Titanic and SS New York near miss and the stabbing of an officer

It was April 10, 1912, as the mighty Titanic was being towed out of Southampton to embark on her infamous maiden voyage that Captain Smith ordered her powerful engines to open up but the suction caused by the propellers unexpectedly resulted in the steel hawsers securing the berthed New York to snap, loosening her from her moorings and drift towards the Titanic. Smith quickly ordered the port propeller to be reversed and the instinctive reaction of the skipper of the tugboat Vulcan in throwing a line to the New York enabled the latter to slow her drift and prevent a collision.

The Titanic continued her voyage, only to be sunk by an iceberg a few days later with the loss of more than 1,500 passengers and crew.

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Three years earlier, Lohman, 33, a fireman on the New York, was involved in another drama at the docks but one of his own creation. He was charged with attempted murder at Hampshire Assizes when he stabbed Pc Walter Shefferd in the chest.

"He was acting like a madman," the officer said of his armed confrontation at the main gate to the docks.

In the early hours of October 25, 1909, Lohman was returning inebriated from a night out on the town. Neither man recognised the other and when the seaman tried to enter the docks, Shefferd rebuffed him. Though Lohman ordinarily had every right to rejoin his ship, regulations decreed he could not do so if a police officer considered him drunk and needed an escort for his own safety.

The violence then erupted when the thoroughly obnoxious Lohman refused to say on which liner he was working when challenged. 

"I tried to get him away from the gates when he rushed at me and struck me in the chest," Shefferd recalled of the attack which also left his tunic ripped. He was ushered to a waiting room where colleague Sgt Pugh rendered first aid until a doctor arrived and found the constable had suffered a chest wound that required four stitches.

"The wound itself was not dangerous but was in a dangerous region," Dr Welch, based in nearby Oxford Street, declared. "He was not in much danger and it was probable the blade glanced off a bone in an upward direction."

Lohman staggered away after the fracas but then suddenly returned to the scene where Pugh arrested him, discovering the bloodstained blade in his pocket. "That's the knife I used to cut my way through the gates," he confessed.

The sergeant admitted he had not seen Lohman strike the blow but said of his condition. "He was drunk but not very drunk. He was very excited and used foul language all the time."

For the defence, Walter Lloyd contended the seaman was so inebriated he could not have formed any intention to murder or cause Shefferd any serious injury. "He had been refused admittance, and when the gate was opened and the officer came out, it was natural that in drink, he thought the policeman was coming for him and it was necessary for him to defend himself."

In summing up, Mr Justice Phillimore advised the jury to clear Lohman of the serious charge and consider whether he was guilty of wounding.  They took a mere few seconds to concur but then learnt knife crime was not alien to him. He had once been jailed for six months for stabbing another officer in similar circumstances.

Detective Inspector Tupper revealed it could have led to more serious consequences. "He used a knife and tore through the constable's trousers. But for a bystander picking it up, no doubt further injury would have been done."The judge told Lohman that if he had been charged with murder and found guilty, he would have faced execution. "This is your second offence and while you are liable to be sent to penal servitude for five years, I will pass a sentence of 18 months with hard labour. But be warned - the next occasion, the sentence will be that of penal servitude."