The Watch That Ends the Night, page 4
We were due to set sail the next day.
I stood on the bridge, awaiting the bells
that would end my midnight watch.
I was aboard now with all the other officers,
and we were to stay on Titanic overnight —
all except Captain Smith, of course,
who would wake up to milk and crumpets, I guess,
and skip down to the docks at his leisure.
I’m a ship hopper — that is to say, my only home
is wherever I happen to be berthed.
No house with a white picket fence for me.
I sleep better on water than I do on land.
There were eight of us officers in all,
four senior and four junior,
each with his own private cabin.
I hadn’t learned all the names just yet.
Captain Smith was top man, of course,
followed by Chief Officer Wilde.
Then the first and second officers in turn.
It’s us junior officers, the third through sixth,
who do most of the grunt work.
I was fifth officer, second from bottom in rank,
though I was competent as any of the others.
Among the Titanic officers, I was odd man out.
They mostly knew one another from other ships,
and I was the only Welshman among them.
That was all fine with me.
I pull my weight. I do my duty.
I wasn’t there to make friends.
HAROLD BRIDE THE SPARK
Phillips and I quickly struck up a friendship
during the days leading up to Titanic’s maiden voyage.
We shared sleeping quarters
adjacent to the operating room — nothing fancy.
Not even a porthole, but a wonderful skylight
that could be opened from below with a crank.
Late Tuesday evening, I lay awake in bed,
listening to Phillips in the next room cracking at the key
- --- -- --- .-. .-. --- .-- / .-- . /
... . - / ... .- .. .-..
dash-dash dash-dash-dit dash-dit dash-dash
Looking upward, I imagined the invisible words filling the room.
I watched them swirl about, then fly up and out
through the skylight, past the masts and rigging,
on their way to heaven, I guess —
a kitten’s small mewl swallowed up by cold, empty space.
THE ICEBERG
I am the ice. I have no need of sleep.
Why do the humans crave it as they do?
While they and I’ve a secret tryst to keep,
I will not rest. There is no time to lose.
Onshore a young boy dreams himself a man.
Another youngster dreams a future home.
A toddler dreams of chocolate eggs to eat.
A restless girl dreams soldiers in pursuit.
A gambler dreams a trick of all one suit.
On board the lookouts rest their weary eyes,
for sleep is precious rare when out at sea.
The uniformed fifth officer, awake,
awaits the bells that end the midnight watch.
At White Star dock, Southampton’s crowning jewel,
Titanic, finally settles down to sleep:
the pantries stocked, the coal bins full of fuel,
the crew recruitment list at last complete.
Come sunrise they’ll arrive from near and far.
Come sunrise they’ll arrive from every port,
by railway, horse-drawn cab, or motorcar.
Come sunrise they will rush to climb aboard.
For now, her engines dumb, Titanic waits.
She waits dim-witted, slow, colossal brute,
to carry on her back her human freight.
I am the ice; I am of water made.
That’s why it’s now of water that I speak:
Watch how the water licks Titanic’s hull.
Hear how the water makes her rivets creak.
See how, before her trip even begins,
the water is obsessed with getting in.
April 21, 1912
SUNDAY
Aboard the cable ship Mackay-Bennett
ATLANTIC OCEAN
THE GRAND BANKS
650 MILES FROM HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
JOHN SNOW
THE UNDERTAKER
Sunday arrives, our first day of harvesting corpses,
and I determine to make the best
of the challenging task at hand. Happily,
on this fourth day out, I have found my sea legs
and I keep my breakfast down.
Over coffee, the lads from the late-night dog watch
tell me they spotted bodies floating in the darkness,
rising and falling with the swells,
occasionally bumping the ship’s hull.
One of the firemen, Arminias Wiseman, swears,
“It’s as if they wanted to clamor aboard!
I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I’m undone!”
But I am the undertaker, and I am an old hand at death.
Men who walk among the dead as I do
must cultivate a certain emotional remove.
Indifference. An indifference to death.
Indifference. An indifference to the dead.
I finish my cup and climb to the sun deck.
I inhale the Atlantic’s cold April air, ready
for whatever the coming day might bring.
A half mile off the Mackay-Bennett ’s bow
a flock of seagulls floats on the swells.
Seagulls? So many miles from land?
“Lower away,” Captain Larnder commands.
Ropes creak through the pulleys as the first small boat
descends in its davits, carrying a crew of five.
As the small cutter reaches the water, I see a half dozen bodies.
They look strange, as if standing in the shallows of a pond,
heads and shoulders above the surface, buoyed ingeniously
by their bulky life vests of bright white canvas and cork.
