Third Officer Max Dittmar-Pittmann - Memoirs of an Imposter*

Memoirs or Pure Fabrication?

In 1926, Kapitän Max Dittmar-Pittmann, a.D. (retired), published his memoirs entitled Ein Menschenalter auf dem Meere. Erlebnisse und Abenteuer eines alten Seemanns (A Lifetime on the Sea. Experiences and Adventures of an Old Seaman). The preface to this slim volume of 124 pages points out that while many books are published on the subject of adventurous stories set both on land and on the sea, they are to a large extent pure fabrication. By contrast, Max Dittmar-Pittmann claims, his memoirs, based on the diaries he kept, are recording the events he describes truthfully and without any embellishment. He concludes by reassuring the readers that they 'can rest in the certainty that even the most unusual of the recounted adventures really occurred and in the way described'.

His life, as Max Dittmar-Pittmann describes it, was indeed full of fantastic and incredible adventures: storms, shipwrecks, and exotic places all feature strongly in his tale. That at least part (if not all) of his life's story is pure fabrication becomes clear in the last chapter of the book in which Dittmar-Pittmann describes his time as the Third Officer of the Titanic.

The style of the book is, however, at least from a modern perspective, strangely bland. The fact that he mentions hardly any dates or names, both people and ships are usually referred to by their initial, was a not an unknown practice at the time. However, this makes it almost impossible to check any of the events he describes.

It is possible, that Dittmar-Pittmann had some experience on the sea, it is equally possible, he just read enough to write convincingly enough for unsuspecting readers. Susanne Störmer has attempted to find out more about Max Dittmar-Pittmann, but - also due to German privacy laws - has been unable to do so. (s. Susanne Störmer, Titanic. Eine Katastrophe zwischen Kitsch, Kult und Legende (Books on Demand GmbH, Elmshorn, 2000), p. 29).

After the publication of his memoirs, Dittmar-Pittmann gave lectures about his life and particularly about his time on the Titanic. It would be interesting to know whether he gave a more detailed description of the sinking of the Titanic in these. This could have been the basis for the strikingly similar description of the disaster in the two German novels about the subject published in the 1930s. One of the authors, Josef Pelz von Felinau, did know Dittmar-Pittmann personally and based his novel on Dittmar-Pittmann's 'recollections'.

Adventurous Life on Sea and Land

Dittmar-Pittmann also claims that he had been shipwrecked twice prior to the sinking of the Titanic. The first time, the cargo of coal catches fire, but it is possible for the crew, including the German captain and his four daughters as well as the ship's cat and her litter of kittens, to make it into the two boats. Only the boat containing Dittmar-Pittmann, several crew members and two of the daughters are rescued, after having, in their desperation, eaten the cats. The second shipwreck occurs when a steamer runs over the sailing vessel in thick fog and cutting it in two. Dittmar-Pittmann is ultimately the only survivor. The second survivor of the collision dies in hospital after being picked up from the sea. His name, one of the few Dittmar-Pittman mentions in full, is Petersen.

Next to his career at sea, Max Dittmar-Pittmann also works as a guard at a gold mine in Venezuela and as a detective in New York and London. Once when in St John's the harbour freezes solid so suddenly that all ships in the harbour are caught by the ice. From St. John's Dittmar-Pittmann joins seal hunting parties twice, the second time his ship is crushed by ice, but they are rescued by another ship. His experiences would be echoed in the novel written by Robert Prechtl a decade later.

The Sinking of the Titanic

No doubt the most interesting part of the book is the last chapter, 'Der Untergang der Titanic'. While only eleven pages long, this description had a defining influence on at least three other books written about the disaster in the German speaking world: H. Hesse, Robert Prechtl, and Josef Pelz von Felinau all based parts of their stories on it.

According to his 'memoirs', Max Dittmar-Pittmann became the third officer of the Titanic after bumping into an old acquaintance, Captain "W". Smith in London who invites him to join because the third officer assigned to the ship was sick. Dittmar-Pittmann immediately leaves for Southampton to join the Titanic. He includes a description of the ship, mentioning its huge size, when it was built and the number of crew and passengers the ship could hold. Some of the description is fairly accurate, most of it bears no resemblance to reality: According to Dittmar-Pittmann the maximum speed of the Titanic was 25 knots, it had twelve large lifeboats, 'several reserve boats, and a large round raft'.

