I'm doing a scavenger hunt for a class I'm taking and need to find the name of the ship that "could have saved many additional lives if only it had responded to the flares that were sent up from the Titanic". I thought I'd ask the experts. Any help? Much appreciated!

i think the ship in question was the 'Calafornian'.

BELL IS CORRECT THE NAME OF THE SHIP WAS THE CALIFORNIAN. MY QUESTION IS WHY DIDN'T THE LIFEBOATS
GO TOWARD THE LIGHTS OF THE SHIP?

I think it was about 10 miles away, or around that figure. So that may have been the reason. But the crew members in the boats would know the Carpathia was comming, so that's probably why they stayed there.

yes thats true

I think one of the reasons Californian didn't come to Titanic's aid,
was because they saw white flares. Now I'm not completely sure
what white flares mean,but red flares mean 'Distress'. Plus the
radio operator aboard Californian had gone to bed around the
time Harold Bride was calling for help.Therefore, Californian
would not have known what was going on. Yes,they were the closest ship within Titanic's position,but They probably weren't
aware of the situation. How Ironic.

The captain of the Californian was Stanley Lord. Many ridiculed him for not responding to the distress of Titanic even though he insisted that the ship his crew reported was not the Titanic. Which is highly doubtful. I mean how many ships could have been in that spot of the ocean sending white flares into the air? Many people however are Stanley Lord supporters. They have subsequently been known as Lordites.

It's a pitty that the Clifornian did not act that night.

All the historical accounts I had read before suggested that Capt. Lord dismissed the rockets as 'company signals' which was a not uncommon practice of ships from the same line firing off a rocket in salute in passing. The color issue I hadn't heard before or that idea that they were 'party rockets' before I came here. I did a little research at Wikipeadia and Encyclopedia Titanica and it seems the confusion arises out of that Captian Lord presented several reasons to the different inquires as to why he didn't respond. It seems none of them really excuse him since it also seems that the maritime regulations state that distress rockets are rockets of "any type or color" fired in short order and require that any ship seeing rockets of any color or number must investigate. It appears that company signals and party rockets are both illegal under the regulations but that does not mean they weren't used that way.

That's what I don't get about Capt. Lord. If you saw a ship firing
up rockets,wouldn't you try and investigate? Almost anybody
probably would. I sometimes wonder how many more people would have been saved if Californian arrived before Titanic sank.

I'm fairly sure that Capt. Lord and his bridge officers took some pretty hefty demons with them to their graves. The British inquiry didn't take any action against them though. There was speculation on another site I visited that already having one glaring example of British bad seamanship dominating the world press, the BOT didn't want to expand on it by dragging Lord through the mud of official charges.

The Californian could probably have saved a lot of lives had she responded but it is not sure if she would have arrived in time to evacuate everyone from Titanic before she sank. It took her about an hour and a half to get the Carpathia the next morning and at night in the ice field it would probably have been at least two hours to reach Titantic so she probably would have arrived just before or soon after she went down.

I just found the Titanic Inquiry Project site
http://www.titanicinquiry.org/index.html
This is the first chance I've had to actually read the transcript from the US and British inquiries and I'm learning a lot of little details I didn't know.