29
WE LAY BESIDE HER, rocking on the water, men in a portside cargo opening fending us with boat hooks, and I snapped this, Captain Smith himself way up there at the top watching us board. They’d run out a gangplank, and now we moved on up it and into the black cargo opening.
Inside we separated forever, everyone else gestured off to the left by uniformed crew members. I alone, tan ticket in hand, politely gestured toward a staircase. But, my foot on the steel tread, I stood for a moment watching the others walk off, chattering, most of them soon to drown, unless . . . unless what?
Up through the ship I climbed then—didn’t yet know where the elevators were or whether they came down this far—up and up toward my deck. The stairs turned from bare steel to carpeted treads, the staircases widening, stair landings becoming more ornate with each flight up, banisters becoming heavy with carving. A new deck, and now the newel posts of the next flight up bore a pair of bronze figures supporting lamps, and I saw stained glass, framed paintings, and above the staircase a great curved ceiling of stained-glass washing stairs and carved banisters in multicolored light. Each of the great public rooms, lounges, and lobbies through which I ascended seemed more lavish than the last, and I’d begun passing glorious women in fashionable hobble skirts, and their cigar-smoking men in suits, vests, watch chains, stiff white collars, some wearing shipboard caps, a few still actually wearing derbies. Nearly everyone smiling, pleased and excited at new sights and sounds. Moving up through this mighty ship on newly carpeted stairs, I’d become aware of the special smell of the Titanic, different from the Mauretania, both saying that we were at sea, but pervading the air of the Titanic the unique smell of—I recognized it now—newness. Of newly dried paint, newly woven and still untrod carpeting, new wood newly glued, new cloth, new everything, this magnificent luxury liner still unused: we were the first.
To the pleased, excited passengers moving up and down through the ship with me, I think everything said pleasure ahead. I saw it in their faces, smiles, and heard it in their voices, and it affected me. For a forgetful few moments moving up through this ship, I shared the anticipation of a beginning voyage. Then I stepped off the stairs onto the floor of the first-class salon, and saw the shining, possibly never-yet-played grand piano. And remembered the story of an Irish immigrant girl saved in one of the lifeboats—had I glimpsed her on the ferry? The ship slowly sinking, she’d climbed up from steerage into this magnificent salon, along with a group of fellow steerage passengers. She continued on up, heading for the boat deck, but glancing back she saw one of her fellow immigrants stop at the piano in awe. He touched the keys, then began to play, sliding onto the piano bench. Others of the group gathered around him, and they began to sing along, staring around them at the unimaginable luxury of the room they’d found themselves in. And that was the last the girl ascending the stairs ever saw or heard of her friends.
True or not, the memory of that story abruptly separated me from the other passengers on the stairs; these splendid women and the cigar-smoking, pince-nezed men. Who of these would be saved? Most of the women, few of the men. I had to shut off these incapacitating thoughts; I was here on this ship for a powerful reason, and I forced my mind to focus on that.
My cabin was where the White Star deck plan had said it would be, very near the staircase I stepped from onto B deck. This is it, B59 on the Titanic, door ajar, key in lock, steady as a hotel room as I stood in the door taking this picture. Just behind me a steward said, “Boarded at Queenstown, did you, sir?” and I understood that he wanted to see a ticket and turned: he wore a brass-buttoned green jacket, white shirt, black bow tie. Will you be saved? my mind asked as I handed him my ticket. He gave it back, nodding: I was the only first-class boarder at Queenstown, so my luggage should soon be here. I nodded and walked out to explore.
Up one last flight to the boat deck, but just before reaching it, I stopped. Beside each stair, one at each side, a little glassed-in light was set, all unlighted now. Wasn’t this the staircase, I stood wondering, and weren’t these the lights that Second Officer Lightoller saw as he stood loading women and children into the portside lifeboats? Glancing down from time to time to see the green ocean water slowly creeping up the stairs toward him, these lights shining eerily under the ascending water? I thought so; thought I remembered from so much I had read that this was Lightoller’s staircase, waiting now for the midnight just ahead when the ocean would enter to slowly climb higher and higher, stair by stair.
I shut down on the thought, and stepped out onto the new teak of the boat deck, the very topmost deck out under the pale sky and weak sun. Through the leather of my soles, suddenly, I felt the vibration from many decks below of the ship’s great turbines, and we began to move out to sea. Here hung the lifeboats, here was the deck soon to be crowded with men, women, and children in life jackets. Some of them stone-faced calm, some crying, some terribly frightened, some laughing at what they supposed was a false alarm. Up here the confused, botched lowering of half-empty boats—Cut it out! I turned to walk over to the starboard side of B deck, and the shining white paint of boat number five. There it hung secure in its davits, glittery white, tautly covered with canvas, and I reached out to touch the new paint of its wooden side. Under my fingertip, the painted wood felt smooth, faintly warm from the sun. But above all it felt solid and real. Titanic Boat Five, said the fresh black lettering at its prow, and I touched the T. Then touched the cool solidity of the varnished ship’s rail below Boat Five, and then I was really here. On the new Titanic, its speed steadily increasing, a doomed ship, carrying me and every other soul aboard toward the immense icy mass waiting ahead. And once again I stood bleakly alone, eyes closing against this useless knowledge.
I walked on; beside me, large as a ten-story building, a great beige and black stack marched in line with three more identical monsters back toward the stern. They rose immensely up through the roofs of the various superstructures, their thin wash of black smoke streaming out to merge and dissipate behind us. Huge air scoops sprouted from the deck like giant ear trumpets. I turned to look forward, and just ahead, the enclosed bridge of the ship stretched across the entire forward end of the deck. A door at its side stood ajar, swinging slightly to and fro with our movement, and I walked up to peek in. There they were, four officers, three in blue, the fourth, Captain Smith himself, still in his whites. Not quite shoulder to shoulder, they stood in a line facing forward, staring out through the long square windows. Captain Smith’s arms hung behind him, one hand clasping the other wrist. Behind them, in his own little glassed-in enclosure, was the helmsman, hands on his great wooden wheel, eyes on the compass in the brass binnacle before him. He stood directly opposite me, only a dozen feet or so off, and before he could glance over and see me, I turned away.