The corpses spin slowly, almost gracefully.
Mouth agape, each earnest face turns upward, staring at nothing,
as if the dead were alive, but blind — heads cocked slightly
to better hear what rowdy living men intrude
upon this silent, solemn interlude.
Captain Larnder whispers respectfully, “And so we begin.”
I turn again to the far-off flock of gulls —
smudges of white floating on the green waves —
and I admit to myself what I knew at the first sight of them:
Those are no seagulls at all. Those are bodies.
More bodies. Each one waiting in a bright white vest.
My God. My God. My God.
Bodies scattered for miles, in every direction.
Bodies as far as my indifferent eyes can see.
FIRST WATCH
SETTING OUT
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND, TO CHERBOURG, FRANCE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 1912
THOMAS HART THE STOKER
Mornin’, sir.
Tommy Hart, at yer service.
Reportin’ for duty an’ all such truck.
What’s that?
Me papers?
Well, of course I’ve got me papers!
I’ve got me discharge book right here.
You see there,
“Issued by the Board of Trade.
Thomas Hart, Southampton.”
Why, what else would it say?
Plain as day: “Thomas Hart,”
but me mates all calls me Tommy
and you can, too, sir, if you like.
Say. I wonder, sir, if you might remind a fellow
where, precisely, the other firemen is berthed?
She’s a big ship, Titanic is, and I wouldn’t want ter get lost.
That would be disgraceful inefficient.
And I do detest inefficiency. So if —
Whazzat?
“Down the spiral stair to F deck, at the bow”?
Yes, sir. Right you are. I remember it now.
I’ll just be off to stow me kit.
Then we’ll get this lady’s boilers up!
I want ter get at it. And that coal won’t jump
into the furnace on its own, eh?
I’m goin’, sir. I’m goin’. I’m on me way.
Name’s Tommy Hart. You have a nice day.
BRUCE ISMAY THE BUSINESSMAN
Before setting out across the Atlantic
Titanic was to visit two ports of call:
In Cherbourg, France, we would collect
the other first-class passengers,
wealthy adventurers returning to America
from their Mediterranean winter-overs.
We’d also bring aboard more third-class souls,
wretched continentals going to America
to escape their impoverished lives.
In Queenstown, Ireland, yet more emigrants
to swell the lucrative third-class ranks,
all of them eager to spend a bit of their
meager life savings to gamble on a better future.
But these were not the only passengers
to board in these various ports. . . .
There was another class of passenger altogether,
a passenger who could be lifted aboard in a sack
and who did not give a fig for lavish appointments.
I am talking about the envelopes, postcards, and packages
that came aboard bound for letter boxes
more than three thousand miles away.
After all, the “RMS” of RMS Titanic
stands for Royal Mail Steamer.
The White Star Line had negotiated a contract
with the British government: so long
as we delivered the mails on time,
we would be paid handsomely for it.
The sea post was a brilliant bit of business:
the letters were like thousands of paying passengers
who asked for nothing and never complained!
OSCAR WOODY THE POSTMAN
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Sort. Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Nothing ever happens in the postal room.
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Anyways, nothing of the heroic sort.
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Sort. Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
We sort the sacks. We sort the sacks.
We slot the envelopes. We stack the stacks.
We resack the sorted. We fill the racks.
We fill the racks with stacks of sacks.
Sort. Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
These envelopes will not sort themselves.
Sort. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
The new man, Mr. March, reports for duty.
“I’m Mr. March, the new man,” he says.
“We’re all of us new to Titanic,” says I.
Sort. Slot. Shuffle —
I stop to shake Mr. March’s hand.
He’s arrived with rubber fingertips in place.
The perfect picture of a sea-post man.
JOHN JACOB ASTOR THE MILLIONAIRE
How about a picture and a comment for the paper, Mr. Astor?
“Colonel Astor,” I corrected the reporter, and sighed.
Before I could answer, the flashes began popping.
It was almost enough to make me curse the man
who invented the camera. Almost.
Walking among the Egyptian ruins,
I had half expected a mummy to spring
from its sarcophagus to Kodak me —
just as I had put my finger up my nose.
We were now back in Paris, boarding the boat train.
And I was already missing the anonymity of Giza,
where everything had been ancient and dead.
Madeleine and I fled New York to escape all this fuss:
the puny scrutiny of the masses,
the mean-minded prurience of the lower classes,
the hypocritical judgment of the upper crust.
And of course the newsmen took their shots
as I bundled my Madeleine onto the train.
Then one of them asked me the question
(they’ve all asked it a thousand times before):
What’s it like, sir? To be the richest man in the world?
