The Midnight Watch (5 page)

I doodled in my notebook, experimenting with some headline phrases:
Titanic
’s danger over. Steamer hit iceberg late last night. Hours of anxiety at last relieved. ‘This afternoon,’ I then wrote, ‘Mr Franklin expressed his utmost confidence in the new liner
Titanic
.’ Too dry, I thought. I tried adding some Bumpton-like verbs. ‘The
Titanic
is limping towards Halifax. Mr Franklin has commanded a special train to race north on the New Haven line to collect her passengers.’ Limp. Command. Race. But still my copy was no good. Perhaps the city editor was right. My pen was just not suited to thrilling adventure.

I found a telegraph office and wired my newspaper – ‘No bodies no story’ – and then caught a cab back to the station. As soon as I stepped into the vast brightness of the main concourse I saw on a nearby newsstand the late edition of
The
Evening Sun
, proclaiming in inch-high letters:
ALL SAVED FROM
TITANIC
AFTER COLLISION.

What a shame, I thought, before I could stop myself.

CHAPTER 4

Cyril Evans was woken by the glare of his cabin light. Stewart, the chief officer, stood in the doorframe, his hand on the light switch.

‘You’d better get up,’ said the chief. ‘A ship has been firing rockets. You’d better see whether anything is the matter.’

‘What time is it?’ Evans asked, blinking his eyes and swinging his legs from his bunk.

‘A quarter to six.’

The chief had brought cold air into the cabin with him. Evans stood up, yawning and shivering. He pulled on trousers and a coat over his pyjamas and sat at his equipment, trying to make sense of what the chief had said. A ship firing rockets?

There was silence in his headphones. For a moment he was puzzled, but then he saw: the magnetic detector had wound down. He rotated its handle a few times until its ebonite discs began to whirr. The chief officer stood by him, perfectly still, waiting. George Stewart was an odd man, Evans thought, with his droopy moustache and glassy eyes. He hardly ever said a word; you just never knew what he was thinking.

Evans switched on his transmitter and sent out a general stations call: ‘All ships, this is MWH.’ His headphones instantly crackled with pulses. He took up his pencil and wrote out the letters as they came: ‘Say old man, do you know the
Titanic
has struck an iceberg and is sinking 41 46 N 50 14 W?’

He tapped his Morse key as quickly as he could. ‘Thanks old man but did you say
Titanic
?’

The reply came at once. ‘Yes
Titanic
. Tell your captain.’

Evans took off his headphones and turned wide-eyed to the chief and held out to him the slip of paper. Stewart read the message and, strangely calm, asked him whether he was sure. Evans said he was. ‘I was just talking to her,’ he added, ‘last night. I can’t believe it. I was just talking to her.’

The chief officer frowned a little and turned away. ‘Never mind about all that,’ he said as he walked from the room with the message held tightly in his hand.

Evans replaced his headphones and began tapping the key as fast as he could. In a few moments, he knew, he would feel the deck beneath his feet jump and leap as the ship’s engine went full speed ahead, and soon after he would see the great liner, flashing her lights and hoisting her flags in gratitude. Her signals had been very strong the night before, so she must be close.

But the deck remained still, and a minute or so later the chief was back in the room. ‘The captain wants an official message,’ he said, ‘captain to captain. He doesn’t want to go on a wild goose chase.’

Evans was surprised. He had already confirmed the
Titanic
’s position and thought they should be making full steam for her – right now. But he took to his key again, listened carefully through his headphones, and soon had a message written out in his very best lettering on an official Marconigram form. ‘
Titanic
struck berg, wants assistance urgent. Ship sinking, passengers in boats. Her position: Lat 41.46 Long 50.14. Signed: Gambol, Master,
Virginian
.’ He stamped it with his rubber
Californian
stamp.

The chief thanked him and once again left the room.

