The Midnight Watch (25 page)

‘Told him to shut up!’ The senator, always with an ear for the dramatic, paused after repeating Lord’s statement. I sensed the room’s collective imagining: the mighty
Titanic
racing at full speed through the black night only minutes from her iceberg, brushing off the little man trying to warn her.

Smith looked at Senator Bourne, his colleague from Oregon, who accepted the invitation and asked, ‘That was the
Titanic
’s reply?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lord’s tone had an edge. He seemed to share the room’s indignation. I imagined him thinking, Yes, if you wish to find a villain in all of this, look to that ship, not mine.

Senator Smith rounded off the topic. ‘And did you have further communication with the
Titanic
?’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Did the
Titanic
have further communication with you?’

Lord’s reply came quickly. ‘No, sir.’

‘Did you see the ship on Sunday?’ Smith asked.

‘No, sir.’

Smith now drifted to questions about times, speeds and distances, which Lord willingly answered, threading his words and numbers together into a seamless fabric of navigational detail. It was, I thought, all very puzzling: less than two hours earlier the senators had heard Ernest Gill swear under oath that this witness had been told of distress rockets and done nothing about them. Yet Smith seemed not at all concerned with that. Having put his questions about the warning given by the
Californian
to the
Titanic
, he seemed to lose interest. He asked about steam whistles and ice, he asked whether a blind man ought to be employed as a ship’s lookout, he asked about the colour of icebergs.

‘Do they usually show white when the sun shines on them?’

‘When the sun shines on them, they show white, usually, yes.’

How pretty, I thought, but what about the rockets?

Smith shuffled his papers. ‘Do any of the other senators desire to ask questions?’ he said, pushing his notes away and sitting back in his chair. He looked at his three colleagues; they looked at each other.

Senator Bourne asked whether Lord thought it might be better for ships to have two wireless operators, instead of one.

‘It would be much nicer,’ Lord said. ‘You would never miss a message then.’

Senator Burton asked a question about binoculars. Senator Fletcher asked whether Lord could have gone to the
Titanic
’s relief if he had picked up her wireless distress message.

‘Most certainly,’ said Lord.

‘You could have gone?’

‘We could have gone, yes.’

And then, after one or two more questions about nothing much, Senator Fletcher pushed his notes away too. No more questions came. Pressmen began to rise; there was soft talking in the galleries. Lord stood up, gathered his logbook, and began to walk back to his seat. I was astounded. In my notebook I drew a large question mark, and then traced it over again. I could not think why he was being allowed to escape.

But as I watched the captain, a theory began to form itself in my mind. To blame this man would not fit the story Senator Smith wanted to tell his nation. America had lost her heroes and she needed villains to punish, not this tall, careful man who had stopped his ship when he saw the ice, who had waited, and been patient, and whose ship was a medium-sized tramp steamer with cotton gins and corn bales in rusty holds. The
Californian
was no
Titanic
, and it was only the
Titanic
that could properly represent the great Edwardian hubris of her makers. Washington didn’t want to pick on the weak man.

As Lord walked back to his seat he was smiling. There was the light of victory in his eyes. He had done just what he said he would; he had told a powerful tale of two ships: a proud, reckless one and a careful, humble one.

But my analysis, fast and clever as it was, was shown in the next minutes to be wholly wrong. I ought to have focused less on Senator Smith’s sense of national pride and more on his reputation for distracting witnesses with elaborate red herrings, all the while preparing to come in for the kill. His stumbling and bumbling was nothing but a cover.

‘Wait, Captain Lord,’ he said, ‘there
is
one more thing.’

Lord, not yet having reached his seat, stopped. I thought I saw in his face the briefest flicker of anger. He turned where he was to face the senator.

‘If you please,’ said Smith, gesturing towards the witness chair.

For some reason, Lord did not seem surprised. He walked back and sat, replacing the logbook on the table and opening it. In its pages was a loose sheet of notepaper, which he now drew towards himself. He’s preparing to read a statement, I thought. He knows what’s coming.

