Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic (12 page)

There was one odd incident in Queenstown Harbour. As the two tenders drew alongside, one of the
Titanic’s
firemen climbed up the ladder inside the fourth, aftmost funnel (it was a dummy, used for ventilating the engine room), and suddenly stuck his head up out of the funnel, his soot-covered face grinning wickedly down at the passengers on the deck of the liner and the tenders below. Although intended as a mere practical joke, it was in poor taste, for few people knew that the fourth funnel was nonfunctional, and the sudden appearance of this man in such an unexpected place caused considerable consternation among those who saw him. The culprit was never identified, but the more sensitive people took the apparition as another “bad omen.” One young fireman named John Coffey, suddenly seized by a sense of foreboding, took the opportunity to desert and stowed away on one of the tenders just before it withdrew from the
Titanic’s
side.
¹⁵

As soon as the last passenger and sack of mail had been transferred, the Titanic’s whistles gave a long blast, a signal for the tenders, bumboats, and any nearby small craft to stand clear. Gangways were dropped, lines cast off, and, with a ringing of telegraph bells, the great ship got under way again. Another stop at the Daunt Lightship to drop off the pilot, and the Titanic was clear of the Irish coast, standing out into the Atlantic. Captain Smith continued to shape his course just a few miles off the coastline, to give his passengers the full benefit of the splendid view. In short order the Titanic had left the Old Head of Kinsale behind, followed by Courtmacsherry Bay, the Seven Heads, and the well-known massif of Galley Head. By midafternoon she was past the Stags and Kedge Island, and around teatime the Fastnet Light was in sight. For years afterward the tale would be told around many a supper table, beside an evening fire, or at the bar of the local pub about how father, son, daughter, or wife had seen the Titanic that day. The image of her grace and beauty would remain indelibly etched in their memories as she raced past, her upperworks gleaming in the bright April sunshine.

By nightfall Ireland had been left behind and many of the Irish immigrants gathered on the stern to catch a last glimpse of their homeland. Whatever fortunes would befall them in America, it was doubtful that many of them would ever have the money or the opportunity to return. Eugene Daly said his farewell on his pipes, playing the haunting “Erin’s Lament.” Once the Irish coast was left behind, they turned and made their way back to their cabins, filled with a thoroughly Irish determination to make a better life for themselves in American.
¹⁶

They were not the only ones to catch that last glimpse of land with some feeling of regret. Nine-year-old Franky Goldsmith, Jr., sat at the stern with his mother Emily watching Ireland slowly disappear. Franky’s father, Franklin, Sr., was a machinist from Kent who was taking his family to Detroit, Michigan, where there was plenty of work at good wages, something he was finding hard to come by in Kent. Franky and his mother watched the British Isles slip below the horizon with mixed emotions: Franky, though as excited as any nine-year-old at the thought of traveling to a foreign country, was saying goodbye to the only home he had ever known; Mrs. Goldsmith’s sadness ran deeper, for she was still mourning her youngest child, who had died of diphtheria only a few months before.

Chief Officer Wilde was less than happy as well, but for quite different reasons. He had written to his sister in a letter posted at Queenstown that he was feeling distinctly uneasy about his latest assignment. “I still don’t like this ship.... I have a queer feeling about it.”
¹⁷

Henry Tighe Wilde was not considered a man given to flights of fancy. A tall, powerfully built man, just thirty-eight years old, he too had worked his way up, from a ship’s apprentice in the old square-rigged ships, through the ranks until his appointment as chief officer of the Olympic in May 1911. The White Star Line’s management held him in high regard, and Captain Smith valued his skill and experience enough to ask that he be assigned to the Titanic for her maiden voyage, moving Murdoch from chief officer to first. With his usual tact and diplomacy the captain had broken the news to Murdoch, explaining that he didn’t doubt Murdoch’s ability, but Wilde’s nearly year-long experience on the Olympic would be especially valuable in shaking down the new Titanic.

