Deadly Voyage

by Hugh Brewster

  I put the steamer rug up to my mouth and breathed through it, hoping the warmth would begin to thaw my face.

  Suddenly water splashed over the side onto the blanket. The lifeboat was now so overloaded that waves were beginning to wash over its gunwales.

  “Some of you in the front,” Lightoller shouted, “move back here!”

  Jack and I and a few others crawled through the other passengers to the stern of the lifeboat. This helped a little, but we were still dangerously low in the water. We were also moving very slowly since the boat was so difficult to row. I looked up at Lightoller standing by the tiller. His lips were blue from the cold. A woman nearby took off her cape and passed it to him. He shook his head, but she stood up and draped it around his shoulders and then put its hood over his head. He looked slightly odd, but it did seem to warm him a little.

  I looked back to the lifeboat being towed behind us. I realized that it was Lifeboat Four, with the Ryersons and Jack’s mother on board. I saw Johnnie with his back to me, rowing with one of his sisters. Lightoller soon cut their boat free and they pulled ahead of us. I could see some of the Titanic’s other lifeboats drawing near to the ship I assumed was the Carpathia. One of them had hoisted a sail and was towing another boat behind it. Soon we were the last of the boats left on the open sea — a sea that was becoming increasingly choppy. Water continued to splash over the sides, making us sink even lower in the water. I wondered how much longer we could last.

  Slowly we lumbered ever closer to the waiting rescue ship. We managed to ride out several long swells and some waves that crashed into the boat. Then we coasted on one long wave that took us right into calmer waters in the lee of the Carpathia. Light shone from an open gangway door on the side of the ship and a rope ladder hung down from it. It was the most welcoming sight I had ever seen.

  Faces appeared over the side of the upper decks and a bo’sun’s chair, a kind of sling, was lowered. Officer Lightoller began bundling women onto the chair as quickly as he could. Some of them screamed as they were hoisted up the side. Finally, only the men were left. Most of us managed to scramble up the rope ladder onto the Carpathia. As I reached up to grab the bottom rung of the ladder, my lifebelt felt so sodden and heavy I stripped it off and threw it into the sea.

  Harold Bride, who was just ahead of me, had feet so badly frostbitten that he sprawled face first onto the deck. I managed to pull myself up and wobble forward. Then I spotted my mother huddled with a group of women.

  “Jamie!” she cried, rushing toward me. “Jamie, thank God you’re safe. Where’s your father?”

  “I don’t know, Mother,” I replied.

  Then my knees buckled and everything went black.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ON THE CARPATHIA

  April 15, 1912, 8:40 a.m.

  Coughing hoarsely, I opened my eyes. My throat was still burning from the whisky I’d drunk in the lifeboat.

  “You fainted,” said a woman kneeling beside me. She had wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

  Then I heard my mother’s voice. “But where are the other boats?” she was asking plaintively. “There must be more boats!”

  I struggled to my feet and went over to her. Rosalie was standing beside her in a small group of women. A uniformed man was gently explaining to them that there were no more lifeboats from the Titanic.

  “But this cannot be!” said a woman with a French accent.

  “Could they have climbed onto the icebergs?” asked another woman. “Should you not look there, Captain?”

  “What about that boat there?” asked my mother, pointing to a small steamer that had appeared beside us.

  “That is the Californian,” said the captain. “She has only just arrived. They have picked up no one.”

  “Then … we are all widows?” asked the French woman.

  “We will have a last look round the area as we depart,” the captain replied quietly. Then he headed up to the bridge.

  “Come inside,” said Rosalie gently to my mother. “Come and have something warm.” But my mother clung to the railing, staring out to sea.

  “Margaret, let’s go inside, shall we?” said a male voice. When the man put his arm around my mother’s shoulder, I realized it was Major Peuchen. Mother only stared at him, but allowed him to escort us to the dining saloon.

  Inside, it was eerily quiet. People wrapped in blankets were sipping coffee or hot broth. No one was talking. One woman was sobbing quietly into her handkerchief, but everyone else just seemed stunned. I heard the rumble of the ship’s engines starting up.

  “Broth?” asked a steward carrying a tray of steaming bowls. I nodded and then spooned it up hungrily until a wave of nausea washed over me.

  “Jamie, you’re looking green!” Rosalie whispered.

  Major Peuchen quickly steered me to a toilet, where I vomited up sea water, brandy and beef broth until my sides ached.

  “I’ll take you to the infirmary,” he said when I came out.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” I insisted. “I just need to lie down for a while.”