‘Captain,’ said Smith, his smile growing warmer, ‘did you see any distress signals on Sunday night, either rockets or the Morse signals?’

Perhaps it had truly only just now occurred to the senator to ask about the rockets, but I did not think so. I thought it more likely he’d held back deliberately, to see what Lord would offer up voluntarily. Either way, Captain Lord’s moment had come. The question had been put directly to him, and now – before these senators and the American nation, and before God – he must admit or deny.

Lord looked straight ahead and took a breath. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I did not.’

I sat in suspense. Although this statement was true – it was not Lord himself who’d seen the rockets – it was not the whole truth. The room waited in silence.

‘The officer on watch saw some signals,’ the captain went on softly, ‘but he said they were not distress signals.’

‘They were not distress signals?’ Smith checked.

‘They were
not
distress signals,’ Lord confirmed.

‘But he reported them?’

Captain Lord, still staring straight ahead, swallowed hard. Perhaps the next two words were the most difficult he had ever had to say in his life. ‘To me,’ he said.

For a while nobody spoke. Perhaps the whole room was thinking what I was.

‘I think you had better let me tell you that story,’ the captain said.

‘I wish you would,’ Smith said, leaning back a little in his chair to listen.

And so the captain began. He told us of a ship that steamed up and stopped to the south of them just before midnight. This ship took no notice of the
Californian
’s Morse lamp. ‘When the second officer came on the bridge at twelve o’clock,’ Lord said, glancing at his page of notes, ‘or ten minutes past twelve, I told him to watch that steamer and I pointed out the ice to him. I told him we were surrounded by ice and to make sure the steamer did not get any closer to us. At twenty minutes to one I whistled up the speaking tube and asked him if she was getting any nearer. He said, “No. She is not taking any notice of us.” So I said, “I will go and lie down a bit.” At a quarter past he said, “I think she has fired a rocket.” He said, “She did not answer the Morse lamp and she has commenced to go away from us.” I said, “Call her up and let me know at once what her name is.” So he put the whistle back and, apparently, he was calling. I could hear him ticking over my head. Then I went to sleep.’

And that was that. I had taken down his words verbatim, as best I could, and in the brief pause that followed I scanned what I’d written. Lord had tried to hurry over the most important sentence: ‘At a quarter past he said, “I think she has fired a rocket.”’ It was easy to miss, it referred to only one rocket and it was uncertain – ‘I think’ – but it was the first time I’d heard the word ‘rocket’ come from his lips, and it shone like a diamond in the sand. I knew from Ernie Gill that more than one rocket had been seen and reported, but no matter: to have been told of one rocket was to have been told of them all. In any event, even in Lord’s own statement of things, one soon became several.

‘You heard nothing more about it?’ Senator Smith asked.

‘Nothing more until sometime between then and half past four. I have a faint recollection of the apprentice opening the door, opening it and shutting it. I said, “What is it?” He did not answer and I went to sleep again. I believe the boy came down to deliver me the message that this steamer had steamed away from us to the southwest, showing several of these flashes or white rockets. Yes, she steamed away to the southwest.’

At last. A cracking of the nut. Lord had conceded that his second officer had seen white rockets, plural, and had reported them to him. His admission was mired in convolutions and qualifications, but it was enough. It would be tomorrow’s headlines.

*   *   *

I began to think of Captain Lord as a man being reluctantly dragged up the high mountain of truth, clutching at roots and boulders as he went, at every stage saying, ‘No higher, please.’ At first, he’d said nothing whatsoever about the
Titanic
– to his employers, to the press, to anyone. Were it not for a chance reference to the
Californian
in a message from the
Carpathia
, no one would ever have known Lord had been anywhere near the
Titanic
. Jack Thomas had led him a little further up the mountain by forcing him to tell of his dash to the wreck site, but he would not go as far as mentioning the rockets. ‘Poppycock!’ he had said in Boston. ‘We saw no signals!’ But here in Washington, Gill’s affidavit and Senator Smith’s questions had at last brought him to a high ledge.

