The inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic may have been influenced by the Freemasons, new evidence suggests.
A secret archive containing the names of two million Freemasons has been made public for the first time on the genealogy site Ancestry which reveals extensive Masonic involvement in the controversial British investigation into the catastrophe.
It confirms that not only the judge who oversaw the British Wreck Commissioner’s inquiry into the disaster and leading investigators, but also even some of those who escaped censure were all Freemasons.
While a US Senate inquiry into the sinking savaged the White Star Line and singled out the British Board of Trade for blame for lax regulations which allowed the scandalously small number of lifeboats fitted on the ship, the UK investigation overseen by Lord Mersey avoided blaming the Board of Trade.
Lord Mersey himself - John Charles Bigham - was, the records show, a Freemason, initiated in 1881 at the Northern Bar Lodge in London.
Crucially, so too appears to have been the President of the Board of Trade Sydney Buxton, initiated at Limehouse in East London in 1888 where he was the local MP at the time.
The names of at least two of the inquiry’s five expert assessors – Prof John Harvard Biles, a specialist in naval architecture, and Edward Chaston, the senior engineer assessor – can also be found in the Masonic archive.
Meanwhile Lord Pirrie, who was not only chairman of the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast which built the Titanic but, crucially, also one of the directors of White Star’s parent company, also appears to have been a Freemason.
The peer was born William Pirrie in Quebec in 1847. The records show a William Pirrie initiated at St George's Lodge in Montreal in 1904.
Titanic Expert Nic Compton, author of Titanic on Trial told History.com: “The Titanic inquiry in Britain was branded a ‘whitewash’ because it exonerated most of those involved. Only three passengers were interviewed, and they were all from first class.
“Even Captain Smith was exonerated on the grounds that most other ships at that time also sped through the ice at full speed with no serious consequences.
“The only person both inquiries heaped scorn on was the captain of SS Californian, the ship that had stood by about eight miles off, its crew watching the emergency flares being fired by Titanic, without doing anything about it until it was too late.”
Mr Compton said the British inquiry got drawn into more populist issues, such as whether Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon had paid the crew of Lifeboat 1 a bribe not to go back and pick up swimmers and whether Bruce Ismay had behaved like a coward.
The passenger line sank in the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of April 15 1912 after colliding with an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
Lookout Frederick Fleet had spotted the iceberg and altered the bridge but by the time First Officer William Murdoch had ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines put in reverse, it was too late. The ship was carrying only enough life boats for half the passengers, the crew were not trained for a full evacuation. In all, more than 1500 people died and 700 survived the disaster.
The British inquiry was headed by the Board of Trade who had approved the ship, and some believed it had little interest in finding itself or White Star negligent.
It concluded that Captain Smith had done "only that which other skilled men would have done in the same position" and neither White Star or its parent company, the International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM) was found negligent.
However the new Freemason links cast new light on the proceedings.
“The records demonstrate the extensive involvement which freemasons have had in British society,” said Diane Clements, director of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry.
“As freemasonry approaches its 300th birthday in 2017, we are pleased to be able to provide access to details of past members.”
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