by Tom Bradman
Behind them stood someone Billy recognised. Mr Ismay was obviously in charge, deciding who was allowed in the lifeboat and who wasn’t.
‘First class only in this boat, I’m afraid,’ said one seaman. He held up a hand, but Anya’s mother knocked it aside and unleashed a torrent of Polish at him.
‘Shame on you!’ somebody yelled. ‘Let the kiddies on the lifeboat!’
‘There’s no more room, I tell you, no room,’ the seaman shouted back.
‘You’re lying!’ somebody screamed. ‘There’s space on the benches!’
Billy looked over the handrail and saw that most of the benches were full. The first-class passengers sitting on them – women and children for the most part, and a few men as well – looked embarrassed and even ashamed. But there was a small space on one bench, a space just big enough for Anya and her mother and sisters.
Billy looked at Mr Ismay and his heart hardened against him.
‘Mr Ismay,’ he called out.
Mr Ismay looked up.
‘Everyone can see there’s room enough in the boat for these wee girls and their ma,’ said Billy loudly. ‘Or are you just going to let them drown along with the rest of us poor people? Maybe the other fine folk in this boat will tell all their fancy friends about it when you get to New York.’
Billy pushed Anya’s mother and the girls up against the seamen. He stared hard at Mr Ismay, refusing to let him look away.
At last Mr Ismay nodded. ‘Let them on,’ he said quietly, and the seamen did as they were ordered, hurrying Anya and her family aboard. Anya’s mother glanced back at Billy, but then she and the girls were gone and the seamen closed ranks again. Somebody yelled at them, and soon there was a scuffle. Billy retreated, looking for George.
He found him by the handrail further along the deck. The two boys looked down at the lifeboat as it was lowered to the sea. Anya was sitting on her mother’s lap, looking up at them. Billy waved, and the little girl waved back.
‘A long and happy life to you, Anya,’ he said softly.
Chapter Twelve
Last Moments
‘What now, Fleming?’ said George, turning to Billy. ‘You’re the man with the answers. Although I don’t think we’ll be getting on any lifeboats in the near future. I’m pretty sure they’ve all been launched, full or not.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Billy.
He didn’t have any more answers. He felt bruised and exhausted and frozen to his bones, and part of him wanted to lie down and die, to wait for the dark sea to swallow him. But he couldn’t say that, not with George staring at him so hopefully.
‘We should try to find Mr McElroy,’ Billy said. ‘If anyone knows what to do, he will.’
It seemed to make sense to head for the bellboy station, even though that meant going towards the submerged section of the ship.
The decks were still full of people, but none took any notice of the boys. Most were searching for lifejackets, and Billy saw several fights over these precious objects. He saw people leaping from the handrail and into the sea, which didn’t seem a good idea.
Further on a priest with a powerful voice led others in a hymn Billy recognised.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
They found the Chief Purser in his office. He was calmly emptying his desk drawers and putting papers in his pockets. He looked up and frowned.
‘Where have you two been?’ he said. ‘I put the rest of the bellboys into a lifeboat half an hour ago. You might well have missed your chance now. And what happened to your uniforms? You look like a couple of scarecrows!’
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Billy. ‘I… I mean we… we were helping passengers…’
‘Don’t be daft, you’ve no need to apologise,’ said George, rounding on him. ‘He wasn’t just helping passengers, Mr McElroy. He saved my life and the life of a little girl, so he did. And he got her and her family into a lifeboat.’
‘Is that right?’ said Mr McElroy. He came out from behind his desk and put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. ‘I knew you were a good lad from the moment I set eyes on you. Can I assume you boys have also settled your differences?’
‘Aye, that you can, sir,’ said George. He turned to Billy once more and held out his hand. ‘You’ve got more guts than I’ll ever have. You offered me your friendship once and I didn’t take it. I hope you’ll forgive me, Billy.’
Billy smiled and took his hand. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, George.’
‘Right, come on, lads,’ said Mr McElroy. ‘We might still be able to help some of the passengers. And we should find out what’s happening in the Marconi Room. I think Mr Phillips and Mr Bride are still in there.’
‘Don’t worry, sir, I’ll check on them,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Mr McElroy was right. Mr Phillips and Harold were in the Marconi Room, tapping away at their Morse keys, even though the cabin was now leaning at a crazy angle.
‘Good to see you, Billy,’ said Harold. ‘We’re about to pack it in.’
‘Did you hear from any ships?’ said Billy. ‘Are there any near?’
‘Yes, there’s one, the Carpathia,’ said Harold. ‘It’s on its way.’
‘It will be at least four hours before they get here,’ said Mr Phillips. ‘We’ll be long dead by then, you mark my words. A watery grave is a terrible thing…’
‘Hark to old misery here!’ said Harold. ‘While there’s life, there’s hope, that’s what my dear old Ma always used to say. Come on, Jack, leave it.’
He dragged Mr Phillips away from the desk and thrust a lifejacket at him.
‘I’ve a spare one for you, Billy,’ Harold added. ‘Here, put this on, and make sure you do it up.’
