by Gary Collins
With the uncontrollable sails down, the vessel tilted back to a reasonable level. However, without sail her captain had little rudder control. Wind and wave bore the Northern Light swiftly away to leeward, away from the land and away from home, away on the heaving breast of the uncaring Atlantic.
* * *
The RMS Baltic was a passenger liner. She had been built at the Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolff in Ireland. When she slid into the North Channel of the Irish Sea on November 21, 1903, she was the biggest vessel owned by the White Star Line. She was also the biggest ship afloat on any sea. When she made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1904, she was under the command of Captain Edward Smith.
By April of 1912 the Baltic had a different captain. She was no longer the largest ship in the world. Her new captain sent warnings of ice sightings to Captain Edward Smith, who was now the proud commander of the newest and largest ship afloat—the SS Titanic. The warnings went unheeded.
The aging Baltic was taking a beating like never before on this bleak December night of 1929. She was 729 feet long, and even at seventy-five feet, six inches midships and reaching a massive 23,876 gross tons, she was still just a toy for the winds to play with. The Baltic’s master, Evan Davis, paced the width of the bridge. He had been doing this for days now with only short periods off watch to sleep.
The huge ship had been tugged out to midstream of the Mersey estuary on November 30. The city of Liverpool, England, barely noticed as the vessel made her way slowly down the channel, heading for the open sea. This was a seafaring town, the comings and goings of ships a common sight. She was passing Birkenhead before Davis rang down for “half ahead.” Twin plumes of black smoke gushed out of her stacks as the engineer five decks below obeyed. The Baltic swung out into the Irish Sea, heading west. Another belch of smoke came from above, followed by a churn of white from her stern as the black ship answered to “full ahead.” Without slowing, the ship turned south and passed Holyhead on the west coast of Wales off her port side. She steamed down the centre of St. George’s Channel, making top speed at fourteen knots. Her top speed had always been sixteen knots, but here the Baltic had slowed a bit, showing her age. Leaving Ireland’s Cape Clear behind, she altered course again and made her westing into the North Atlantic. She was bound for New York City in the United States. Ireland’s rugged green coast had barely sunk below the eastern horizon when the ship encountered the first of the heaving swells head on.
It was now the middle watch, just past midnight, on December 5. The big ship had done constant battle with a west-northwest gale for nearly five days. They had sailed directly into the path of a hurricane.
Hundreds of miles behind her troubled stern, the winds had reached England. Though weakened and bowed by the reach of the North Atlantic, the hurricane clung to its power. It pushed unseen currents up through the English Channel and along the east coast of England, bearing extraordinary tides with it. The lowlands along the Thames flooded as far as two miles in over its banks. Sea water flowed up over wharves. Small outbuildings were swept away into the brackish mix of sea and fresh water.
Aboard the Baltic, her captain ordered just enough revolutions for little more than “slow ahead.” Davis was trying to keep his passengers as comfortable as possible, but he wasn’t having much success. The steep bows of the ship rose on and above the frenzied waves. At intervals her bow was lifted so high that gravity took over. Her immense weight was sucked back down the steep sides, only to summit the same wave again. Into the deep troughs she plunged, splattering white spindrifts away from her surging stem. Snow skirled sideways across the faint beams coming from her lights. Constant sheets of spray blew up over her sides. Ice was forming on her decks, and the ice on her windows made it difficult for her handlers to see out through. She had more than 2,000 passengers aboard and half of them were seasick. Davis was glad to be aboard such a huge, secure vessel on a night like this. But the Baltic wasn’t the only vessel fighting with the North Atlantic winds on this December night.
* * *
The gale showed no signs of letting up as the new day came.
Several times during the frightening night they had just put behind them, Thomas had wished he was “hove to,” but every time he considered it, he changed his mind. It was too late for that now. In order to bring the Northern Light full into the wind, she would have to be several minutes directly broadside to the gale. The night seas had rolled by higher than the schooner, dark and menacing. He wouldn’t take a chance of broaching his vessel.