But it was still only a ledge. It was not the peak. His ship may have seen rockets but, he now said, these rockets were most definitely not from the
Titanic
. They were from some other ship stopped nearby. In the bright airy sunlight of the conference room, Senator Smith seemed doubtful.

‘Regarding this ship that stopped by you on Sunday night,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Have you any idea what steamer that was?’

‘Not the faintest.’

Another ship steaming up from the southeast and stopping just as the
Titanic
did? Then firing rockets just as the
Titanic
did? Then disappearing just as the
Titanic
did? And this ship never being heard of or sighted by anyone else? None of it made sense, of course, but the captain’s voice seemed to command us all to believe it. There was something about the angle of his body, too, and the steady focus of his eyes, that made me think
he
believed it.

Just in front of me, the woman who was sketching the captain had caught his Roman nose with its high bridge in two bold lines; in two narrow marks she had his eyes, and in fast single strokes she dashed off the long bones of his fingers. As I sat watching her I wondered how I might sketch Lord with words, how I might portray his unusual brand of pride. There was something of steel in this man, but how to convey what was in his face when he asked us all to believe that it was not the
Titanic
his ship had seen?

Once again I felt sorry for him, and at that moment I didn’t want him to be dragged any further up the mountain. If mystery ships between his and the
Titanic
were what Lord needed to be rid of the terrible guilt for all those deaths, then let him invent a hundred. What else could he do? To deny that those white rockets had come from the
Titanic
, and to deny it absolutely, I now understood, was his only defence. And perhaps the senators understood this too, because they asked not one more question about them.

Washington may have been in the mood for a fight, but in the end Senator Smith and his colleagues treated Lord as if he were a guest at their country club. ‘Now,’ Smith said to the captain, showing him a warm smile, ‘from the log which you hold in your hand, and from your own knowledge, is there anything you can say further which will assist the committee in its inquiry as to the causes of this disaster?’

‘No, sir,’ said Lord, ‘there is nothing. Only that it was a very deceiving night. That is all I can say about it.’

Yes indeed, I thought.

There was a short adjournment. I followed Lord into the anteroom and stood at a distance. I saw Philip Franklin there, waiting patiently for the captain. I had last seen him sobbing at his press conference in New York, and I would have liked to step over and shake his hand. But instead I hung back in an alcove, listening as he took up conversation with the captain. Lord was smiling again; once more he seemed pleased with himself. I couldn’t make out everything he was saying, but I heard the words ‘agreeable’ and ‘friendly’ – and some odder words, too: ‘convivial’, ‘confab’, ‘swimmingly’. He spoke as if the
Titanic
might yet come steaming into New York Harbor in the spring sunshine, afloat and happy, never having seen an iceberg or fired a single rocket.

But on Franklin’s face I saw a kind of horror. His eyes were wide open beneath lowered eyebrows and from time to time he rubbed his temples with his knuckles. This could not be easy for him, I thought. What Franklin thought of the captain I couldn’t know, but I did know that if he, Franklin, had been accused of abandoning so many people, the weight of shame would have broken him. And yet Lord’s head was upright; he seemed to bear no weight at all.

*   *   *

I knew what Cyril Evans would tell the senators after the adjournment: that Jack Phillips on the
Titanic
had told him to shut up, that he’d gone to bed and been woken in the morning with news of rockets, and that he’d had precedence on the wireless. I owed it to him to listen, but there was time first for some refreshment to help clarify my thoughts. I found a restaurant on the second floor with marble pillars and silver chandeliers, but I settled for a basement café that was smaller, darker and dirtier. I ordered coffee and added a shot of bourbon from a flask I kept in my satchel. Newspapers lay in a pile on a side shelf, left behind by visitors; I gathered some up and sat at a corner table to read awhile.

The disaster had ignited Washington’s moral fervour. There was much to learn, and holy men applied their wisdom to the people like heat to clay. Reverend Muir lectured on ‘Lessons of the
Titanic
’, Reverend Howlett pondered the ‘Teachings of a Tragedy’, Reverend Montgomery explained how ‘In a World Full of Sorrows God Can Still Be Good’, and Reverend Gray exulted in the courage of ‘Washington, Our Unshaken City’.