Billy did as he was told, and the three of them left the Marconi Room. The panic was worse than ever, the ship sinking ever further under the cold sea, its insides groaning ever more loudly.
‘Hang on, what are they up to?’ said Harold, pointing at a group of men on the bridge. They were wrestling with something, a long wooden shape – and as Billy looked he saw that it was a boat.
He ran off to tell Mr McElroy and George.
‘Of course, the collapsible lifeboats!’ said Mr McElroy. ‘I saw two being launched so I assumed they’d all gone already. But there are another two stored on the roof of the bridge…’
Moments later they climbed the ladder that led to the roof of the bridge. It leaned down at a steep angle and one edge was below the water. Harold and Mr Phillips were there, along with a dozen men – a couple of officers, deckhands, even some passengers. They were all working on the two remaining boats, raising their canvas sides and knocking into place the ribs that would stiffen them.
Suddenly the roof of the bridge juddered and a huge wave surged across it, sweeping away one of the boats and the men working on it.
‘Don’t let the other one go!’ yelled an officer, and they tried to hold on to it, Billy and George leaping forward to grab the wooden gunwale. The ship seemed to judder again, the roof dipping further below the water, and the second boat was swept away too, tipping over as it hit something – and dragging Billy into the sea with it.
There was no great splash. One minute Billy was on the roof of the bridge and the next he was in the water, completely disorientated. He kicked and thrashed and the sea roared in his ears, and just when he thought his lungs were about to burst he shot into the air and bobbed on the surface. The lifejacket had saved him.
But where was everybody? And where were the two boats?
He coughed and spat out seawater and tried to focus, but his eyes stung and for a while he couldn’t see anything at all. He could hear the shouts and screams of people in the water around him. He shouted too, calling ‘George!’ and ‘M
r McElroy!’ over and over again, but there were no replies. Then he heard a terrible grinding noise and looked round just as his eyes cleared.
He found himself looking at the stricken Titanic. The wave that had swept him off the roof of the bridge must have been a big one, for he was at least a hundred yards from the ship. Its lights still glowed, but it was tilted steeply downwards, its gigantic stern now a couple of hundred feet above the water.
Suddenly a great crack appeared round the base of the leading funnel. It tipped over, smashed into the superstructure, then hit the sea with a colossal splash.
There were screams from the ship and the sea, and more when the second funnel followed the first. Billy floated, horrified and fascinated by what he was seeing. It was like being in the front row of a theatre watching the most amazing spectacle in the world, the last moments of a great ship. It was tilted so steeply now he thought the end must be soon. But there were more surprises to come.
The grinding noise grew louder as the ship’s stern rose further from the water. The lights went out at last with a great fizzing, and there were other sounds as well, crashes and bangs and booms, and Billy had a sudden vision of what must be happening inside that enormous, hollow structure. Everything that wasn’t bolted down or riveted in was falling towards the bow – furniture and trunks and chests and crockery and tools and people. Judging by the volume of sound even things that were bolted down were falling as well now.
Then huge cracks appeared in the side of the hull about a third of the way back from the bow. The cracks grew wider until the hull finally split in two, the whole forward section of the ship shearing off and going under the frothing sea in a cloud of steam and smoke.
The rest of the ship fell back onto its bottom, the last two funnels falling off, one on either side, and Billy could see the tiny figures of people dropping from the handrail or clinging on for dear life.
They didn’t have long to wait. The ship’s stern began to tip up once more and within seconds it was almost standing in the water.
Billy heard terrified screaming and watched as the tiny, ant-like figures scrambled upwards, away from the relentless water. Many of them jumped or fell as the last part of the Titanic sank down and vanished entirely in a final, terrible maelstrom.
Billy could still hear people calling out and thrashing in the water around him, but the noises soon faded. The sea was draining the warmth from him, and he felt as if his blood was turning into ice, sharp crystals crackling through his veins. He couldn’t feel his feet or his legs any more, and he shivered, his whole body juddering. Then the ice reached his chest and the shivering stopped. It was strange, but the cold had penetrated so deeply that he almost felt warm again.
Billy was filled with a strange calmness. He leaned back, spread his arms in the water and looked up. There were so many stars, a host of lights sprinkled across the blackness. He thought of everything he’d seen, images from the last few crazy hours spinning through his mind. He thought of Ma and his sisters. He thought of Da, and wondered if he might be seeing him again soon, and whether Da had been watching when he had saved Anya. Billy hoped so.
He closed his eyes and let the water cover his mouth.
He didn’t hear the lifeboat approaching, or feel the hands that roughly hauled him from the sea.
Chapter Thirteen
The Lucky Ones
Billy didn’t remember much of what happened over the next few hours. He woke up to find himself being carried onto another ship, and wondered briefly how somebody had managed to re-float the Titanic so quickly. But it wasn’t the Titanic, it was the ship Harold had spoken of, the RMS Carpathia.
Three days later Billy was at the Carpathia’s handrail as it steamed past the Statue of Liberty and into New York harbour. By then he had discovered just how lucky he had been. Most of the lifeboats had got as far away from the Titanic as possible, their occupants afraid of being sucked down by the sinking ship or swamped by the people in the water. Billy had been saved because he had been alone and the lifeboat had almost run him down.
