The Titanic Secret (35 page)

When he ended the call, Cumming stared at the second hand of the clock on the table in front of him as it inexorably swept around the dial, counting off yet another minute.

Mrs McTavish knocked on the office door and walked in. ‘You asked me to remind you, sir, when the time was up,’ she said.

Cumming looked old and grey. He nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you, Mrs McTavish.’

It was twenty-two hundred hours Eastern Standard Time.

As she turned away, Cumming stopped her with a final instruction. ‘I expect the Admiralty will be telephoning quite soon, Mrs McTavish. When they do, do not connect the call to me. Just tell them that I am unavailable.’

14 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

In the Marconi Office, one of the harassed operators seized the next message from the pile and looked at it. The transmitting equipment now seemed to be working properly, but because of the earlier problems there was still a huge backlog of messages waiting to be processed.

‘“Most urgent”,’ he muttered to himself, as he prepared to transmit the text. ‘Every blasted message from a passenger on this ship is “most urgent”. You’d think they’d have something better to do with their time than send this sort of rubbish.’

He was unfamiliar with military messages of any sort, and as far as he was concerned no one passenger’s communication deserved any higher precedence than anybody else’s.

The message was short, just a few groups, and within a couple of minutes the operator had marked it as ‘Sent’, and moved on to the next Marconigram.

14 April 1912
London

Mansfield Cumming watched the minute hand of his desk clock move round, with what seemed like frightening rapidity, to the number five on the dial. When it reached ten past the hour, Mrs McTavish opened the door.

‘I’ve had one of those admirals on twice, sir, and he sounded really annoyed. Do you still not wish to speak to them?’

Cumming shook his head. ‘No, not yet. Just a few more minutes.’

At twenty-two fifteen Eastern Standard Time, as he heard the telephone ring in the outer office once more, he knew that he could delay no longer. He stepped outside his office and waited until Mrs McTavish had ended the call to the admiral whose voice was so loud that Cumming could make out most of what he was saying from where he was standing. Then he confirmed with her what he already knew, that no messages had been received, and handed her the ‘execute’ message for immediate transmission via the Admiralty’s radio communication system.

Then he walked back into his office, shut the door and for some seconds sat at his desk with his head in his hands. Then he pulled open the bottom drawer, removed a bottle of single malt whisky that he’d bought on the Isle of Skye, and poured himself a large drink.

He held the glass of amber liquid up to the light and studied the way that it seemed almost to glow.

‘Goodbye, Alex,’ he said, ‘and you too, Maria. God rest your souls.’

There were tears in his eyes as he took the first sip.

14 April 1912
Crookhaven, County Cork, Ireland

The telegraphic station at Crookhaven was working at maximum capacity, despite the late hour, with a full complement of six operators on duty. Since the station had been established ten years earlier in 1902, the amount of wireless traffic from ships crossing the Atlantic had increased enormously. The job of the Crookhaven operators was to convert the radio traffic to normal telegraph and transmit the messages along landlines to their ultimate destination. In the early days, the station might only be in contact with one ship, but by 1912 traffic from over six ships at a time was the norm.

That night, one of the operators was working full-time just on signal traffic from the RMS
Titanic
, such was the volume of messages being transmitted from the liner, and he was finding it difficult to keep up. His head bent over his desk, he snatched another signal form and immediately began transferring the message to the telegraph, oblivious of the chattering of his companions and the constant tapping of the other Morse keys beside him. As soon as he’d finished that message, he reached for the next. And then the next, creating a production line of communications as he struggled to clear the backlog.

He took a brief break for a drink and a visit to the lavatory, then resumed his task. Tremayne’s Marconigram was in the pile in front of him, marked for onward transmission to the London telegraphic address. But because of the volume of traffic being handled, it was almost fifteen minutes after its arrival before the operator finally picked it up and relayed it to its addressee and final destination.

