The Master's Tale--A Novel of the Titanic

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  ‘Savannah?’ With surprise, I said, ‘But I haven’t been there in thirty years!’

  She glared at me, while the companion wilted beside her. ‘I guess that’s right.’

  Thinking longingly of the quiet hour I’d promised myself, I suggested we might sit down and have coffee, rather than discussing old acquaintance by the elevators. To my relief, as soon as we were seated the companion – a sparrow to Mrs Burgoyne’s more flamboyant bird of paradise – fluttered away.

  ‘So, Savannah,’ I said, waiting for her to fill in the gaps. Savannah to me meant sweltering heat, Colonial houses, vast estates, and cotton – bartering with agents, judging the staple, trying to get the best possible quality, watching the stowage as it came aboard. Then she named one of the plantations from which I’d bought when I was Master of the Lizzie Fennell, and the circumstances came back to me. Her father had been a big, swaggering man, difficult to deal with. When Mrs Burgoyne named her sister, Marcia, she came to mind at once: Marcia, one of the languid beauties for which the South was famous, and yes – I had been rather keen on her.

  As the older woman refreshed my memory – somewhat resentfully, it has to be said – gradually the young Adelaide came to mind, a gawky, wide-eyed girl aged maybe twelve or fourteen, present somewhere in the background when I visited the house. She was hard to recognize in the plump features of the woman before me.

  I’d been in my late twenties when Adelaide Burgoyne first knew me, trading from southern ports like Galveston and Savannah. Her father was a bully, used to browbeating his way through negotiations, but I’d refused to be rushed into purchasing my cargo, and, with time on my side, eventually paid a fairer price.

  Later, having gained a modicum of respect, I was invited to the estate to see how the crop was harvested and fed through the cotton gin before baling. It was interesting, but then so was his elder daughter Marcia. She knew how to smoulder – and to tease. Alone and frustrated through some warm southern nights, I told myself not to be a fool. If I’d found a liberating sense of acceptance in America, I knew equally well that as a young sea-captain with no assets, my chances with Marcia were virtually nil.

  Not until my next visit a few months later, when Marcia’s conversation dwelt on riverboats, did I realize with shock how warm things had become. We were by the waterfront, watching cotton bales being loaded onto a barge. The suggestion that I might come ashore, work the boats, was phrased delicately, but I caught her drift. If I came ashore, she might be prepared to marry me… That gave me a jolt. I had only to picture her bullying father as my parent-in-law to experience a great longing for the open sea…

  I felt my memory begin to slide down darker paths, and only as Adelaide Burgoyne enquired, somewhat querulously, about my subsequent disappearance, did I drag myself back to the present.

  ‘You took off that time with never a word – we thought you were dead,’ she repeated. ‘Poor Marcia was inconsolable for months.’

  Even after thirty years, I was sorry to hear that and said so. ‘Under the circumstances,’ I added gently, ‘there was no time for delay – we had to leave at once. But you know, Mrs Burgoyne, I wrote to your father from Liverpool. To advise him the ship and his cargo had arrived safely.’ In truth I’d wanted to let Marcia know – through her father – that I was changing my direction.

  ‘Did you?’ It was clear she didn’t believe me.

  ‘Yes, I did. Since it was largely concerning business matters, perhaps he didn’t say?’

  ‘We thought you were lost in that hurricane!’ she protested. ‘You, the ship, the cargo – lost at sea! He wouldn’t have kept that from us!’

  Would he not? It was cruel, but perhaps not such a surprise. Looking back, I thought he’d been less keen on the idea of me as a son-in-law than Marcia – and her sister – had imagined. For him, perhaps that hurricane had come at an opportune moment.

  Apologising again for having sailed away and left them in the dark, I said, ‘You’re right in one sense, Mrs Burgoyne. That hurricane nearly finished us. We had quite a job getting home to Liverpool. As it happened, I never went back to Savannah. If I had,’ I assured her, ‘I would have called on your sister.’

  ‘You’d have been too late,’ she snapped. ‘Marcia married Beau – the man Father wanted for her all along!’ At that she gathered herself together and left me with an untouched cup of coffee.

