by David Dyer
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.
Where, Stone wondered, was the Titanic?
Now Cyril Evans appeared at the top of the bridge stairs, with trousers over his pyjamas and a pullover that was back-to-front and inside-out. He was wearing slippers. He stood for a moment and then announced, ‘The Titanic has sunk. Not sinking – sunk. I have it confirmed from the Carpathia. She is picking up her lifeboats right now.’
Captain Lord seemed to Stone to be made of iron; he did not flinch. For some time he said nothing whatsoever, then he turned to Evans. ‘Go to your cabin,’ he said, ‘and put on your uniform. A ship’s bridge is no place for a man in slippers.’
Before Stone had time to think, the third officer was on the bridge, running and shouting and pointing towards the icefield, his large square jaw thrust forward. On the other side of the field, a ship had drifted into view from behind two icebergs. She was a passenger steamer with a slender red funnel and four masts, perhaps five or six miles away. Groves was crying out, ‘See? She has her flag at half-mast!’ and Stone saw that it was true. He saw, too, that the ship was using her derricks to recover empty lifeboats from the ocean.
The ship must be the Carpathia, he thought, and, more importantly, she was on the other side of the icefield – the side from which they had just come, in the very position in which Stone had seen a ship firing rockets during the night. The Californian, he realised, had come too far west: they had steamed through the icefield for nothing.
The captain found his voice. ‘Full ahead!’ he called to the man on telegraph, readjusting his cap on his head, and resecuring the buttons on his blazer. ‘Steer for that steamer,’ he ordered.
Slowly the ship’s head came around to the northeast, and began to push back through the ice.
Stone felt a tightness in his chest and he wanted to cry out. The Titanic had sunk and he had seen her rockets. He could hardly speak; he could not think what to do next. He felt that he wasn’t in the world any more, that things were passing before him as if on a screen, out of reach.
In half an hour they were at the Carpathia. She was a pretty ship, with a gleaming white accommodation and a funnel standing proud and tall in the red and black livery of Cunard. Stone could see people crowding on the decks, staring across the water at him. A derrick was lifting a lifeboat onto the foredeck where perhaps a dozen boats were already stacked. On the bridge, the captain waved his right hand above his head and an officer walked to the rear of the bridge to hoist a signal pennant up the jumper halyard. They were about to semaphore.
Stone heard Captain Lord ask the chief officer to stand by with the flags, and the third officer to run up an answering pennant and read off the Carpathia’s replies. The Carpathia’s officer took up the bright yellow and red flags and began signalling.
‘D!’ called Groves, then ‘o’ and then ‘y-o-u.’
Do you … Stone watched the outstretched arms adopt their odd angles, and mouthed the letters silently to himself as Groves called them: ‘h-a-v-e a-n-y s-u-r-v-i-v-o-r-s a-b-o-a-r-d?’
The sun rose higher. The water lapped gently at the sides of the ship. Stone knew at once what that question meant: the Carpathia did not have all of the Titanic’s people aboard. He took a step closer to his captain. How many were the dead? he wondered.
‘What shall I say, Captain?’ asked the chief officer, the flags fluttering in his hands.
Captain Lord spoke quietly. ‘Tell them no,’ he said, ‘and … ask them…’ He faltered.
Ask them how many, Stone thought. How many were they?
‘Ask them what is the matter.’
The chief officer moved his flags quickly – ‘What is the matter?’ – and again Groves called the reply. ‘Titanic sank here 2.20 a.m.’
Six hours ago, thought Stone. During the midnight watch.
The signalling from the Carpathia continued. ‘We have picked up all her boats and survivors.’
There was a pause. Stone looked at the signalling officer on the Carpathia through his binoculars. He was holding both flags straight up, the left at a slight angle, indicating that he was about to signal numbers. Stone knew they would be his numbers – his and his captain’s. Captain Lord was, he knew, like him, waiting for them. Once they came they would be theirs forever.
The sun grew smaller and more intense as it climbed
the sky. It poured such a torrent of white light onto the bridge that it seemed to wash the colour from things. There was no subtlety of shading; the scene appeared to Stone at a uniform saturation, like an overexposed photograph. Even the black pitch between the planks at Stone’s feet glistened as if wet with light. Under the black rim of his cap, Captain Lord was squinting. Stone thought of Moby-Dick. ‘Oh, my Captain! my Captain!’ he said to himself. ‘Away with me! Let us fly these deadly waters!’
At last the numbers came. ‘One,’ he heard Groves call. Then, ‘Five.’
Fifteen? Could it be only fifteen?
Groves called, ‘Zero.’
One hundred and fifty, then.
Raising his hand to shield his eyes, Stone waited for the signal that letters were to follow, but instead the officer held his arms perfectly still – one flag pointing straight up, and the other pointing down and to the right. It was unmistakable, and the bright image of it burned itself into Stone’s mind. It was another zero, and Groves called it, calmly, firmly. And then the letters l-o-s-t.
Captain Lord spoke. ‘Was the zero signalled twice, Mr Groves?’
‘Yes, Captain. He repeated it.’
‘Very well.’
The light bore down on Herbert Stone. He thought, for some reason, of his first day at sea, and the narrow, stinking pump room into which he had been sent to clean the bilges, and the caustic sludge that had scalded his hands. He wished he were there again now. At least it had been dark; there was not this burning, unforgiving light. He took a step backwards, looking for some shade. There was none – not even the flimsy bridge awning cast shadow. Light filled every corner.
On the starboard bridge wing he saw the captain standing alone, erect and still, pulling his cap tighter on his head, lest it be blown off by the wind. ‘I told him,’ Stone whispered to himself. ‘I told him.’
CHAPTER 5
Harry Houdini stared at me. His hair was parted in the middle above a high forehead that told me he was intensely clever – so clever he was most likely insane. In a few weeks, I knew, he was going to lock himself in a packing crate with two hundred pounds of lead and have himself thrown into the East River from a tugboat. He blazed with a fearsome intelligence; he seemed to know that life could only be tasted in its most concentrated form at its boundary with death. But there was something about his face that was pained. This man, I thought, was a prisoner of his own brilliance, his own incessant thoughts. His was a brain that never stopped. Every packing crate, steel box and vault he escaped was an enactment in the outer world of an escape he could never achieve in the inner. His mind was a straitjacket. Behind those eyes, that furrowed brow, that non-compromising intensity, was someone trying to get out.