Evans’ headphones now crackled with Morse – from the
Mount Temple
, the
Frankfurt
, the
Baltic
, the
Virginian
, the
Birma.
He worked each ship one by one, getting what details he could, and telling anyone who listened about how close his own ship was to the sinking liner. ‘I had MGY very loud last night,’ he sent. His Morse key had never tapped so fast. The stale cabin air became acrid with ozone from the transmitter’s spark. ‘What happened to her? When did she hit? Was she in the icefield? How close are you? We are closer! Do you see us? We are a four-master with a salmon pink funnel. We are very near her.’ He kept sending until a message came in from Mr Balfour, a travelling Marconi inspector on the
Baltic
: ‘Stand by and keep out. You are jamming. We are trying to hear
Carpathia
. Balfour, Inspector.’

Evans paused. He did not want Mr Balfour to report him to the company, but he also knew the rules: closer ships had precedence over distant ones. And his ship was certainly closer than the
Baltic.
He had every right to find out what was happening.

He took off his headphones and began to hunt for his operator’s manual. But when he heard the ring of the telegraph bell from the bridge above, and then felt at last the thump of the ship’s engine, he could hold off no longer. He replaced his headphones and began to send again. ‘We are steaming full speed now,’ he tapped out to anyone who would listen. He waited for indignation from the
Baltic
, but instead heard the faint signal of the
Titanic
’s giant sister,
Olympic
, steaming east out of New York. She called repeatedly, ‘
Titanic
?
Titanic
? This is
Olympic
. Please reply.’ Then he heard a message, sent via the Cape Race shore station, direct to the
Titanic
’s captain himself: ‘To Smith: Anxiously awaiting information and probable disposition of passengers. Signed: Franklin, White Star New York.’ He listened for a reply from the
Titanic
, but there was none. He heard, too, the Associated Press calling the Allan Line’s
Virginian
via Cape Race: ‘Do you have any more information about
Titanic
? New York most anxious.’

The whole world was listening and Evans was right there, on the spot.

He was thinking about what message to send next when the door of his cabin opened and Jim Gibson burst in. He was barefoot and clad only in his dressing gown, beneath which, Evans glimpsed, he was naked. Evans lifted the headphones from his ears.

‘Sparks!’ Gibson said, burying his hands in his gown pockets to keep them warm. ‘The chief officer just told me. The
Titanic
! Do you have her?’

Evans smiled. His friend might be good at boat drill and might one day be an officer, but he could not understand Morse, and that was what mattered now. ‘I can’t hear the
Titanic
,’ he said, ‘but I have the
Mount Temple
, the
Baltic
, the
Olympic
– and even the Vice President of White Star in New York.’

Gibson lowered his tone, as if to emphasise the special importance of his own information. ‘I saw her rockets, you know. I saw them.’

Evans looked at his friend. He didn’t know whether to believe him. He thought the chief officer had seen the rockets, and that that was why he’d come down to wake him. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ said Gibson. ‘With my own eyes. The second officer saw them, too.’ He turned and ran from the room as quickly as he’d come in.

Evans chewed the end of his pencil until it splintered. It tasted bitter in his mouth. He put down his headphones. He was puzzled once more. He knew that Gibson stood the midnight watch with the second officer, but that watch had finished many hours ago. So if Gibson and the second officer did see rockets, why was the
Californian
only just now speeding to the rescue?

*   *   *

Herbert Stone did not understand. He thought it a strange sort of joke. But the chief officer was insistent. ‘The
Titanic
is sinking up ahead. You’d better get up and get dressed,’ he said, pulling open the curtain to let in the light. ‘You’ll be needed in the boats.’

The chief disappeared into the alleyway. Stone got to his feet, half asleep and trying to think, to remember, to make sense of things. The deck pounded, the whole cabin rattled and shook. He drew back his top lip and tapped his teeth hard. He could think only of white rockets.

Now Charlie Groves stood in the doorframe, doing up the buttons of his shirt, his cheeks pink. His words came out so fast Stone could hardly follow them: ‘passengers in boats’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘the unsinkable ship’, ‘an iceberg’. Stone interrupted him. ‘I saw her rockets,’ he said abruptly. ‘During my watch. I saw her rockets.’

Groves fell silent. He stopped doing up his buttons.

