Murdoch being the suicide officer seems out of character
First officer Murdoch being the rumoured suicide officer doesn't make much sense to me. Survivor testimony tells us that during the attempted launch of collapsible A, Sixth officer Moody suggested to let the lifeboat float off the ship but Murdoch insisted on properly lowering the lifeboat by use of the davits. On the wreck, those davits can still be seen resting in an upright position, so that suggests that they were being cranked back in to attach the collapsible and swing it over the side of the ship. With the port list that Titanic was experiencing at the time, Murdoch must have assumed he had enough time to launch collapsible A before the ship went down. But we know that when the Titanic returned to an even keel, a sort of wave washed over the starboard boat deck before the ship ultimately entered her final plunge. It seems really out of character to me for Murdoch to be so adamant to launch the last lifeboat against the suggestion of Moody to let it float off, to then all of a sudden decide to shoot himself instead of pursuing his intitial goal to save as many people as possible by properly launching the lifeboat over the side of the ship. My belief is that Murdoch was fully occupied with trying to attach the collapsible to the davits when the wave caught him by surprise and washed him overboard alongside Moody. If there were to be an officer suicide on Titanic as testified by a number of witnesses, I believe it was either Chief officer Wilde as no confirmed sightings of him seem to exist after he aided Second officer Lightoller with the launching of collapsible D, or perhaps another member of the crew shot themselves with a personal firearm. Perhaps the witnesses mistook an engineer or even another member of the crew for an officer as they wore similair looking uniforms, and perhaps some crew had access to their own weapons just like Fifth officer Lowe who had brought his own handgun aboard the ship. We will of course never truly know what exactly happened during those last chaotic moments, but I simply found it odd for Murdoch to have commited suicide while he seemed very much focused on rescuing as many passengers by trying to launch every single one of his starboard lifeboats. I just don't see him abandoning his duty in the midst of launching collapsible A, which was his own suggestion to begin with. What do all of you think about this viewpoint? My apologies if this has already been brought up in the past.