Each of the men save young Peter punched a trick at the wheel that day. He wanted to, but at each request his father said no. Not in a storm like this, Peter was told. Everyone was cold, tired, hungry, and soaked to the skin. At times the schooner went along at top speed, the force of the wind at her stern pushing her along as if she were “boom out”—the seaman’s term for running before the wind in a gaff-rigged schooner, with both mainsail and foresail leaning out on opposite sides of the vessel. It would only be attempted under fair winds. Once during the day she seemed to be racing, as if trying to get away from the following seas.
“She must be goan ten knots or more!” Thomas yelled to his son Rex. “An’ wit’ bare poles, by gawd! I’ve never seen the like!”
Rex coughed before he answered, a dry, hacking cough that came from deep within his chest. “I wouldn’t mine the speed we’re goan if we was heading fer the shore instead of away from it.”
“You’d better git below and try to warm yerself. And see if dere’s any dry clothes left to put on,” Thomas told his son. He knew Rex was sick. He also knew Rex wouldn’t shy away from his duties. That was his way.
Rex Parsons was twenty years old and a born seaman. He took to the ways of fishing and schooners like a man born to do nothing else. Quick in your mind and quick on your feet will always keep you above the deep. The old saying among schooner skippers suited him well. He had a sharp mind and never shied from decision-making. He was well-muscled and like a cat on his feet. But now he was slowed by a sickness the crew figured was the flu.
“Caught the bloody stuff in S’n John’s. Don’t want to worry about it. A man kin ketch anyt’ing in dere except fer fair prices,” Fred Wiseman had ventured.
Whatever his illness and wherever he had caught it mattered little to Rex. He just knew he was weak and not himself at all. To his father the very thought of influenza was frightening. Barely ten years before, at the closing of World War I—the Great War, they were calling it now—the flu had spread like a biblical pestilence across the face of the earth. During the two-year span of 1918-19, la grippe or Spanish flu ravaged its infectious spore into the lungs of one fifth of the world’s people, killing more than 30,000,000 of them before frantic scientists and overworked doctors finally found a vaccine. Parsons remembered it well. He also knew the virus preferred victims between twenty and forty years of age. With no medicine aboard, Rex was a prime target.
* * *
Almost every time the Northern Light rode the edge of the waves and fell over them, her bowsprit dived through the water. Always she rose and shouldered her wet load aside. Sometimes she shuddered with the weight of the full of her deck below the sea. Still she rose above her misery and continued on.
Darkness found the entire crew in the forecastle and the helm secured. Even lashed to the wheel, a man would not survive on that exposed deck.
Below, everything was in shambles and dishes were overturned on the table, sliding back and forth with the motion of the boat. A low railing surrounding the edge of the forecastle table kept them from falling onto the floor, where salt water was sloshing.
All the men were fully clothed and spare clothes were hung everywhere in an effort to dry them. There were two small stoves in the triangle-shaped cabin; one used wood, the other kerosene. Both stoves were so crowded and surrounded by wet coats, cuffs, socks, and boots that v
ery little heat escaped from them. The clotheslines swayed with each roll and turn of the schooner. A lantern gave off just enough feeble light to cast weary shadows as it swung in its gimbal. Some of the crew sat on the bunks while others stretched full in their veed berths. With each forward pitch of the Northern Light, her timbers strained and wrenched in protest. Thomas Parsons was standing and trying to keep his balance by hanging on to the pawl post.
“Dere’s no let-up in the win’ a’tall, b’ys. Not one lun since we left,” he said. “Try to get some sleep if ya kin. We’ll need all the strength we kin muster as soon as the storm slacks.”
Rex tried to suppress a cough.
“’Ow are ya, Rex, b’y? You don’t sound very good,” his brother Peter asked him.
Rex was reaching up to his top bunk searching for dry clothes.
