Not long after the Titanic sank on April 14, 1912, there were calls on both sides of the Atlantic for an inquiry not only into why the liner went down on its maiden voyage, but why there was such an extraordinary loss of life.
In the US, the Senate blamed not only the vessel’s owner, the White Star Line, but also the British Board of Trade for allowing her to sail with far too few lifeboats.
In Britain, however, the official inquiry appeared lenient to the point of farce – possibly owing to the high-level involvement of a number of leading Masons who may have had a vested interest in covering up for their fellow members.
The investigation was headed by a Free-mason – Lord Mersey – initiated into a lodge in London in 1881. The President of the Board of Trade, Sydney Buxton, was a Mason, who was also a member of a London lodge.
It is claimed that Lord Pirrie, the chairman of the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic and a director of White Star’s parent company, was a Mason. And, furthermore, two of the inquiry’s experts were Freemasons. Professor John Biles, a specialist in naval architecture, had joined the Clausentum Lodge in Woolston in Hampshire in 1890, and Edward Chaston, a senior marine engineer, had been initiated into the St Nicholas Lodge in Newcastle the same year.
Today, we cannot be sure that all these men deliberately worked together to undermine the investigation, but the strong suspicion is that it was in their common interest for the inquiry to be a whitewash – as many believe it proved to be.
It concluded that the Board of Trade’s oversight and regulation, the White Star Line and the captain were not to blame. It was the fault of excessive speed and the iceberg. – Daily Mail