The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, Lawrence Beesley [best romantic novels to read TXT] 📗

white road,

though as yet it stretched back to the horizon and dipped over the

edge of the world back to Ireland and the gulls, while along it the

morning sun glittered and sparkled. And each night the sun sank right

in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering path way, a

golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship

followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the

horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam

and slipped over the edge of the skyline,—as if the sun had been a

golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to

follow.

 

From 12 noon Thursday to 12 noon Friday we ran 386 miles, Friday to

Saturday 519 miles, Saturday to Sunday 546 miles. The second day’s run

of 519 miles was, the purser told us, a disappointment, and we should

not dock until Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday night, as we had

expected; however, on Sunday we were glad to see a longer run had been

made, and it was thought we should make New York, after all, on

Tuesday night. The purser remarked: “They are not pushing her this

trip and don’t intend to make any fast running: I don’t suppose we

shall do more than 546 now; it is not a bad day’s run for the first

trip.” This was at lunch, and I remember the conversation then turned

to the speed and build of Atlantic liners as factors in their comfort

of motion: all those who had crossed many times were unanimous in

saying the Titanic was the most comfortable boat they had been on, and

they preferred the speed we were making to that of the faster boats,

from the point of view of lessened vibration as well as because the

faster boats would bore through the waves with a twisted, screw-like

motion instead of the straight up-and-down swing of the Titanic. I

then called the attention of our table to the way the Titanic listed

to port (I had noticed this before), and we all watched the skyline

through the portholes as we sat at the purser’s table in the saloon:

it was plain she did so, for the skyline and sea on the port side

were visible most of the time and on the starboard only sky. The

purser remarked that probably coal had been used mostly from the

starboard side. It is no doubt a common occurrence for all vessels to

list to some degree; but in view of the fact that the Titanic was cut

open on the starboard side and before she sank listed so much to port

that there was quite a chasm between her and the swinging lifeboats,

across which ladies had to be thrown or to cross on chairs laid flat,

the previous listing to port may be of interest.

 

Returning for a moment to the motion of the Titanic, it was

interesting to stand on the boatdeck, as I frequently did, in the

angle between lifeboats 13 and 15 on the starboard side (two boats I

have every reason to remember, for the first carried me in safety to

the Carpathia, and it seemed likely at one time that the other would

come down on our heads as we sat in 13 trying to get away from the

ship’s side), and watch the general motion of the ship through the

waves resolve itself into two motions—one to be observed by

contrasting the docking-bridge, from which the log-line trailed away

behind in the foaming wake, with the horizon, and observing the long,

slow heave as we rode up and down. I timed the average period occupied

in one up-and-down vibration, but do not now remember the figures. The

second motion was a side-to-side roll, and could be calculated by

watching the port rail and contrasting it with the horizon as before.

It seems likely that this double motion is due to the angle at which

our direction to New York cuts the general set of the Gulf Stream

sweeping from the Gulf of Mexico across to Europe; but the almost

clock-like regularity of the two vibratory movements was what

attracted my attention: it was while watching the side roll that I

first became aware of the list to port. Looking down astern from the

boatdeck or from B deck to the steerage quarters, I often noticed how

the third-class passengers were enjoying every minute of the time: a

most uproarious skipping game of the mixed-double type was the great

favourite, while “in and out and roundabout” went a Scotchman with his

bagpipes playing something that Gilbert says “faintly resembled an

air.” Standing aloof from all of them, generally on the raised stern

deck above the “playing field,” was a man of about twenty to

twenty-four years of age, well-dressed, always gloved and nicely

groomed, and obviously quite out of place among his fellow-passengers:

he never looked happy all the time. I watched him, and classified him

at hazard as the man who had been a failure in some way at home and

had received the proverbial shilling plus third-class fare to America:

he did not look resolute enough or happy enough to be working out his

own problem. Another interesting man was travelling steerage, but had

placed his wife in the second cabin: he would climb the stairs leading

from the steerage to the second deck and talk affectionately with his

wife across the low gate which separated them. I never saw him after

the collision, but I think his wife was on the Carpathia. Whether they

ever saw each other on the Sunday night is very doubtful: he would not

at first be allowed on the second-class deck, and if he were, the

chances of seeing his wife in the darkness and the crowd would be very

small, indeed. Of all those playing so happily on the steerage deck I

did not recognize many afterwards on the Carpathia.

