Deadly Voyage Read online

  DEADLY

  VOYAGE

  RMS Titanic

  by Hugh Brewster

  To my mother

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Boat Train

  Chapter Two: Departure

  Chapter Three: Cherbourg to Queenstown

  Chapter Four: At Sea

  Chapter Five: A Quiet Sunday

  Chapter Six: Collision

  Chapter Seven: To the Lifeboats

  Chapter Eight: The Final Minutes

  Chapter Nine: On an Overturned Boat

  Chapter Ten: On the Carpathia

  Chapter Eleven: Arrival in New York

  Chapter Twelve: A Journey to Halifax

  Epilogue: Discovery

  Historical Note

  Glossary

  Images and Documents

  Image Credits

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books in the I Am Canada series

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  The last survivor. That’s what the young man on the phone called me. He claimed that I’m the last Canadian still alive from the Titanic. I was surprised to hear this, since there were quite a few of us on board. Then he invited me to a convention for people interested in the Titanic. And that surprised me even more — I thought the Titanic would be long forgotten by now! I said I was too old to travel, so he asked me to write down my memories of the ship and what happened the night she sank. He said that there are too many myths about the Titanic, and I had to agree with him on that. The newspapers back then had a field day making up wild stories about it. And many of those outrageous things are still believed today. But the real story is quite amazing enough. I know because I was there. I saw it happen. It’s time to set the record straight.

  — James Laidlaw, April 15, 1987

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE BOAT TRAIN

  Waterloo Station, London, April 10, 1912, 9:30 a.m.

  “Jamie, do hurry on,” my father called out over the noise in the station. He was standing beside a porter and a luggage-filled trolley. “We know what the platform is,” he added impatiently as I stared up at the signboard.

  “It’s Platform 12,” I announced.

  “Yes, the porter knows that,” he sighed. “It’s his job.”

  Boat Train–Southampton had been posted in white letters on the signboard below a list of places that all seemed to start with W — Wimbledon, Wandsworth, Winchester and Woking. But I especially liked the name Boat Train. It made me think of a large boat that went barrelling along the railway tracks. Of course, I knew that it was just a train that took you to the boat. But in this case the train at Waterloo Station wasn’t taking us to just any boat. It was taking us to the largest boat in the world. My father had given me a brochure about the Titanic and I couldn’t wait to explore this giant, brand new ship. It had a swimming pool and a gymnasium and dining rooms where I could order anything I wanted. After the terrible food at my English boarding school, I was ready to eat until I burst.

  We actually needed two porters to wheel all our luggage to Platform 12. My mother had spent weeks supervising the packing up of our rented house in Kent. Crates of furniture and most of our belongings had already been sent back to Canada on another ship. But we still had a mountain of luggage going with us on the Titanic. My mother had decided she had to have a different gown to wear for dinner each night on board the ship — why, I’ll never know.

  Rosalie, my mother’s maid, was walking with Maxwell, our Airedale terrier, beside the second luggage trolley. I went back and took his leash. “Come on Maxwell, come on boy, we’re going on a big, big boat!” I said. I asked Rosalie in French if she was happy to be going home to Montreal — even though I already knew the answer.

  “So, so much,” she answered in English as we followed my parents through the crowded station.

  At Platform 12, I spotted the shiny dark-brown coaches of the waiting Boat Train. The porters unloaded the trunks into the luggage car and then pushed the trolleys with the smaller bags along the platform until they found an empty compartment for us. I gave Maxwell’s leash back to Rosalie and started to lift one of the bags from a trolley, but the porters waved me off, saying, “We’ll do it, son. We’ll do it.”

  Wisps of steam floated around the wheels of the green locomotive at the front of the train. I noticed that the conductor was standing with his whistle in his mouth — clearly we didn’t have much time! The porters hurriedly placed our hand luggage into the overhead racks as we sank into the seats underneath them. My father paid the porters, who tipped their hats and hopped back onto the platform. The moment the conductor’s whistle blew, doors slammed and the locomotive built up steam. I looked at my watch, which read 9:45 a.m. The compartment gave a sudden jolt — we were off!

  Maxwell started to bark, so I patted his head to calm him. As we left the station, the train went into a tunnel, and when it emerged I could see the sooty back walls of London tenement buildings. On their slate roofs stood tall chimneys with smoke coming out of red clay chimney pots. Sometimes when a heavy fog rolled into London it would cause a “pea souper,” a smog so dense it would blank out the sun and make morning seem like dusk. But today a fresh April breeze had blown the smoke away and there was an occasional burst of sunshine through the clouds

  Soon we reached the London suburbs, with tulips and fruit trees blooming in neatly tended gardens. Finally we reached open country, where stone churches with square towers stood beside green fields lined with hedgerows that were just coming into leaf. I saw a horse clip-clopping along a laneway, hauling a cart filled with tin milk cans.

  “So-o lovely,” my mother said with a sigh. “I shall really miss the English countryside, won’t you, Henry?”

  My father looked up briefly from his newspaper and mumbled agreement.

  “I won’t miss the rain,” I said, “that’s for sure.”

  “Or the damp,” added Rosalie.