“The man in the top bunk always gets the flu first,” someone said from the shadows.
Before anyone could comment, the room suddenly tilted back, and back, as the schooner mounted yet another comber. Not a word was said as she lifted higher and higher. She finally crested the wave, but instead of pitching forward as expected, she slid forward like a toboggan on a snowy hill. Down she plummeted, taking everything movable in the forecastle into the messy, saturated recesses of her inner bows.
When she bottomed out, everyone was thrown forward with the impact like a hammer blow dealt directly to the aging bows of the Northern Light. There came a noise of sea water rushing past the hull and furiously flooding the deck above, then the shuddering feel of wood all around trying to rise above the weight of water. Above the dull roar of outside wind and waves came a sound like timbers stretching and straining, maybe even breaking.
Then the old schooner started to rise from her fetters. The sound of resisting wood increased. She rolled hard to starboard. The vessel seemed to shed most of her wet burden, for she steadied herself with a lurch.
“She’s leakin’, Skipper, from ’er topsides. I jest seen water peasin’ in t’rough the top strake.”
“’Ow bad is it?” asked Thomas. His voice was controlled and even.
“Oh, not dat bad, Skipper, but anudder blow like dat one will serve ’er barbarous.”
“She must ’ave beat the oakum out of ’er deck, too, Skipper. Dere’s water leaking down in a few places,” reported Dick Russell.
“B’ys, dere’s smoke comin’ from—my gawd! The two bogies are gone from der stands!” shouted young Peter.
He was right. The sudden downward rush of their vessel had dislodged the stoves from their fastenings. Both lay on their sides, one spilling hot, smouldering ashes. Someone grabbed a wet blanket, threw it under the table and over the ashes, then crawled in and quickly put the fire out. A smell of woodsmoke and burning cloth added to the odours.
Parsons jumped to the ladder and climbed the steps. He was reluctant to open the small door. If his vessel took another wave like the last one and the door was open . . .
He waited and listened. The schooner seemed to have settled. Sliding the door back, he stood on the last step and looked out. He kept peering astern over the washing deck. It was snowing. The schooner rose on another roller and for a moment her stern hung against the faint sky. He could see the wheel. Thank God, it was still secure. The lashings had held. The rudder below her stern was taking a terrible pounding, he knew. He was powerless against a storm like this. Thomas closed the door and stepped backward to the grimy floor. He had seen something else above, or rather had not seen something.
“Our punt is gone, b’ys!” he said. “Dat last great roller must ’ave took ’er. The lifeboat is still on deck, though. The wheel is still lashed, an’ she seems to be ridin’ it out a’right.”
“We can’t start a fire in ar one of the stoves, Skipper. The funnels are beyon’ repair. All squat up, dey are,” said Carty.
Thomas tried to cheer his crew. “We’ll ’ave to do wit’out the stoves, den, b’ys. Sure, ’tis no worse dan out on a gunnin’ point waitin’ fer a shot o’ ducks. We’ve all done dat. Snowin’ just right fer it, too.”
Rex was shivering and trying not to show it. His father saw it but said nothing.
“We’ve been backin’ from the lan’ like a lobster in its ’ole, Skipper. Where do you figure we are?” asked Wiseman.
“I can’t rightly say, Fred, b’y, but we must be somewhere to the suddard of Cape Race. Lets try to clear up the forecastle a bit. ’Twill warm us up.”
For the next four days, the Northern Light was carried before the storm. The winds moderated some but still came hard out of the north and west. They managed to keep watch during the day and did what they could to keep their vessel before the wind. The schooner was leaking badly now. The night the stoves had been overturned had only been the start of their trouble. The leaks had only gotten worse and the water sluiced over the cabin floor. They bored holes to allow the water to drain into the bilge to the pump. The working of the pump, on deck just aft of the mainmast, was manned every hour.