 

Coming now to Sunday, the day on which the Titanic struck the iceberg,

it will be interesting, perhaps, to give the day’s events in some

detail, to appreciate the general attitude of passengers to their

surroundings just before the collision. Service was held in the saloon

by the purser in the morning, and going on deck after lunch we found

such a change in temperature that not many cared to remain to face the

bitter wind—an artificial wind created mainly, if not entirely, by

the ship’s rapid motion through the chilly atmosphere. I should judge

there was no wind blowing at the time, for I had noticed about the

same force of wind approaching Queenstown, to find that it died away

as soon as we stopped, only to rise again as we steamed away from the

harbour.

 

Returning to the library, I stopped for a moment to read again the

day’s run and observe our position on the chart; the Rev. Mr. Carter,

a clergyman of the Church of England, was similarly engaged, and we

renewed a conversation we had enjoyed for some days: it had

commenced with a discussion of the relative merits of his

university—Oxford—with mine—Cambridge—as world-wide educational

agencies, the opportunities at each for the formation of character

apart from mere education as such, and had led on to the lack of

sufficiently qualified men to take up the work of the Church of

England (a matter apparently on which he felt very deeply) and from

that to his own work in England as a priest. He told me some of his

parish problems and spoke of the impossibility of doing half his work

in his Church without the help his wife gave. I knew her only slightly

at that time, but meeting her later in the day, I realized something

of what he meant in attributing a large part of what success he had as

a vicar to her. My only excuse for mentioning these details about the

Carters—now and later in the day—is that, while they have perhaps

not much interest for the average reader, they will no doubt be some

comfort to the parish over which he presided and where I am sure he

was loved. He next mentioned the absence of a service in the evening

and asked if I knew the purser well enough to request the use of the

saloon in the evening where he would like to have a “hymn sing-song”;

the purser gave his consent at once, and Mr. Carter made preparations

during the afternoon by asking all he knew—and many he did not—to

come to the saloon at 8.30 P.M.

 

The library was crowded that afternoon, owing to the cold on deck: but

through the windows we could see the clear sky with brilliant sunlight

that seemed to augur a fine night and a clear day to-morrow, and the

prospect of landing in two days, with calm weather all the way to New

York, was a matter of general satisfaction among us all. I can look

back and see every detail of the library that afternoon—the

beautifully furnished room, with lounges, armchairs, and small writing

or card-tables scattered about, writing-bureaus round the walls of the

room, and the library in glass-cased shelves flanking one side,—the

whole finished in mahogany relieved with white fluted wooden columns

that supported the deck above. Through the windows there is the

covered corridor, reserved by general consent as the children’s

playground, and here are playing the two Navatril children with their

father,—devoted to them, never absent from them. Who would have

thought of the dramatic history of the happy group at play in the

corridor that afternoon!—the abduction of the children in Nice, the

assumed name, the separation of father and children in a few hours,

his death and their subsequent union with their mother after a period

of doubt as to their parentage! How many more similar secrets the

Titanic revealed in the privacy of family life, or carried down with

her untold, we shall never know.

 

In the same corridor is a man and his wife with two children, and one

of them he is generally carrying: they are all young and happy: he is

dressed always in a grey knickerbocker suit—with a camera slung over

his shoulder. I have not seen any of them since that afternoon.

 

Close beside me—so near that I cannot avoid hearing scraps of their

conversation—are two American ladies, both dressed in white, young,

probably friends only: one has been to India and is returning by way

of England, the other is a school-teacher in America, a graceful girl

with a distinguished air heightened by a pair of pince-nez.

Engaged in conversation with them is a gentleman whom I subsequently

identified from a photograph as a well-known resident of Cambridge,

Massachusetts, genial, polished, and with a courtly air towards the

two ladies, whom he has known but a few hours; from time to time as

they talk, a child acquaintance breaks in on their conversation and

insists on their taking notice of a large doll clasped in her arms; I

have seen none of this group since then. In the opposite corner are

the young American kinematograph photographer and his young wife,

evidently French, very fond of playing patience, which she is doing

now, while he sits back in his chair watching the game and interposing

from time to time with suggestions. I did not see them again. In the

middle of the room are two Catholic priests, one quietly

reading,—either English or Irish, and probably the latter,—the

other, dark, bearded, with broad-brimmed hat, talking earnestly to a

friend in German and evidently explaining some verse in the open Bible

before him; near them a young fire engineer on his way to Mexico, and

of the same religion as the rest of the group. None of them were

saved.