After mentioning a collision with a marine tender in Southampton, that had no consequences for the Titanic Dittmar-Pittmann glosses over the next days until, on the 13th, he informs Captain Smith, that he 'smells ice'. This information does put the Captain in a conundrum because he knows he should slow down, but the chairman of the White Star Line is aboard and expects him to win the Blue Riband for the Titanic.

In the description of the Titanic's collision with the iceberg and its sinking Dittmar-Pittmann's narration enters the world of fiction. Dittmar-Pittmann is off duty when the ship hits the iceberg and, due to the Titanic high speed had been travelling with, he only catches a glimpse of it far astern. While he had not been on the bridge, he states that First Officer Murdock (sic) was there as deputy to the Captain who attended a festivity. Though not explicitly said, Dittmar-Pittmann implies here that the Captain should have been on the bridge. Murdock sent the Second Officer, who was officer on watch, to the chart room 'contrary to regulations' to check something and prevented him from doing his duties. This, Dittmar-Pittmann claims, was what the Second Officer and the quartermaster had reported in the inquiry about the disaster. - In reality Lightoller, the second officer, was in not on duty but in bed at the time of the collision. - When he realised the severity of the collision, Murdock shoots himself.

Dittmar-Pittmann (naturally) at once grasps the seriousness of the situation. He climbs down to the engine room, talks to engineer Hesketh who is not aware of any problem. He thought that the sudden stopping of the engine was to allow a bearing that had run hot to cool down. Then a greaser informs him that the ship is taking on water.

Dittmar-Pittmann was in charge of loading the six starboard lifeboats, four of which immediately sink after being lowered because they were overloaded and, unknown to the officers on deck, were immediately swamped by people who had already jumped into the sea. When Bruce Ismay demands a place in one of the boats, Dittmar-Pittmann puts his gun to Ismay's chest and threatens to shoot him. Ismay survives on the round raft. Several of the passengers shoot themselves in desperation.

Somehow, Dittmar-Pittmann mixes two of the iconic stories of the night up: Isidor and Ida Straus are replaced by the banker Guggenheim and his wife, who refused to leave her husband.

Dittmar-Pittmann is on the last boat that left the Titanic. There are 42 women and children and four crewmen in his boat, among the women was Madelaine Astor. Dittmar-Pittmann observes the sinking of the Titanic and spots Captain Smith swimming close by. Dittmar-Pittmann asks the Captain to climb into the boat, but Smith ignores him and follows the Titanic into the deep.

The 'preliminary hearing' in the USA and the 'main hearing' in Britain, Dittmar-Pittmann writes, assigned the blame for the disaster to Bruce Ismay, for ordering that the ship maintain speed, and Captain Smith, for following the orders despite the ice warnings. The attempt to break the speed record was the cause for the great loss of life.

The Third Officer

The reason why Max Dittmar-Pittmann concluded his memoirs with a chapter about the Titanic-disaster is simple, people were interested in it. As he himself writes even the Great War had not dimmed the memory of the disaster for the contemporaries. After his previous adventures, his time on the Titanic is a spectacular conclusion to his book that could hardly be topped. Perhaps for this reason, he merely mentioned that though he retired from the sea after the sinking of the Titanic, he was back during World War I, captaining a steamer called Carbo to some more adventures in both the Baltic and the North Sea.

It is more than likely the similarity of his own name to that of the real Third Officer of the Titanic that inspired Max Dittmar-Pittmann to usurp his place as third officer of the Titanic. Additionally, Herbert Pitman was not as high-profile a surviror as for example Lightoller or Lowe.

Dittmar-Pittmann was only able to pull this deception off because he lived in Germany. If he had tried to do the same in the UK (and presumably in the USA), the actual surviving officers of the Titanic and probably the White Star Line would have come down on him like a ton of bricks. At the time communications was a lot slower than it is today, travel between Germany and the UK less frequent and knowledge of the facts about the Titanic less widespread and incomparably more difficult to find than it is now.

Eventually, Max Dittmar-Pittmann was found out to be an impostor. Unfortunately, I have not discovered when or how his exposure occurred, and what consequences, if any, it had for him. What the story of Max Dittmar-Pittman also tells us that already in the 1920s what we would call now 'the brand' of the Titanic was a money-maker.