  “Montreal is very cold in the winter, you mustn’t forget that,” my mother replied.

  I felt like saying that I’d never been as cold in Canada as I had been in my freezing boarding house at school. But I could see that my mother was sad to be leaving England, so I kept silent. We soon passed through a place called Basingstoke and not long after that, a town with a huge grey cathedral right in the centre of it came into view. Suddenly I knew where we were.

  “That’s Winchester!” I called out. “We’ll be going right by the school!”

  “So we shall,” my father said, looking up from his newspaper.

  When we first arrived in England, he had decided that I should go to Winchester College because the son of a man he worked with at the Imperial Bank had gone there.

  “It’s the oldest school in England,” he had said. “And you’ll learn how to play cricket. But you’ll have to pass the entrance exam first.”

  I did well on the admission test, though I never quite got the hang of cricket. But the school certainly was old — older than anything in Canada, as I was frequently reminded — founded in 1382, over a hundred years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. A few of the school buildings dated back to that time and had Latin inscriptions on them. Latin was a big deal at Winchester. We had to say prayers in chapel in Latin and also the grace before meals. Even the school song was sung in that dead language — never my favourite subject.

  But much worse than any Latin class were the prefects — older boys who were allowed to boss around younger boys like me. In my first year I had had to polish shoes and do other chores for one prefect — a fat, pompous fellow with a wobbly chin, named Sykes. I
can still hear him bellowing “Coll-ie-e!” at the top of his lungs, meaning that I had to scurry and see what he wanted me to do. Collie was his oh-so-clever nickname for me, short for Colonial Boy. It didn’t help that my hair tended to poke up around my ears like a collie dog, so the nickname just stuck.

  The train slowed enough as we passed through Winchester that I caught a glimpse of the school’s cricket pitch and rugby fields. I thought of the droning voice of the headmaster at morning prayers. I thought of the icy cold-water baths we had to take. And I could almost smell the dining hall, where the odour of boiled cabbage or soggy Brussels sprouts always lingered. It was thought to be a big treat when we had smoked fish called kippers for breakfast. And a frequent dessert — or sweet, as the English called it — was gluey tapioca with a dollop of strawberry jam in it. The boys called it “nosebleed pudding.”

  “I am so-o happy to be out of that prison,” I whispered to Rosalie. She giggled and my father looked up from his paper disapprovingly.

  About half an hour later we entered the outskirts of a larger town, which I guessed must be Southampton. I reached up and pulled my bag down from the overhead rack.

  “Plenty of time yet, my lad,” said my father.

  When I put my head against the window and looked forward, I could see in the distance what looked like large cranes towering over the buildings ahead of us. They must be used for loading freight at the Southampton docks, I thought. As we drew closer I caught a glimpse of the funnels and masts of some ships, but none of them looked big enough to be the Titanic. We then crossed over a main roadway and went right onto the pier under the overhanging roof of a long train shed. As we slowed to a stop I walked into the corridor beside our compartment and looked out the window. Maxwell followed me and put his paws up on the window.

  All we could see through the glass was an enormous wall of black steel with about a million rivets in it, and higher up, a row of round portholes. Then I realized that the train had pulled in right next to the giant black hull of the Titanic.

  “Let’s find a porter, Jamie,” my father called as doors opened on the other side of the train. I led Maxwell back to our compartment, hoisted my brown leather school bag onto my shoulders and stepped out onto the platform. My father had already hailed two red-uniformed porters. As they were loading our luggage onto their trolleys, Maxwell began to paw at my leg.

  “Maxwell needs to do his business,” I said to my father.

  “That’s a bit of a nuisance,” he replied.

  I told him not to worry and that I’d take care of Max while they went on ahead.

  “Very well, but don’t be long,” he said. “We’ll meet you on the other side of the gangway. You just climb those stairs where the other passengers are going.”

  “Don’t you think we should wait here for him?” my mother asked.

  “The boy’s fourteen, Margaret,” my father replied. “He’ll be fine.”

  Maxwell was starting to yelp so I ran off with him down the platform to the end of the train. We both jumped down onto the tracks and he instantly squatted to relieve himself. As I looked across, the Titanic seemed even bigger than she had from inside the train. The Empress of Britain, the ship we had taken across the Atlantic two years ago, would look like a tugboat next to her.

  The sun broke through the clouds, making the ship’s white-painted upper decks gleam in the sunshine. I looked left to see if I could make out the name TITANIC on her bow, but it was too far away. By craning my neck backwards, though, I could just see the ship’s four giant funnels pointing upward to the clouds.

  When Maxwell was finished we jumped back onto the platform and headed for the stairs. On the second level was a long verandah that hung out over the train, and an awning that covered the entrance to a gangway that went across to the ship. By now most of the train passengers had gone on board, but in the middle of the gangway was a man taking a photograph. From where he stood, the side of the Titanic looked like a giant cliff face.

  “That’ll make a great picture,” I said as I approached him, wishing I had a camera with me.

  He clicked the shutter and turned to me with a smile. “She’s far too big to do in one shot,” he said in an Irish accent.