Wilde, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly keen on the idea. He disliked the thought of bumping his friend Murdoch out of his new berth, and like Lightoller, he never felt comfortable with the Titanic herself. Eventually his friends and family persuaded him to overcome his reluctance to take the appointment, arguing that with Captain Smith retiring this would put him in line to succeed him as captain of either the Titanic or the Olympic. After much consideration, he finally agreed to go, but as the letter to his sister showed, he was still apprehensive about the new ship.
¹⁸

Together, Captain Smith, Chief Officer Wilde, First Officer Murdoch, and Second Officer Lightoller were the watch-keeping officers. To assist them were four junior officers: Third Officer Herbert Pitman, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, and Sixth Officer James Moody. Pitman had spent nearly nine years at sea, five of them with the White Star Line. He had a particular talent for administration and a comfortable, friendly manner in dealing with passengers. Boxhall, like Pitman, had been with the Line for five years now. Boxhall came from a seafaring family, and indeed there must have been something nautical in his genes, for he had already acquired a reputation as being an outstanding navigator. Captain Smith had so much confidence in his skill that he assigned Boxhall the responsibility of keeping the ship’s charts up-to-date, including any position, weather, or ice reports the Titanic might receive.

Harold Lowe was a self-described “hard case” who had gone to sea at the age of fourteen. Actually “gone to sea” wasn’t quite correct: he had been apprenticed by his father to a Liverpool businessman, but Lowe announced that he “wouldn’t work for anybody for nothing” and promptly ran away to sign on as a cabin boy on a schooner. He soon moved up to square-rigged ships, earned all his certificates while spending five years sailing up and down the West African coast, and finally joined the White Star Line in early 1911.

The most junior of the officers, James Moody, had also spent a fair amount of time in sailing ships before joining the White Star Line. His first ship with the line was the Oceanic. The assignment to the Titanic seemed like a godsend to him, although he found her size somewhat imposing. While still in Belfast, he had written home, “I have been here a week, chiefly occupied trying to find my way about the big omnibus.” Moody was disappointed that the new position didn’t offer any increase in pay, but there were compensations: he wrote excitedly to his sister that at last he had a cabin, though small, all to himself. With the weather expected to be clear and calm for the next few days, none of the
Titanic’s
officers anticipated anything more than a routine crossing, with, of course, the usual teething troubles that accompany any new ship. Yet even those seemed more noticeable by their absence. Harland and Wolff had done a splendid job on this new ship, and the
Titanic’s
officers, staff, and crew settled into a routine of daily shipboard duties.
¹⁹

Still, there were a few members of the crew who exercised the age-old sailor’s right to find something to grouse about in their ship, no matter if she was brand new. Arthur Paintin, Captain Smith’s steward, was typical when he wrote to his parents in a letter posted from Queenstown, “what a fine ship this is, much better than the Olympic as far as passengers are concerned, but my little room is nowhere near so nice, no daylight, electric light on all the time, but I suppose it’s no use grumbling.”
²⁰

For the next three days the Titanic steamed calmly across the Atlantic, fair weather accompanying her the entire way. The passengers had quickly grown accustomed to the new ship, and the experienced travelers had indulged in what had become a ritual on the transatlantic liners: the first night out they consulted the passenger list, looking for familiar names. The list itself had been printed in a neat little booklet for them, the White Star Line being used to their wealthier clients’ habits.

Of course the list included all the prominent names, but also included were the thirty-one maids, valets, and personal servants accompanying the various First Class passengers. These servants were indispensable to the upper classes of the day, and often were valued friends and confidants of the men and women they served. The Line also recognized the somewhat nebulous status these men and women held—obviously it wouldn’t do to treat them as First Class passengers, which they clearly were not, but they couldn’t be treated like any ordinary working class folks either. White Star solved the dilemma by including a separate promenade and dining room reserved exclusively for the maids and menservants of the First Class passengers.
²¹

A few people traveling First Class had their names deliberately omitted from the printed list. Missing were the names of George Bradley, C. H. Romaine, and Harry Homer. All three men were sailing on the Titanic, but under aliases. They had a very good reason for doing so: all three were notorious cardsharps, hoping to make a maiden voyage killing. A fourth professional gambler, Jay Yates, was also making the crossing, under the name “J. H. Rogers,” though neither name was on the passenger list.

