by Alan Veale
Pirrie nodded slowly. ‘I’m sure that will meet Mr Morgan’s expectations, although in my opinion, seeking the cooperation of any country outside Britain or America in these circumstances has its risks. And yet… you make it all sound very straightforward.’
‘It will be. There’ll be back up, of course, in case the weather conditions affect. I am presently looking to appoint a suitable commander to be on hand for assistance, should anything go amiss. Are you familiar with Stanley Lord? No? Good chap. Very discreet.’
‘Hmmm. The better part of valour, eh? Mr Penn also mentioned abstaining from the use of Marconi transmissions?’
Penn leaned forward. ‘That’s essential. We need this to be seen as a chance encounter. At the appointed time a rocket will be launched from the derelict ship. The lookouts won’t be able to miss it, so long as they’re close enough. There will be a light on the masthead to aid navigation, but we need Titanic to be the nearest ship to provide assistance. If anything is broadcast by Marconi before they sight it, we risk someone else butting in.’
‘Butting in?’ queried Pirrie.
‘I mean interfering with the rescue. The crew will have instructions to scuttle it before they transfer to Titanic. We don’t want that to happen too early, or for them to be picked up by another ship, do we?’
‘No, we don’t.’ Pirrie frowned. ‘That would never do.’
Penn was unable to contain his enthusiasm for the project. ‘Once they’re picked up, they can broadcast. That’s the big story then. Everyone loves to hear about a rescue at sea. Imagine the papers! We’ll have the story ready for release on Smith’s signal, don’t you fret.’
Ismay caught Pirrie’s eye, and gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry, old chap. Anything and everything has been thought of. Just leave it to me.’
*
‘Can you believe this?’ Chrissie exchanged a look with Billie. ‘They must have been in deep shit to have tried to pull something like that. A publicity stunt, for Christ’s sake!’
Billie nodded. ‘Incredible, isn’t it? But a damned sight more likely, and more feasible than swapping Titanic for Olympic as some would have us believe.’
‘Sorry? They swapped ships?’
Billie shook his head. ‘It was a conspiracy theory someone came up with after the wreck was found. They reckoned there were structural differences which indicated that Titanic’s sister ship had been sunk instead. A case was made suggesting Olympic was seriously damaged from a couple of collisions, so White Star secretly swapped the two ships to deliberately stage a sinking and claim on the insurance.’
‘That’s crazy! But it’s been disproved, right?’
‘As far as I know, yes. But there are still some out there who believe it. It’s a fanciful idea in my view, but when you look at what we have here, who’s to say what seems more likely?’
Chrissie thought for a moment, weighing up one story against another. ‘They scuttled another boat but sank themselves because they lost an argument with an iceberg?’
‘Exactly.’ Billie held out his hand for the copy of Mickey’s notes. ‘If it did happen, then there were another four deaths from the smaller boat that were never included in the total. Did you catch the other revelation about Stanley Lord?’
‘No. Who’s he?’
‘Captain of the Californian. The scapegoat. Some reckon his ship was close enough to have come to Titanic’s rescue, but he stayed put instead, asleep in his bunk. The British inquiry agreed with that, yet he always protested his innocence. Maybe he had some involvement after all?’
Robin spoke up for the first time. ‘Listen, laddie, I hate to rain on your parade but not much of this is making sense to me. You obviously know all there is about the Titanic. All I know is it was a bloody big ship that hit a lump of ice in the middle of the Atlantic and sank with almost everyone on board. What is there in these notes and letters that says anything different? Or am I missing the point?’
‘What have you got there?’ Billie reached for the letter in Robin’s hand and gave it a quick glance. ‘The stuff about Ismay. Okay, do you know who he was? Right, let me give you a brief bio, because it looks like he had a lot to answer for. Joseph Bruce Ismay was chairman of the White Star Line that owned Titanic and her sister ship Olympic. Lord Pirrie was chairman of Harland & Wolff, the company that built both ships for White Star. But White Star had been bought by J. P. Morgan in 1902, using a subsidiary company called International Mercantile Marine, and Morgan appointed Ismay as president of IMM, so the two were very close.’
‘In other words, Ismay was on Morgan’s payroll, and he was the one paying Pirrie to build the ships?’
‘Yes. J. P. Morgan was hugely wealthy from investing in steel and railways in America, but once he got into shipping, he lost a lot of money. He felt humiliated that his ships were struggling to turn a profit while the Cunard Line in Britain were breaking records and getting government assistance. Then Olympic was seriously damaged by a British Navy ship, and White Star were sued by the British Government. That made him determined to turn his business around by making Titanic headline news. I reckon these documents show how he intended to do that.’
‘By sinking the Titanic?’
‘No! By deliberately setting up a situation that would gain him front-page headlines and boost his business skywards.’
Robin frowned. ‘He got the front-page headlines all right. But not the right ones.’
‘Exactly,’ Billie continued. ‘Ismay also lost his street cred and never recovered, but it looks like he tried to drag others down at the same time, and that’s where some people in government got a bit twitchy. The unions too. Is that the letter you were reading?’