Water trickled below decks and soaked into their food supply. They were short of fresh water, short of food, and they had no way of cooking a meal. No way of keeping warm, either.
On deck everything was in shambles. Part of the jib still clung to the fore-topmast stay, hanging from the end of the bowsprit like a dismayed figurehead. One of the standing shrouds that gave the foremast its lateral support had let go. The cable had torn free from the port side, taking part of the bulwarks with it. It swung from the foremast hounds where it was fastened, and it gave off a whining sound as it flogged back and forth with the flaws. The missing section of bulwark allowed better escape for the water that rushed over her deck. Unfortunately, it also gave easier access to the seeking sea when the schooner rolled and tilted deep to port. Under these conditions the crew of the Northern Light prepared for yet another night of torment.
* * *
Captain Evan Davis of the Baltic was a lantern-jawed, always clean-shaven man. He wore the captain’s dress of the White Star Line: black, fine-creased trousers and double-breasted jacket. White collar and black tie completed his uniform. All the ship’s officers wore suits of black. Davis’s jacket sported four brass-coloured bands around each wrist and four spotless matching buttons.
He stepped from his quarters just aft of the bridge. Unusual for him, he was hatless and his tie was askew. He and his officers had spent a hard few days and nights on and off the bridge. While the ship was not in any foreseeable danger of sinking, she was in need of some repairs. The twenty-six-year-old steel-hulled ship was no stranger to these waters. She had crossed between England and America many times. Over all these years her commanders had dreaded the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Her present master, Davis, carried the same concerns on his shoulders.
Of all the hundreds of square miles of her Atlantic crossing, this section of ocean demanded his most careful attention. Winter and spring brought huge fields of floating ice, sometimes stretching the entire length of the Canadian coastline, icebergs so huge their progress could not be hurried even by the forces of wind and current combined. Davis looked at the charts laid neatly on the slightly angled chart table. An overhead light shone down on the charts and maps displayed there.
After studying them for a while, he moved forward and stopped beside the binnacle with its soft light illuminating the compass within. He seemed to be calculating the ship’s course as it rolled and yawed from starboard to port. Davis ignored the motion, having acquired a permanent set of sea legs long since. He walked back to the chart table, bent over it for a moment, and then stood erect.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “we are nearing the spot where the sister of this very ship went down so long ago.” He paused and spoke again, softer this time. “The Titanic.” He had everyone’s attention. All but the helmsman, who stared out through the black windows, looked his way.
D
avis straightened his tie. “Strange sort of events, that. You all know the story, of course. However, all of you don’t know the role this ship played on that night. You are aware that it was a stark calm night. Not much like this one, eh, Number One?”
The first mate nodded toward his captain. “Hardly, sir.”
Davis addressed the bridge again. “From this very bridge a message was sent to the wireless officer on board the Titanic warning her of icebergs!” He swallowed hard. “She ignored the message.” Davis seemed to want to say something else.
Walking forward to the windows, he stretched out his arms for balance. Standing against the ledge beneath the water-streaked window, he looked out at the storm-tossed seas and said no more.
As much as winter and spring brought constant ice dangers from the north, the Grand Banks were respected and feared for other shipping extremes. Two of the world’s greatest ocean currents pour over their domain. The frigid Labrador Current collides with the warmth of the Gulf Stream here. The north current sustains the richest fishing grounds on earth. It also has the distinction of hosting the densest fog banks on the planet. The tropical stream from the Gulf of Mexico separates into two: one carries its water northwest to Europe, and the other southwest, all the way to the west coast of Africa. This warm water is also the spawning ground for hurricanes.
The morning watch had just begun with its crew shift. Davis gave detailed course instructions to the new wheelman and turned to leave the bridge.
“Pardon me, Captain, sir. I—I thought I saw something, sir,” said the new helmsman.
“Where away?” asked Davis.
“Just—just off the port bow, sir. I was sure, sir. Though I don’t see it now.” The man was nervous.