Such professional gamblers were and continue to be a fixture on passenger liners. Most were known to the pursers and assistant pursers on the larger liners, but as long as the stakes never went too high or no one appeared to be victimized by his or her losses, the gamblers’ activities were largely ignored. The White Star Line did take the precaution of issuing a warning, inserted in the passenger list, that professional gamblers might be aboard and discouraging “Games of Chance, as being likely to afford these individuals special opportunities for taking advantage of others.” Admittedly this warning was more for the self-protection of the White Star Line than the welfare of the passengers, to keep the Line from being implicated should anyone lose too heavily.
²²

Another ritual that took place early in the voyage was the custom of gentlemen traveling alone to formally offer their services to “unprotected” ladies, that is women who were single, widowed, or traveling alone. Usually this involved nothing more strenuous than fetching a deck chair or calling for a steward to “bring the lady another hot tea.” It also ensured a dinner companion and often some interesting conversation. As a prelude to a shipboard romance, however, the custom was a dismal failure, despite seemingly being tailor-made for such a prospect, since the unwritten, unspoken code of conduct of the day demanded that the gentleman be exactly that, and almost invariably the men complied.

So it was, for example, that Mrs. William Graham and her daughter Margaret, along with Margaret’s governess Miss Shutes, were taken under the “protection” of Washington Augustus Roebling, the heir to the New York engineering and steel firm, and Howard Case, the London manager of Vacuum Oil. Colonel Gracie nearly outdid himself, beginning by taking Mrs. E. D. Appleton, Mrs. J. Murray Brown, and Mrs. R. C. Cornell under his wing. Gracie later told how these three women, who were sisters, were returning from England, “where they had laid to rest the remains of a fourth sister, Lady Victoria Drummond.” Finally, he would extend his services to young Miss Edith Evans, not to mention the remarkable Mrs. Candee.
²³

Mrs. Helen Churchill Candee was every bit as well protected as Colonel Gracie was overstretched. An attractive widow of considerable charm, Helen Candee was born out of her time. By 1912 she was already a successful author: in 1900 she had published a book based on a thoroughly startling premise, expressed in its title, How Women May Earn a
Living,
followed by a western, An Oklahoma Romance, and a cultural guide entitled Decorative Styles and Periods; she was due to have a history of tapestry published in the fall. She was independent, intelligent, and strong willed—thoroughly capable of succeeding in a man’s world.

It was her habit to spend her mornings reading on the Promenade Deck forward, taking two chairs, “one for myself and the other for callers—or self protection,” as she put it. No less than six different gentlemen came forward at various times the first two days of the voyage to offer their services: Colonel Gracie, of course, the very model of the Edwardian gentleman; an Englishman named Hugh Woolner, the son of a sculptor, who probably appealed to Mrs. Candee’s artistic leanings; Edward A. Kent, a Buffalo, New York, architect who had been recommended to her by a mutual friend; Clinch Smith, a Long Island socialite and one of Colonel Grade’s best friends; E. P. Colley, from Ireland; and Bjorn Steffanson, a dashing Reserve lieutenant in the Swedish Army.

Mrs. Candee “felt divinely flattered to be in such company,” while the six gentlemen in turn were all fascinated by this attractive, dynamic woman. Furthermore, the reason for her sailing on the Titanic added to her mystique : her son had been injured in an airplane accident—an unusual event in 1912—and she was hurrying to meet him. While it seemed that Mrs. Candee had a few more gentleman escorts than she needed, she in no way discouraged the attention. Indeed the entire custom of a gentleman offering his “protection” to an unescorted woman, which would bring howls of protest from various quarters in later, more “enlightened” times, could come in very handy
²⁴

Colonel Gracie would later refer to this handful of people as “our coterie” and they all got along famously. The colonel, a kind and well-meaning sort, occasionally could be a bit much: he had even pressed a copy of his book The Truth About Chickamauga onto Isador Straus. Mr. Straus, a model of tact, told Gracie he would read it “with intense interest,” although what interest he would find in 462 pages of overly detailed military minutiae was questionable. Nonetheless, Gracie was having such a good time that, uncharacteristically for him, he neglected his exercise regimen to spend time with his new friends.
²⁵