‘Yes. I think I’d better read it again. One other question. I think I know the answer to this but I’d like your view. Marconi was the radio system, right? And no one knew much about it before the disaster, but because of the publicity over the distress signals it got the kind of attention Morgan wanted for his fake rescue plot?’
‘That’s about it, yes. The company was newly trading on the stock exchange, and the share price rocketed immediately after the news broke. Seems it got out, possibly through Ismay, that the Attorney General and a few others were tipped the wink and bought stock in Marconi the day after the sinking.’
Chrissie looked from one man to the other in the silence that followed. ‘Sounds like a perfect set-up for insider dealing. Boy, this Mickey Palmer kept some pretty hot stuff, didn’t he? Let me read that letter.’
Thirty-Six
On the surface, it was an innocuous looking document to modern eyes. Emma had identified it on her bullet list as June 1912 letter to Pirrie from Seaman’s Association in Belfast (re Ismay). The letterhead carried a crest featuring a sword and mitre. The addressee was given as Lord Pirrie, Harland & Wolff, and the contents described a series of incidents that placed Ismay front and centre, followed by an invitation for Pirrie to comment:
Sir, it is our manifest duty to inform you of actions reported to us concerning Joseph Bruce Ismay in relation to his management of events surrounding the Titanic disaster. You will have read in the press that JBI has dismissed the assertion of cowardice, and maintains he suffered from shock as a result of the collision…
Ismay was closer to panic than he thought possible. Instead of unsteadily negotiating a sloping boat deck listening to the cries of anguished men and women, he was focused on his personal future—and the view was worse than he ever imagined. How can this be? We’re supposed to be the rescuers, not the rescued.
Standing at the top of the metal stairs leading down to A deck, his attention was caught by movement to his right. A woman about his own height, a fur coat draped over her lifejacket, and wearing neat velvet slippers. She was carrying something small and pink.
‘Madam! Madam, what are you doing? I thought all the women had left! Are there any other ladies around? Tell them to come over to this staircase at once!’
She moved towards
him with a questioning look, and held out a toy animal for his inspection. ‘My lucky pig. I left it in my cabin.’
He stared at it for a moment, incredulous at the woman’s behaviour, then took a firm grip of her left arm as two seamen rushed forward and took her right. Their assistance was considered a step too far.
‘Don’t push me!’
Ismay stood aside as the woman twisted out of their grasp. One of the seamen snarled. ‘If you don’t want to go, stay!’ Both walked away to seek out more compliant souls in distress, while the woman staggered in the opposite direction, leaving her slippers behind.
His world was falling apart. Literally sinking beneath him. Ismay could see the green water swallowing his creation, inch by inch. Chairman of the White Star Line, but barely in control of his own legs, he watched as his ship became a derelict like the other. This is not what we planned. Is Lord on his way with the Californian? Not for the first time, he wished he knew more about boats. Is that a ship’s light over there? Let it be the Californian. Did Lord see the rockets?
O hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea.
*
It is clearly manifest by the actions of JBI that his agenda following the disaster was of a personal nature. While we acknowledge his intention to relate first-hand the nature of the problems encountered, we find his desire to place himself in isolation totally suspect…
The shakes were starting again. The puddle of brandy in his glass rippled on the surface under his grip. Calm waters? One more mocking manifestation from the disastrous events of the last twelve hours. What manner of man was he that lived while others perished beneath? Tormented by matters beyond his understanding, Ismay lifted his eyes to the ceiling, unmoved that this one bore no golden embellishment. This was the Carpathia—a Cunard ship, the tiny doctor’s cabin shielding him from a world no longer familiar.
He looked at the pad on the table, on which he had written just one word: Containment. He needed to see it there in front of him. To focus. The worst of all possible disasters had happened. Now his priority must be to prevent the details spreading without restriction.
He was alone now. No valet to brush his coat sleeves five times apiece. No personal secretary to note his aspirations. He lacked a chief steward to enquire about the cut of beef for lunch. Braver men than he. No longer in this world for him to employ.
Above the hum of the ship’s engines he heard a man groaning. His detached sensibilities struggled to recognise the sound as his own.
*
‘I don’t get it,’ said Chrissie. ‘You could read this as being in support of the guy, right? Because he might have had some sort of mental breakdown from the stress of it all. But it’s like they want Pirrie to condemn him for some reason.’
‘Have you read the section at the inquiry?’
‘No. I’m still on the part where he’s deciding how to send news about the sinking.’
‘See what you make of Ismay a couple of months later,’ said Billie. ‘This was when he was getting a lot of flak in the press for being rescued, and his appearance at the British inquiry didn’t help either.’
Chrissie shivered. It seemed cold in the room, but she felt sure her discomfort was at least partly prompted by the strange world presented to her through the papers in her hands. She skimmed ahead to the next paragraph:
Furthermore, you are hereby notified that JBI made an ill-advised verbal attack on Rufus Isaacs KB, Attorney-General, on the eve of his appearance at the British Commission of Inquiry earlier this month…
Seven weeks. Or, to be more accurate: fifty days and a few hours. That was the distance between his former life and the one he endured now. Ismay sitting in another room, wood-panelled in Victorian formality, inhaling the smoke from his cigar. The physical shakes had stopped. Containment was now the order of the day. Especially today.
