Buff, TSstudios and MGY Friend....The Californian was probably at most 12 miles away. I do believe in my research that twelve is the most probable number. Captain Lord claims that his ship was 19 miles away from the sinking and stood by that. We know that his coordinates are fairly accurate. The Titanic's however were not right....in fact they were 7 miles off of the 41 46 N, 50 14 W degrees. That makes 12 miles between the two. Also, both moved in the current at the same pace, so any movement of the ships positions would also alter the same. I have said many times, I do believe that they failed to respond properly to the distress calls. But think about this way, the Californian had no idea what was going on 12 miles away. When they heard, they did whatever they could to assist the Carpathia and search for survivors. I doubt it would have mattered anyways.


Now lets say that the Californian responded after the first CQD. That would have been at 12:15am. It took them about 2 1/2 to 3 hours in the daylight to reach the Carpathia. Although they traveled through the ice field first, and took a longer way. With the ice so thick and pack, in the dark would make it even harder to steer through the ice that surrounded them. Also keep in mind, the Californian was a single screw, 13 knot ship. Even if they did everything in their power, it would have still been too late. They perhaps could have arrived just has the vessel was plunging to the bottom(2:15am...if we go by the 2 hour rescue, which is unlikely).

Here's a quote from an author who has done some research on the rescue by The Californian:

"In reality, if Californian had raced to the site of the disaster, it would only have rescued Captain Lord's reputation and robbed Arthur Henry Rostron of his moment in fame. At top speed, Californian would have arrived just at the time of Titanic's stern pointed into the sky like a black finger of death. A few nearly frozen survivors might have been plucked from the water-but only a few. Survivors bobbing in the lifeboats might have still been waiting in the first light of dawn for rescue, because retrieving lifeboats in the darkness would have been dangerous."

-The Last Log of the Titanic" written by David Brown.

Also check out this website: http://home.earthlink.net/~dnitzer/Frameset.html

If you scroll down the left side toolbar, you'll see a Bold "Updates."
Click on "Maps of the Area" to get an idea where the two lay that night.

Hope this helps!