‘Yes, old chap, I saw her rockets,’ Stone continued. ‘Just after you handed over the watch.’ He glanced briefly at the third officer, who had become very still, and then added, ‘I told him,’ as if the words were nothing, an afterthought. But he knew already, in the deepest part of his being, that they were the most important words of all.
I told him.

‘Who?’ asked Groves, his eyes narrowing. ‘Who did you tell?’

‘The captain.’

Groves paused. Stone could see that he was surprised.

‘When?’ Groves asked.

‘During my watch. As they were being fired.’

‘And what did he do?’

‘He stayed in the chartroom.’

The third officer stood waiting, as if he expected more. But Stone could think of nothing more to say. He stood up and began hunting about for his clothes. ‘Anyway,’ he said, laying out his uniform, ‘you’d better hurry up. The chief said we’ll be needed in the boats.’ Groves stepped back across the alleyway to his own cabin and Stone dressed as quickly as he could.

A moment later he was on the bridge. Things were very different from the calm black stillness of the midnight watch. Everything now was action and movement and light. The sun had risen and the deck bounced hard with the ship’s engine at full speed. There were lookouts everywhere, on the bridge wing, on the focsle, and Stone could even see a man swinging high in a coal basket hoisted aloft.

There was ice all around. A vast, low, lumpy field extending many miles north and south rose and fell gently in the morning swell, and everywhere there were icebergs. Some were trapped in the unyielding slush of the field, others floated free at the edges. Stone could see at least thirty or forty of them, standing tall like the majestic giants of some magical world, radiant and silent. They made him uneasy; they seemed to be watching him, waiting for his next move.

The ship was steaming west across the icefield through narrow channels, and at the fore part of the bridge Captain Lord stood in full uniform with the chief officer, facing into the wind. The captain seemed again to be at the centre of things, to be illuminated by a special authority. From his upright, unwavering figure a power seemed to radiate. Men reported to him one after the other – the chief engineer, the chief steward, the bosun – and Stone marvelled at his quick thinking and clear commands. The captain ordered the uncovering and swinging out of the lifeboats, the rigging of ladders, the piling up of lifejackets, the opening of valves to steam winches. For every man there was an action, for every problem an answer.

Stone thought Captain Lord would have a solution for him, too, but when he walked up and reported himself ready for duty, the captain turned a dismissive eye to him and said only that he should stand by. So Stone walked to the aft end of the bridge, where he waited and watched.

The ship pushed on through the ice. In some places it was no more than a thin slush; in others it thickened to a lumpy, greedy mass that sucked at the hull and made for slow going. The captain looked as much aft as forward. Whenever large chunks drifted towards the propeller or rudder he called, ‘Dead slow,’ or, ‘Stop.’ Stone knew what he was thinking: that no matter what, he must not disable his ship. Thousands of lives might depend upon him.

Soon the
Californian
steamed into clear blue water to the west of the icefield and turned south. The morning had a glory to it. The sun had driven away any hint of mist or haze and the distant horizon was vividly clear. The water hissed and frothed below the bridge as the ship steamed at full speed.

When a cry of ‘Ship dead ahead!’ came from the man aloft in the coal basket, Stone thought it must be the
Titanic
at last. But the captain, looking through binoculars, called out, ‘One funnel!’ and as the
Californian
drew nearer, Stone could see that the ship was a mid-sized passenger steamer. Minutes later, at six bells – seven o’clock in the morning – Captain Lord rang ‘Stop’ on the telegraph and announced that they were at the
Titanic
’s SOS position.

Stone watched as the captain and chief officer searched the horizon with their binoculars. He saw that on the main deck engineers, stewards and seamen were looking too. But there was only the nearby ship, rolling gently in the low swell, her single funnel glowing yellow in the sunlight.

A pervasive stillness settled over the
Californian
. The deck work was complete. Pilot ladders had been rigged, the lifeboats had been swung outboard and secured by their bowsing tackles, lifejackets and lifebuoys had been piled fore and aft ready to be cast into the sea. Halyards clicked against the slowly rocking masts like the ticking of a clock. The sun rose higher, the calm blue water glittered, and the ice began to glow.