  10

  Leaving Savannah: I hadn’t thought of it in years. As I made my way back to my quarters I could feel the sticky heat, smell the river. The back end of August, hurricane season. In Savannah folk were watching barometers and battening down in readiness for a bad blow. Every shipmaster in port was trying to get away before the wind hit. No matter how bad the weather, at sea you can ride the storm. Hang around in a confined space and you’ll be smashed to smithereens.

  We were fortunate – in fact I was congratulating myself on having most of the cargo aboard, 2,000 bales of cotton stacked in the hold and ‘tween deck space, with another 800 to be lashed on deck. If I gave back-word on the deck cargo – always a good move in bad weather – we could be away with the next tide. Did I think about Marcia, try to send a message? I don’t know. Probably not. My mind was on the job at hand.

  I sent the 3rd Mate to round up the stragglers ashore, and while the drunks were still reeling to some inner music we were towed out into the river. An hour or so later, having made the open sea, I put her on a north-easterly heading, and with all sail set prepared to put as much sea as possible between me and the land before that weather hit.

  I was not overly worried. I’d been through some bad blows since my promotion, and enjoyed the challenge. I can do this, was a thought that always got me through, and while I was generally too busy to remember the years of experience, in some quiet backwater of my mind Joe was always there, overseeing every action.

  After Hong Kong I’d expected to do a third trip with him, but with just a few months of sea-time to qualify for my 2nd Mate’s exam, he pushed me to sign on for the Atlantic run. Gibson’s had no 3rd Mate’s job available, so I signed on instead as able seaman aboard the Amoy. Those two trips across the North Atlantic, to Norfolk, Virginia, and St John’s, Newfoundland, were hard, but I wouldn’t have missed them for the world. In those few months I really learned my trade, and could say with the best that I knew how to handle a ship. Not only knew how, but loved the thrill of battling the wind, of finding a way forward when the elements were against us. Better still, cracking on to skim across the waves when everything was in our favour.

  At 21 I had my 2nd Mate’s ticket, and by 23 my 1st Mate’s. By 25, like Joe, I was a qualified Master Mariner, and a year later was given my first command. Sweet Lizzie Fennell, a full-rigged ship of just over a thousand tons, was built at St John, New Brunswick, with a wooden hull and lines similar to the Senator Weber. She seemed so familiar I loved her from the start, and I swear she responded to that. I soon got to know her little ways and she seemed to know mine; so, off Savannah with that weather building behind us, I was rightly concerned but not afraid. I knew she’d see us through.

  I’d hoped to outrun the weather, but we didn’t quite make it. Just two nights later, the skies were dense, and with no moon it was as black as pitch on deck. I could feel the seas coming up from starboard in long, oily swells. Hard to see except where they met the ship’s quarter in a long, rolling crest of foam. First light was a relief, but the mainmast was describing huge arcs against breaking banks of cumulus, the dark seas presenting bottomless black hollows on every side. For a while the wind remained favourable, but as the sun came up it changed, gusting from every direction; and then I saw the anvil of the storm behind us, growing, flattening, rolling a turbulent shelf of air towards us.

  I called the Mate. The men were aloft almost before the orders were given. With part-reefed sails we ran before the tempest, hauling in canvas as we went, great spumes of water leaping over the stern and pouring down the deck. Hard to tell whether we were soaked wi
th spray or hail or driving rain. The noise was deafening. For a few hours we managed to keep up, always with the fear that if we reefed too much we’d lose control; too little and we’d lose the mast. And meanwhile the wind shrieked through the rigging as though all the devils in hell had turned out to drag us overboard.

  Men were working overtime on the bilge pump, but I wasn’t worried about the cargo. It was the ship herself I feared for – and the men, lashed together, struggling with lines and ropes, one after another swept off their feet as poor Lizzie was flung about, this way and that. It was like being punched and beaten: hard to breathe, hard to think beyond the need to hold hard and keep your feet. With seas coming green over the starboard quarter, we had two men on the wheel, while the Mate and I were linked to the quarterdeck rail. You expect bad weather in the North Atlantic, but this was more ferocious than anything I’d ever experienced.