14 April 1912
HMS
D4

The signal Lieutenant Hutchinson had been expecting arrived later than he had anticipated, at around twenty-two twenty-five EST. He already had the code book out on the table, and the moment the signalman passed him the sealed envelope and he’d signed for its receipt, he began deciphering the message.

As soon as he saw the size of the encrypted text, he knew what the contents would be. What he’d been hoping to receive would have been a simple three digit message – RTB, return to base – but he was looking at nearly a page of encrypted groups.

It took him ten minutes to complete the decryption, not least because the final section, which followed the series of precise orders he was to follow, was another personal instruction from the head of the Submarine Service, reiterating the crucial national, and international, importance of what he was being ordered to do, and the vital necessity of never breathing a word about the operation to anyone.

Despite this high-level reassurance, for several minutes Hutchinson sat on the edge of his bunk and simply stared at the decrypted signal, struggling to make sense of the implications. Firing a torpedo at an enemy vessel during a time of war was entirely justified. That was what he and his crew had been trained to do. Firing a torpedo at a completely unarmed civilian ship in peace time was utterly abhorrent to him. What he was being told to do seemed sheer madness. He could think of no possible reason why the British government would want him to sink the White Star Line’s newest and most expensive passenger ship, the
Titanic
. But that was what the signal was instructing him to do, in absolutely clear and unequivocal language.

For a few fleeting seconds, Hutchinson considered not acknowledging the signal and simply ignoring it. But he knew that the signal logs on board the boat would clearly show that he had received the message, and then disobeyed it. So perhaps there was something else he could do. In fact, he realized, there was one thing he should certainly do.

He walked back out into the control room and summoned a signalman.

‘Acknowledge that message you just received,’ he instructed, ‘and then add the following two words: “Confirm target”. And do that right now.’

The signalman hurried away, and Hutchinson climbed up the metal ladder to the conning tower, where Bill Evans was on watch.

‘All quiet?’ Hutchinson asked. ‘No ships?’

‘It’s clear all the way to the horizon,’ Evans replied, ‘but we’re seeing a few more icebergs now, so we may have to do a bit more manoeuvring than we’ve done so far if we’re going to stay in this area. Have you had the signal yet?’

Hutchinson nodded. ‘It came a few minutes ago and it does instruct us to carry out a live firing. I’ve asked for confirmation, just as a precaution, but my guess is we’ll be firing the two weapons in an hour or so.’

‘At what?’ Evans asked reasonably, looking around at the empty sea.

‘A target ship will apparently be provided,’ Hutchinson replied, stretching the truth more than a little.

‘Sir?’ The voice came from below, and Hutchinson looked down to see the signalman standing at the foot of the conningtower ladder.

‘Yes?’

‘They’ve replied, sir,’ he said, ‘and in clear. The message reads: “Target confirmed. Course and speed as briefed. Execute.” That’s all it says, sir.’

Hutchinson nodded slowly. Now it was all up to him.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Get some men up here to drop the mast and stow the radio aerial, and rig for diving.’

‘We’re submerging?’ Evans asked. ‘With all these icebergs around?’

‘Believe me, Bill,’ Hutchinson said. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

14 April 1912
London

Mrs McTavish didn’t even bother to knock. She simply swept the office door open, a piece of paper clutched in her right hand, which she waved at Mansfield Cumming as she strode across to his desk.

‘The signal, sir, the message. It’s from the
Titanic
. They’ve done it. Mr Tremayne and that Maria. They’ve done it!’

Cumming grabbed the paper from her and read the two brief sentences that it contained. Then he looked at the time it had been sent from the ship and realized that Tremayne had made the deadline. But the message had taken the better part of three hours to get to him.

‘Quickly, Mrs McTavish. Get me the Admiralty, as fast as you possibly can.’

He was connected to his opposite number there in less than two minutes.

‘Stop the attack,’ Cumming said, almost shouting. ‘My man has done it, but his message was badly delayed.’

There was a pause from the other end of the line, and when the captain replied, his voice was almost apologetic.

‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ he said. ‘The boat’s already acknowledged the “execute” signal. The captain queried it, but we’ve already sent confirmation.’

‘You’ve got to try!’ Now Cumming really was shouting, a vein in his forehead pulsing angrily. ‘For God’s sake man, do something.’

He heard nothing for about a minute, and then the officer came back on the line.

‘We’ve sent an order cancelling the operation and instructing the submarine to return to base,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that we ordered the captain to dive his boat as soon as he’d acknowledged the signal, in preparation for the attack, and before he can submerge, he has to unship the radio aerial. That means he can’t receive any transmissions from us until he resurfaces and puts the aerial up again. Stand by.’

There was another short pause before the captain spoke again.

‘We’ve sent the signal six times now, and there’s been no response of any sort. We’ll keep transmitting, but I think we have to face the facts here, Mansfield. That submarine has submerged and it’s going to prosecute the attack, so we’ll need to be ready to react when the news breaks. This is going to be a complete disaster.’

As he ended the call, Mansfield Cumming thought that, if anything, the captain at the Admiralty was severely understating the magnitude of what was about to unfold.

14 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

The
Titanic
’s Marconi radio room was busy, messages being sent and received both from other ships operating in the north Atlantic and from shore stations such as Cape Race in Newfoundland.

An ice-warning message, the first of several, had been received by the ship at about noon that day, but nobody on the bridge seemed to be particularly interested. The
Titanic
was a huge ship, filled with watertight compartments and doors that could be closed electrically from the bridge to isolate certain sections of the hull in the event of any damage being sustained. Floating ice was not perceived to be a serious problem.

A second message had been received just after seventeen thirty EST, reporting three icebergs close to the liner’s planned route, and at twenty-two forty, a third message had been received, this one from a ship named the
Californian
. That vessel reported so much ice in its vicinity that the captain had ordered the engines to be stopped until daylight the following morning, leaving the ship dead in the water and surrounded by ice.

That message was brushed aside by the operator on the
Titanic
because it wasn’t prefixed by the standard urgency code ‘MSG’ – standing for ‘Master Service Gram’ – which would have ensured it was sent directly to the captain, the master of the ship.

So when, sometime later, the radio operators received yet another message warning of icebergs ahead, even though the source of this particular message was somewhat unusual, they didn’t feel that it was worth reporting the matter to the bridge.

And in fact, by that time it was already too late.

14 April 1912
HMS
D4

Bernard Hutchinson was the last to leave the conning tower. Just before he did so, he glanced at his watch. Ten forty-six. He took a last look around the horizon with his binoculars, and there, slowly beginning to appear down to the south-east, he saw a faint glow of light. The
Titanic
, the ship he’d been ordered to sink, was just about to come into view.

He knew the vessel would be travelling at about twenty knots, perhaps even slightly faster, and would reach his location within the hour. He scanned in a complete circle once again, mentally noting the position of a handful of icebergs in his area. In those conditions, he would have much preferred to stay on the surface, and steer the boat from the conning tower, but that was now an option which he didn’t have. But the boat wasn’t going deep. It would remain at periscope depth throughout the operation.

He climbed down the ladder, securing the hatch above his head as he did so, then stepped onto the steel floor of the control room, shedding his foul-weather clothing as he did so.

‘Dive the boat, Mr Evans,’ he instructed. ‘Maintain periscope depth.’

Evans issued the appropriate orders, and the metal hull of the small submarine suddenly came alive as water rushed into tanks to reduce its buoyancy and allow it to dive. The throb of the diesel engines, which had been an inescapable background accompaniment for the last few days, suddenly ceased as the boat switched over to electric power.

Within five minutes, the submarine was below the surface of the water, the screws turning just enough to provide steerage way, and Hutchinson was standing in the control room with his head clamped to the eyepieces of the periscope. Through the optics, the distant shape of the ocean liner was now just visible, though the ship was still too far away to be positively identified. But Hutchinson would absolutely ensure that he was targeting the correct vessel before he gave the order to fire his weapons.