I was accosted by reporters, old ladies with ideas of taking me home with them, and photographers wanting to take my picture. I even saw a man with a movie camera.
I know some people made fortunes from the disaster; others traded on it and used the fact that they had survived to help them secure jobs and to forge careers, but I knew that was not for me.
I had Egbert Fortescue’s notes, but I had no idea what to do with them. And, to be honest, at first, there were more pressing matters to deal with. I had to find work and a place to sleep. I found a laboring job pretty quickly. Uncle Bert had been right all along in his belief that America would be a land of opportunity. I was one of the thousands of men who worked on the Woolworth Building on Broadway… all fifty-seven floors of it!
So, for several years I was preoccupied with trying to make a decent living and just getting on with my new life. I kept Fortescue’s papers safe, but did nothing with them.
The war swept everything up in its path. In 1917,I was conscripted into the army, but the fighting was over before I could be sent overseas. In 1918, I went back to the construction industry and my old job. I worked hard, became a foreman and then a site manager, but I never forgot about Egbert Fortescue and the papers he had entrusted to me.
Then, in 1921,I married and moved into a larger apartment. Packing away my few possessions, I rediscovered the notes from Fortescue and suddenly felt guilty that I had not done enough with them. And so I began visiting the public library on Fifth Avenue, and I gradually started to piece together anything I could find out about Egbert Fortescue and what he had been doing on the Titanic.
That was how I eventually unearthed the true story of the man I had met briefly. There was an old report in The Times of London detailing the sad news that the scientist had died in a mysterious drowning accident in Manchester in April 1912. I thought this was an unnecessarily macabre decision on the part of the men who wove the fiction, but at least I now knew a little more. The identity of the fellow in the photograph accompanying the piece was unmistakably the man I had met on the stricken Titanic. But, of course, there was no clue as to what Dr Fortescue, a physicist who had worked with Professor Ernest Rutherford, had been doing on the ship, nor where the precious cargo he had with him ended up.
I spent many long hours pondering what Egbert Fortescue had written in his set of notes. But, although I’ve always had a gift for math and could follow the steps he was taking, I had absolutely no idea what it was the mathematics described. Every weekend I would visit the public library to study mathematical texts and I finally began to realize that the work was something to do with the new science of atomic physics.
I read everything I could find on the subject. There was not a lot during those days — it was all very new. I managed to find some scientific journals, but the first few I discovered were written in German. One journal was called ‘Annalen der Physik’; another was ‘Zeitschrift für Physik’. Eventually I located an English magazine, ‘Nature’, and spent a long time working out what was meant by the new science of atomic physics and matching this with the mathematics Fortescue had written. I finally concluded that he had been working at the cutting edge of the discipline. Indeed, although I understood only a tiny fraction of the work, it was clear that the man I had met on the fateful voyage of the Titanic was a leader in his field.
Eventually I reached a decision. I would have to show Fortescue’s work to someone who would fully appreciate it, and it occurred to me that the best person would be the most famous scientist of the day, Thomas Edison.
I was pretty naive! I wrote to the great man and waited three months for a reply from a secretary who said that Mr Edison was too busy to see anyone but that if I wanted to travel to the Edison laboratories in West Orange on 3 September at 2 p.m., I could meet up with a Professor Frank Usoff who assisted the famous inventor.
Usoff worked in a laboratory crammed with odd-looking equipment, test-tubes and glowing glass bulbs. He had a rather poky little room at the back and a young man in a white coat led me through the lab to meet the professor.
I realized immediately that Usoff was feigning interest in what I had to say and looked at me with growing scepticism as I described the set of papers that had come into my possession.
‘Mr O’Donnell,’ he said, studying my face. ‘What is your area of expertise?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your discipline? Which university department do you work in?’
I wasn’t sure whether he was being serious or extremely rude. I decided he might not have been correctly informed. ‘I’m not an academic, sir.’
‘Oh, so what is it you do?’
‘I’m a site manager in Manhattan.’
Usoff looked confused. ‘I see. Very well, let me peruse the papers you mentioned in your letter.’
I handed them across the professor’s desk. He spent several minutes surveying the equations.
‘I have done a little research myself,’ I said.
Usoff looked up. ‘You have?’
I could see the suppressed amusement clear in his face. But, undeterred, I went on. ‘Yes, I think it is something to do with atomic energy.’
‘Ah, yes,’ the professor commented, turning back to the pages before him. ‘I imagine there is quite a call for experts in atomic science on construction sites.’
I bridled and Usoff shook his head slowly. ‘Where did you get these?’ He nodded at the papers.
I felt a knot in my stomach and realized I shouldn’t have ventured here. I looked into Usoff’s face and tried to weigh up what I should do.
‘Well?’ he said as though talking to an errant child.
‘I was given them to look after by a fellow passenger aboard the Titanic.’
Usoff’s mouth opened and it seemed that for several moments he did not quite know what to say. He took a deep breath. ‘Well, they make little sense,’ he said finally. ‘I’m not sure what you expected.’
‘The first part is a simple enough description of a set of experiments…’ I began.
The professor held up a hand. ‘Please, Mr… Mr O’Donnell. I really think this is a matter for gentlemen of science… do you not?’
He had chosen his words carefully and I understood immediately the implication… the emphasis on the word ‘gentlemen’ rather than ‘science’. I knew what this arrogant sonofabitch was thinking… What can some uneducated Irish laborer know about science? Who is this Mick trying to fool?
I got up from the chair. ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I won’t be wasting anymore of your time, professor…’
He was standing. I went to take back the papers. He put his palms on them.
‘I would like to take a further look at these,’ he said firmly.
‘I’m sure you would now,’ I replied.
He glared at me and gave me his most intimidating look, but I would have none of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but they were entrusted to me by a friend.’
‘On the er… Titanic,’ Usoff replied sarcastically.
I grabbed Fortescue’s notes and stacked them neatly, while the professor stood rigid behind his desk.
I didn’t say goodbye, just turned and strode into the laboratory. A man was walking towards me, a big bulky fella. I recognized him immediately… Thomas Edison.
He nodded to me and I nodded back. He walked into Usoff’s office and I heard him say: ‘Who was that?’ Usoff replied: ‘Oh, just another crank, sir.’ And they both laughed.
As I headed back to New York on the train I watched the trees and the buildings, the fields and the low clouds stream past. A long time before this moment, I had come to accept my lot in life, to accept the fact that I had been born into the wrong family at the wrong time and that I would never have an opportunity to achieve my full potential. ‘Men like Usoff,’ I said to myself ‘see it as their right to be superior.’ It was an affectation Egbert Fortescue never showed, and I believe he was not that way inclined. He had possessed a truly great intellect and yet he had been a man with no need to put on airs and graces, a man confident enough in his own abilities and with too kind a soul to put others down.