Had he done enough?
His isolation was no longer a material thing, waiting alone for his name to be called. Morgan had been noticeably distant. Too busy, as always. Pirrie? Ah, well… ill, apparently. But compliant. There would be no trouble there. The unions? Paid off.
But questions remained.
While the Americans had focused on issues at surface level, the British inquiry would go deeper, of that he was certain. There would be a lot of questions. In that regard he must trust in the beneficial ear of the inquiry commissioner, Lord Mersey, and in one other: leading counsel for the inquiry, Attorney General Sir Rufus Isaacs. He thought back to the advice offered him by the fellow over dinner last night.
‘Speak clearly and with confidence,’ Isaacs had said. ‘Deuced bad acoustics in the Drill Hall but it can’t be helped. All we’ve got available, they tell me. Mersey has complained he can’t hear some witnesses, but you’ll be no trouble, eh?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Got to bring up the question of speed, you realise that? It’s already been raised, and I want you to be quite firm about when you understood the boilers to have been lit. Let’s get rid of this notion of a record crossing. Not in the equation, eh?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Good. One thing, old chap: Tomorrow I’ll need a little more meat on the bones than “of course not”. So, feel free to give as good as you get.’
‘Of course, Sir Rufus. By the way, how’s your brother Godfrey? Is he still the managing director of Marconi?’
The fellow’s reaction had made Ismay smile, especially when he followed up by referring to the matter of shares in the new company. Isaac’s face had turned a satisfying shade of red at the realisation his profiteering venture had reached outside ears. Ten thousand shares at £2 each bought on the day that news of Titanic’s fate reached London. Half of them sold for double that price two days later as soon as they were put up for trading on the stock exchange. Sir Rufus had done well out of the sinking—together with his colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
A door rattled open. ‘Calling Mr Joseph Bruce Ismay.’
Yes, Sir Rufus. I shall certainly give as good as I get from you, or maybe even better. Picking up his cane and gloves, he walked from the room with a straight back.
*
In the small hours of Sunday morning the occupants of room 529 in a Manchester budget hotel were still trying to come to terms with Emma’s Titanic Document.
Robin attempted to sum up all that he had learned. ‘If we accept what we have read here, then it starts with a fraudulent attempt to boost the White Star Line business when it was facing considerable losses. It continues with the disaster itself because Titanic was speeding far more than was safe and hit the iceberg. Then it gets worse because Ismay and other powerful figures did everything to shift the blame while walking away squeaky clean. Is that a fair summary?’
‘Just about,’ agreed Billie. ‘Don’t forget some of them profited financially.’
‘That’s true,’ said Chrissie.
Robin drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘So where’s the damage?’
‘What? You mean to Titanic?’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘To the government. And to Gris in particular. Because if this Emma person is to be believed, people have been killed to stop this document getting out. Something’s missing.’
Billie stood up and stretched. ‘I think you’re right. That’s what’s been bothering me. This stuff would have embarrassed the government in 1912. The situation in Northern Ireland was sensitive enough even then. And when you take the timing of Patrick Faulkner’s death into account, just before the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Gris clearly saw it as a threat for similar reasons in 1985. But today? Okay, there’s a fair bit of damage to Churchill’s name, but not enough for people to be killed to prevent it getting out. So there must be something in here that Peter Gris sees as a personal threat to him. What have we missed?’
Thirty-Seven
Chrissie’s departing shot, whispered, in consideration of the late hour, was to advise Billie to sleep with a chair wedg
ed under the door handle. Such was his state of mind that he caught himself nodding. What price security? But the Ziploc file did find a temporary new home under the mattress.
Sunday dawned without any interest from Billie. The breakfast hour passed unnoticed, and it was a protest from his neglected stomach that put an end to his slumber shortly before eleven. Chrissie had re-titled the Titanic document as the T Doc, and it was now his constant companion. He kept the green plastic case with him as he reached the restaurant four floors below, settling for a liquid breakfast loaded with caffeine.
It sat under his notebook while he scanned the scribblings from the previous night’s debate. The concluding agreement had been for Robin to come over again that afternoon, while Chrissie drove up to Glasgow to resume her managerial duties with Fersen Marine. Once there, she would have time to trawl the internet. Ed was expected to be discharged some time on Monday, so Robin would take him back to the Hilton for a few days. Billie was to return the T Doc to the library for safety. But after that?
On one page he’d scribbled just two words: “Emma” and “WhatsApp”. He had her new number, and so considered challenging her about the accusation she’d made causing him to be suspended. But that felt like asking for her cooperation—admission that he had let her take control of his life. He’d researched Titanic because the subject intrigued him. But then he had listened to her claims about Peter Gris, played the gallant helper by coming down to Manchester, and nearly got Ed killed as a result. Now the document which appeared to have started all this mayhem was in his possession. Shouldn’t he be calling the shots?