  I nodded and walked past him into the vestibule. My parents were standing farther inside, near the curved banister of a massive staircase.

  “Here he is,” my mother said to the green-jacketed steward who was waiting with them. She had a small bunch of flowers in her hand and my father was sporting a red carnation on his jacket. I was given one too so I stuck it into the buttonhole of my school blazer.

  I started to lead Maxwell up the grand staircase but my father called out, “We’re taking the lift, Jamie.”

  When we went around behind the staircase I saw that there were actually three “lifts” (or elevators as we called them in Canada) set into the mahogany wall panelling. We stepped into one and the steward said, “C deck, please,” to the uniformed boy who was operating it. He didn’t look much older than me. We went down one floor and then along a carpeted corridor to our rooms, C-29 and C-31. “It’s not like being on a ship at all!” my mother exclaimed as she walked around our suite. “We’ve never had rooms this large before! Henry, this is marvellous!”

  “Just thank the Imperial Bank, my dear,” he replied with a small smile.

  Suddenly there were several loud blasts from what sounded like huge foghorns.

  “That’s the whistles giving the all-ashore signal,” the steward said. “Must be almost ready for departure.”

  “We’re leaving already?” I asked, throwing my bag down on my bed. “I don’t want to miss this!”

  “What about Maxwell?” my mother asked.

  “I’ll take him to the kennels for you, ma’am,” the steward replied. Seeing the surprised look on my face, he added, “You can visit him there and take him for walks if you like.”

  “Oh, all right,” I replied, feeling too rushed to argue. “Well, I’m off. I’ll see you up top!”

  Within seconds I was racing down the corridor, heading for the grand staircase.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DEPARTURE

  Wednesday, April 10, 1912, noon

  On reaching the staircase I sprinted up one flight, dodging around the other passengers on the white-tiled steps. One more climb took me to a landing where daylight streamed down from a huge glass dome overhead. At the top of the stairs stood a large clock on the gleaming mahogany wall, surrounded by two carved angels. Both hands pointed to twelve.

  Once I reached the boat deck, another deafening blast erupted from the steam whistles high up on the funnels. The gangway we had walked over from the pier had already been removed. One smaller gangway to a lower deck still stood in place for the people leaving the ship. A few minutes later it was swung away too, and not long after that, five men came rushing along the pier waving their arms. They had handkerchiefs tied around their necks and carried cloth satchels.

  “Wait, wait!” one of them shouted. “Lower the gangway!” But there was no response from anyone on the ship.

  “Looks like those fellows have missed the boat!” I heard an American man say with a chuckle.

  “Poor chaps,” said a softer voice beside me. “They’ve just lost a week’s wages. And a stoker doesn’t earn much to begin with.”

  I recognized the Irish accent. It was the same man I’d seen earlier on the gangway, taking photographs.

  “Maybe they have enough stokers on board already?” I wondered aloud, then added, “What do stokers do exactly?”

  “They shovel coal,” the Irishman replied, “into the furnaces for the steam engines. It’s hot, dirty work.”

  Suddenly I felt the ship move as the tugboats started to pull us away from the dock. The stokers who had missed the boat walked away dejectedly. But the other people at the dockside began to cheer and wave, so I waved back at them.

  As the huge ship moved down the pier, the crowd onshore followed us. Then flow
ers started raining down from the upper decks. Some of the passengers were tossing the bouquets they had been given on boarding. I snatched the carnation from my own buttonhole and hurled it over the side. Suddenly a gust of wind tore off my straw boater and I had to chase it down the deck. I trapped it with my foot and then picked it up and looked at its ugly ribbon done in chocolate brown, blue and yellow stripes, my Winchester house colours.

  I don’t need this anymore, I decided, and spun it over the railing, watching as it twirled down into the water. Then I took a quick look around, wondering if either of my parents had seen me do this, but, luckily, they were nowhere in sight.

  Soon the Titanic was approaching two smaller liners that were tied up together at the pier, with crowds of people standing on their decks to get a good view of our departure. All of a sudden I jumped as several short, sharp cracks split the air like gunshots. The mooring cables from one of the liners instantly flew upward and whipped back into the crowd.

  “Whoa!” I said. “What was that?”

  “Those lines just snapped like threads!” the photographer said. “It must have been suction from our wake. I hope no one was hurt.”

  Could suction from the Titanic’s passing have caused this? I wondered. The ship nearest to us, now untethered, was beginning to swing out in our direction.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “That looks like trouble!”

  The stern of the liner kept moving outward until it was almost at a right angle to us. The photographer was leaning over the rail with his camera at arm’s length. A newspaper headline suddenly popped into my head: Titanic in Crash While Leaving Port. I imagined myself telling the boys at my new school in Canada all about it.

  “Here comes a smash!” someone said. The Irishman leaned out even farther and clicked away. We both tensed, expecting to feel the crash — but it didn’t come. He dashed aft along the deck to get a closer look and I chased after him. We found a spot nearer the stern and leaned over the side. A sudden whoosh of water from one of the Titanic’s propellers allowed us to slide by the black hull of the breakaway ship with what seemed like only inches to spare.