  While Jameson kept his attention forward, I flung stinging water from my eyes and cast my attention aft. The taffrail was away. Alarm shot through me. If the poop should be breached and the rudder damaged, we’d be finished.

  There were no clear options. I fretted, knowing I had to depend on the skill of those eastern seaboard shipwrights, but even as I willed my soul into the timbers around me, Lizzie climbed a massive wave, teetering on the crest. Black holes appeared on every side, the sea a many-mouthed monster about to swallow us whole. I urged her over the crest with every prayer I could think of. Just as I thought she would do it, a massive sea came up from starboard and shoved us bodily sideways. I yelled at the helmsman, the Mate bellowed orders above the screaming of the wind. No use. We were dropping, beam on to those massive waves. Taking them aboard. Going over.

  This is it, I thought as my legs went from under me. In the next instant, smacked hard by the sea, everything went black.

  When I came to, I was half-strangled and up to my neck in water. I could feel something hard in the middle of my back – turned out to be the Mate’s knees. His hefty fist had hold of my collar, and he was trying to haul me up the deck and out of the water. I grabbed at the quarterdeck rail, using the uprights like a ladder. Incredibly, our Lizzie hadn’t turned turtle, but was partially submerged and lolling horribly to port.

  When I had sense enough to take things in, I saw the masts were at a crazy angle, the lifeboat banging from its lashing amidships, men hanging off ropes like monkeys. Worse, the main hatch-cover was breached – a hasty job sought out by wind and waves – layers of canvas ripping free. As seas crashed over us, I felt the cargo begin to shift. Felt those cotton bales swell and burst their battens. As the ship sank further every man grabbed something better to anchor him. I thought we were done for. Clinging to the quarterdeck rail, I tried and failed to undo the rope around my waist. As though being free to swim could have saved me.

  But our Lizzie did not go over. She lolled, swamped and helpless, while we poor sailors expected to meet Davy Jones any minute. But we were effectively in the lee of the ship, and, despite the battering, the dreadful exhaustion of our precarious position, by some sweet miracle Lizzie Fennell stayed afloat.

  Jameson and I were close enough to exchange words. With each switch and shriek of the wind we tried to guess what the hurricane was doing, how long before it might loosen its grasp and let us be.

  Gradually the 2nd and 3rd Mates got around the men, establishing that none were lost. All we could do was hang on and pray. Sometime during the night, in the midst of cramp-like agony, we became aware that the noise was less, the devils had stopped shrieking and the rain ceased lashing. I glimpsed the stars for the first time since leaving Savannah, and it came to me that we were being tossed about in the aftermath, that the monstrous thing had curved away, chewed and shaken us like rats but spat us out, indigestible.

  We were alive, for which God be praised. Our sweet Lizzie hadn’t let us down, she’d stayed afloat beyond every expectation. But she was in a bad way. We would have to summon every ounce of energy to get her upright again.

  Something I’d picked up from Joe, and learned for myself over the years, is that a ship can come alive only by virtue of the energy invested in her. Unless every man pulls together the ship will founder and fail. And it doesn’t matter who we are, whether we hate each other, despise our officers, loathe the work – we must care for our ship. She is our only saviour. Without her – and the grace of God – we are all lost.

  It was never more evident to me than when we surveyed our position in the morning light. Before the hurricane struck, we’d been in the warm Gulf Stream, approaching Cape Hatteras, some fifty miles or so from the land. When morning came, we could see the black and white lighthouse on the point. It was behind us. Somehow the hurricane had swept us to the north-west, missing the Diamond Shoals – a veritable graveyard for ships – by what can only have been a hair’s breadth.

  The sea was still hugely disturbed, so we were not yet out of danger. While the 2nd Mate organised teams to man the bilge pump in short spells – it was a brutal job at the best of times, and worse at that angle – Jameson and I worked out how best to catch the prevailing wind and ease us away from the shoals. Just looking at the state of the ship made me sick with apprehension, yet I knew we had to get her right. With the jolly boat gone, all we had was our Lizzie. She was our only chance, even though seeing her at this angle it was hard to believe she was still sound. The men were rigid with fear and no wonder, but until we could get her up a bit we wouldn’t know the extent of the damage, and we couldn’t get her up until we got rid of some water below decks.

