told about the rockets, to which he replied that they may be "company rockets", to help ships identify themselves to liners of the same company.

Meanwhile, on the ''Titanic'', for an hour after the collision, no other ships were noticed until the lights of a ship were seen in the distance. [[Joseph Boxhall|Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall]] and [[Quartermaster]] Rowe tried in vain to contact the strange ship by [[Morse lamp]]. Nobody on the deck of the ''Californian'' saw these signals; however, they had also tried to signal the mystery ship, but were unable to get a response.

Authors Tim Maltin<!--Q119846417--> and Eloise Aston attribute Captain Lord's belief that the nearby ship was not the ''Titanic'' to visual distortions caused by cold-water mirages.<ref>Maltin, Tim and Aston, Eloise ''101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic...But Didn't'' Beautiful Books (2 April 2010)</ref> Not able to understand any messages coming from the strange ship, ''Californian''<nowiki/>'s officers eventually concluded that signals were merely the masthead flickering and not signals at all.

Throughout the night, no one on board the ''Californian'' attempted to wake their wireless operator, and ask him to contact the ship to ask why they were firing rockets and trying to signal them, until 5:30&nbsp;a.m. By then, however, it was too late&nbsp;— the ''Titanic'' had gone down at 2:20&nbsp;a.m. When it had slipped below the water, the sudden disappearance of lights was interpreted by the ''Californian'' crew to mean that it had simply steamed away.