A huge crowd clamoured on the pier as the Carpathia docked – people desperate for news of their families, reporters yelling questions, the New York police trying to hold them back.
To his relief, Billy was whisked off with the other survivors to a hostel. There he was given a complete change of clothes – he was still wearing the trousers and pullover he had found in the abandoned cabin with George and Anya. Then he curled up on a bunk and slept for two days.
A week later, a man from the White Star Line’s Manhattan office came to see him. Most of the American survivors had gone home by now, but plenty of people from other countries had been on the Titanic and they were still waiting until they were well enough to go on to their final destinations. Others – especially those who had lost loved ones – simply wanted to go home, and were waiting for their passages to be arranged. By now Billy knew there had been over 2,200 people on the ship, and over 1,500 of them had died. So he really had been one of the lucky ones.
The man from the White Star Line wrote down Billy’s name in a notebook, and told him the company would pay for his passage home to Belfast.
‘Can I ask you something?’ said Billy. ‘Is there a list of survivors?’
‘Sure is,’ said the man, smiling. He was plump and balding and had a strong New York accent. ‘I got a copy of it right here with me. Who are you looking for? Captain Smith isn’t on it, and neither is Mr Andrews. They went down with the ship, which seems right, I reckon, as one of them was the captain and the other one built it. Maybe Mr Ismay should have done the same.’
Billy had read some of the New York newspapers, so he knew that Mr Ismay wasn’t the most popular man in the world at the moment. It seemed that he had escaped in one of the collapsible lifeboats before the end, and the newspapers had said quite openly he was a coward who should have given his place to somebody more deserving. Many women and children had died. Most of them had been third-class passengers.
‘What about the officers?’ said Billy. ‘Did Mr McElroy make it?’
The man frowned and ran his eyes down the list. After a while he looked up and sadly shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Was there anybody else?’
‘Anderson,’ Billy said. ‘George Anderson.’ The man ran his eyes down the list again, and once more shook his head.
Poor George, Billy thought, closing his eyes to remember his friend. That only left Anya and her mother and sisters.
‘What about a little Polish girl called Anya?’ he said. ‘Is she on the list?’
The man ran his eyes down the list one more time and Billy held his breath. At last the man looked up at him with a smile.
‘Well, I don’t think I can say her last name – it’s full of c’s and z’s,’ he said, pronouncing the last letter as ‘zee’ in the American way. ‘But there’s definitely an Anya, and there are four others with the same surname – they’re listed here as a mother and four daughters.’
At last, Billy smiled too. He found out later that Anya and her mother and sisters had been sent to Ellis Island, the place where immigrants to the USA were processed. As survivors of the sinking of the Titanic they would definitely be allowed to stay. It was strange to think that a boy from Belfast had saved a little girl from Poland he had only met days before. Strange, but good.
* * *
Two weeks later Billy was on a small steamer heading back across the Atlantic along with the small number of White Star Line employees who had survived. To his surprise he didn’t feel at all scared. If anything, he felt at home on a ship, pleased to feel the deck throbbing beneath his feet and know that he still had his sea legs while others didn’t.
There was one moment of sadness. The ship stopped in mid-ocean to lay a wreath at the spot where the Titanic had gone down. A vicar led the ship’s company and passengers in prayer and they sang hymns, their voices whipped away by the wind. It was a blustery day, the sky full of grey clouds, and Billy looked
down at the wreath floating forlornly on the green waves. But he didn’t cry.
Eventually they arrived in Belfast. Billy stood at the handrail, staring at the red-brick terraces and the Harland and Wolff gantries and the graveyard where his Da was buried. He could hardly believe that none of it had changed.
His street hadn’t changed either, and neither had his old front door. He rapped on it as if he were a stranger, and it was a while before it opened. Little Mabel stood in the hallway looking up at him with a frown. Then she turned round and ran back down the hall, yelling. ‘Ma! Our Billy is home!’
Billy laughed. It was grand to be back, so it was.
Postscript
A Titanic Story
I have to confess that I was never very interested in the story of the Titanic. I knew about the sinking, of course. I remember seeing the 1958 film when I was very young and thinking how terrible it all was, but it didn’t have that much impact on me. I was very taken with James Cameron’s epic version of the story. When Titanic came out in 1997 I went to see it twice, but it was still just a movie.
Then my son Tom and I were asked to write this book, and we both started to read about the great ship and that terrible night in April 1912, and soon I began to realise how the story of what happened can draw you in.
There’s something about it that exerts a powerful influence. Maybe it’s the fact that the disaster was a result of a number of small mistakes that added up to a catastrophe. Maybe it’s the inevitability of it all once the iceberg had been struck. Maybe it’s to do with discovering that the big story is made up of all the smaller stories of everyone on the ship – although for each person it was a very big event indeed.
Billy and his family are fictional creations, but it’s true that building the Titanic was a big achievement for the Harland and Wolff shipyard, a business the people of the city were proud of. Boys became apprentices at fourteen, and working in the shipyard was hard. Eight men died while the Titanic was being built. George is also fictional, though the job of bellboy is real.