  With difficulty, the 2nd Mate and I got into the hold. We saw the cotton bales had swollen and sagged to port, increasing the list and holding us down. Pointless hauling them back up again. I figured the bales would gradually drain out into the bilge space – or they would if it wasn’t already full of water.

  ‘So,’ I gasped to Jameson when he hauled us out, ‘we keep pumping bilges, let the bales drain naturally, and she should start coming up. Once we’re close to an even keel we can think about repairs and re-stowing the cargo.’

  The Mate raised his heavy brows. ‘It’ll be a hard slog. For the men, I mean.’

  ‘Aye, it will indeed. Spell it out to them – there’s no choice. It’s that or we slop around here until the food and fresh water run out.’

  ‘We couldn’t get back to Wilmington?’

  ‘No. We get straight, survey the damage, then make decisions. Meanwhile, grab the cook and let’s see what he can do for us. If they’re to work, the men need food…’

  ~~~

  We did get straight, we did pull her up, we found the Gulf Stream again and made it back to Liverpool by dint of every man’s will and sheer hard labour. Despite the current and some good westerlies pushing us along, it was a slow, sluggish, arduous journey across the Atlantic. By the end of those 25 days I felt I’d ground the grit of my determination into the very timbers of the ship. By the time we reached the Mersey I was nauseous with exhaustion, wondering how Joe had managed to be so chipper, coming home from trips like this.

  And then came the moment that erased all that. Approaching the Bar Lightship we passed one of the new Atlantic steamers: sleek black hull, white-painted accommodation, four tall masts and a buff and black funnel trailing a long plume of smoke. Her canvas was furled yet the RMS Britannic was cutting the foam like a tea-clipper. Wallowing in the wake, Lizzie Fennell nearly threw me off my feet.

  It was like seeing a beautiful woman walk past with a rival. Love, lust and envy, all rolled into one. That ship, that day, spelled the future to me.

  A month later I applied to the two most prestigious companies afloat. Cunard had no vacancies but, in the spring of 1880, White Star took me on.

  11

  ‘You can smile, Ted,’ Joe allowed over a supper of bread and cheese, ‘but these infernal steamships are in danger of making us forget our place in the order of things. Praying for good speed and a fair passage keeps a man in touch with the Almighty. A man is nev
er in charge of anything, you know, except by the grace of God.’

  I mumbled an acknowledgement as he emphasised the point with his knife. ‘This modern preoccupation with clocks and timetables isn’t good. You mark my words – get on those steamships, you’ll not be the owners’ servant, you’ll be a slave to time…’

  A slave to time… I came to with a shiver, Joe’s voice in my ear, startled, disoriented, young again, thinking I knew it all and my brother was getting to be an old fogey…

  Aware that I’d drifted, I roused myself, wondering why my steward hadn’t called me. But a glance at the clock said I’d been asleep for barely an hour.

  With an effort I got up, went to the bathroom, relieved myself, rinsed hands and face and stared at the reflection in the glass. A weathered old face stared back, white beard, white hair, neater now, with all its youthful curl gone; and a nose that was starting to show signs of good living.

  Ellie said I should cut back on the spirits. Not that I drank much at sea – when the weather was bad I needed every wit I could summon. Bending to my shoes, I felt I should really cut back on the meals. Straightening again, pressing studs into the wing-collar, I fiddled with the bow tie but managed it. Remembering the old days, my struggles to master that one essential item of gentlemen’s clothing, I found myself smiling – which brought forth a cheery response from Paintin, my steward, when he came through to assist with waistcoat and mess-jacket.

  While he adjusted the epaulettes I stood before the glass wondering where the fit young shipmaster had gone. Time: that word again. A long time since I was surviving on salt beef stew and hard tack, falling into the nearest chop house for a decent meal once we landed ashore. Now it was turtle soup and crown of lamb any day of the week, with some frothy concoction for pudding. Not to mention the best selection in French and English cheeses. I caught Ellie’s eye viewing me and sighed, telling her – in my mind, anyway – that it would be easier once I was home for good, once I had her to care for me, to remind me not to have that extra helping or that second nightcap.