And I answered him back as I buttoned my fur-collared coat:
“Cold, sir. It is very cold.”
And as usual
as the boat train began its lurch toward Cherbourg,
where Titanic awaited me like a tomb,
the reporter did not even write the answer down.
FRANKIE GOLDSMITH THE DRAGON HUNTER
Early in the morning, we caught another train
that took us, clickety-clack, all the way
from London to a city called Southampton.
That made two big cities in as many days —
I was already a world traveler,
searching out dragons to the ends of the earth.
The train pulled up right next to the dock
as if we were royalty. Alfred acted like the Prince of Wales,
walking with his nose in the air.
Then he tripped over Mr. Theobald’s bag
and fell onto the platform all in a pile!
Just a few steps away, we were all squeezed into a room
where a man checked us up and down,
putting his fingers into my hair,
looking at my eyes under a bright lamp.
He asked us all our ages:
Alfred said, “Sixteen.”
I said, “Not yet, you’re not.”
Alfred said, “Shut up, you.”
The inspector man pinned a tag to my lapel, and off we went
across a long gangway onto the ship —
a canvas overhang, a sturdy metal rail —
there wasn’t even the tiniest bit of danger involved.
I was somewhat disappointed.
But once we got aboard, I was so excited
I nearly jumped out of my knee pants.
Mum kept a hand on my shoulder
like she always does when she’s nervous.
She does that — makes a big deal of protectin’ me
when really she wants protectin’ herself.
Well, she protected me all the way to our cabin
till my shoulder was black and blue.
I claimed top bunk. Mum took bottom.
Dad said he’d sleep on the sofa couch.
Alfred Rush and Mr. Theobald found their room
at the other end of the ship,
“With the other single men,” Alfred said.
Mum wanted to protect me some more,
but I finally made my escape
when she lay down with a cool cloth on her head.
Just as I was sneaking out, Dad caught my arm.
He whispered, “Go on, now, Frankie.
Watch the signs — make sure you stay in third class.
Stick with Alfred, and don’t get into trouble.”
I whispered back, “Daddy, it’s just a big ship.
What trouble could I possibly get into?”
Daddy laughed. “Oh, you’ll think of something.”
Did I forget to tell ya
that I’ve got the best dad
who ever sailed the seven seas?
OSCAR WOODY THE POSTMAN
Thump. Thump. ThumpThumpThump. Thump .
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
“Did you hear that?” says March.
“Did I hear what?” says I.
“ That thumping sort of noise,” says March.
And there it is, between the shuffles.
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. thump . Shuffle-shuffle.
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. thumpthump. Shuffle-shuffle.
“Not to worry, Mr. March,” says I. “That’s the racquet court next door.
Mr. Wright, the racquets instructor, is warming up, no doubt.”
Sort. Thump . Shuffle-shuffle. Thump . Shuffle-shuffle.
“Well, Mr. Wright is making a racket for sure.
The thumps are throwing off my rhythm,” says March.
“You’ll grow used to it, Mr. March,” says I.
“You’ll find the occasional thumps break up the monotony.”
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Says March, “What monotony?”
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Sort. Shuffle-shuffle. Slot. Shuffle-shuffle.
Oh, he is good, that Mr. March. Sort. Slot.
Mr. March is a true sea-post man, I say.
E.J. SMITH THE CAPTAIN
“Yes, that’s right, Colonel Gracie. We do have a racquet court on board.”
It is White Star policy that off-duty officers stand at the first-class entrance to greet the well-heeled cabin passengers.
“No. I have not read your book, but —
Yes. Yes, I would like a signed copy, thank you.”
I make my small talk. I shake their hands.
“Yes, Mrs. Straus. . . . Yes, ma’am. . . . No, ma’am. . . .
Oh, no, ma’am. Definitely not. The ship will not sink.”
Mr. and Mrs. Straus are a wonderful couple;
they own Macy’s department store in New York.
Major Arthur Peuchen, the Canadian lumberman,
informed me that he is “an avid yachtsman” himself
and please feel free to call upon him if I find myself shorthanded.
Mr. Billy Carter slapped me on the back
and said he hoped my “boat” was watertight
as he had a brand-new motorcar stowed in the holds.
I smiled and assured Mr. Carter that Titanic did not leak.
Americans.
Smile, E.J. Keep on smiling.
THOMAS ANDREWS THE SHIPBUILDER
I would be lying to say Titanic has no leaks.
Every ship leaks to some extent, certainly.
That is what the pumps are for.
The large leaks, of course, are the primary concern,
but they are rare. So long as the rivets are strong
(and I assure you Titanic’s rivets are strong —