  When we came back to the table, my mother was sitting with Mrs. Fortune. She said little, but did tell me that two rooms had been offered to the Fortunes and that she had been invited to join them. I wondered if there was news about Charles and his father, but thought it better not to ask.

  “Jamie,” said a voice. I turned to see Jack Thayer standing with one of the Carpathia’s passengers. “This lady has kindly offered me the use of her room,” he said. “Why don’t you come too?”

  I looked at my mother and she nodded her approval. I glanced at Rosalie and she waved me off, saying, “I’ll be fine. You go.”

  “How’s your mother?” I asked Jack as we walked out of the dining saloon.

  “Not too bad, considering,” he replied. “Worried about my father, of course. She’s in the captain’s cabin with two other women.”

  We followed the Carpathia passenger to her room, which turned out to be quite small, with only one bed. I insisted that Jack take it and made a bed for myself on the floor with a few pillows and a quilt. Our clothes were still damp and smelled of sea water. We both stripped to our underpants and passed our clothes out the door to the woman whose cabin we were using. “I’ll see if I can have these laundered,” I heard her say from the corridor.

  “That’s most kind of you,” replied Jack with his head half out the door.

  We tried to wash up as best we could using the small sink.

  “Whew,” said Jack, pointing to my lower back. “That’s a real beauty of a bruise.”

  I had to turn and look in the mirror to see a large reddish area with purple in the centre. I gave it a poke and winced.

  “Well, it looks worse than it is,” I replied. I told him about being slammed against the wire grating. “Looks like something got you too,” I said, indicating a long red scratch on his neck.

  “Yeah, a jagged piece of wood stabbed me just after I hit the water. Still, it’s not much, considering.”

  “Yes, considering,” I replied. We both fell silent for a moment.

  Exhausted, I sank onto my makeshift bed on the floor. The scent and feel of a fresh pillowcase on my cheek was intoxicating and I instantly fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  The rhythmic sound of the Carpathia’s engines woke me gently. When I opened my eyes I wondered what I was doing on the floor. Then I remembered.

  Jack’s bed was empty and my clothes were lying on it. As I crawled out of bed I felt a stab in my lower back. I checked in the small mirror. The purple patch on my back had grown larger. When I picked up my clothes from the bed they were dry but still unwashed and a little stiff from the salt water. I had no idea what time it was, but I was very hungry. My watch had stopped at 2:15. I realized that must have been the time I had dived into the ocean from the Titanic.

  “You’re up,” said Jack, startling me a little as he entered the room.

  “Yes. What time is it?”
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br />   “Almost two in the afternoon,” he replied. “But you can still get some lunch if you hurry. There was a lineup earlier.”

  I pulled my sweater over my head and we walked down the corridor together. It was hard to believe that it was less than twelve hours since the Titanic had sunk — it seemed like days ago.

  The Carpathia’s small dining saloon was crowded and the stewards seemed a little frazzled with all the extra passengers they had to serve. As Jack and I sat down at a table I saw Johnnie leaving with one of his sisters. I waved to him, but he looked away the moment he spotted me.

  “Feeling better?” said a man’s voice. It was Major Peuchen. He sat down and began filling us in on all that had happened while we’d slept. He was as talkative as ever.

  “Captain Rostron raced through the night at full speed, dodging icebergs, to come to our rescue,” he said. “I trust he receives commendation for it.”

  The Major described how the captain had organized a memorial service in the dining saloon as the Carpathia steamed over the site where the Titanic had gone down. A Carpathia passenger who was a minister had read prayers for both the living and the dead. I was glad that my mother hadn’t been there — I knew it would have been too much for her. Major Peuchen had gone out on deck during the service to look at the wreck site, but said that he had seen only floating debris — deck chairs, pieces of wood, lifebelts — and just one body.

  “So … maybe more people were rescued then?” I asked.

  “No, son. I’m sorry. I’m told there’s no chance of that,” he replied with a sigh. “I believe there are just over seven hundred of us from Titanic on board. That means that more than fifteen hundred have … have … perished.” His voice broke. “It’s … just … overwhelming … ”

  The Major, for once, had to stop speaking. I looked at Jack and saw tears in his eyes. My eyes were burning too. Both of us had been hoping that our fathers had somehow survived.

  “So … there’s no hope … at all?” I asked.

  The Major shook his head with his eyes closed. There was a long silence. Jack put his elbow up over his face and I saw his shoulders heaving. I buried my face in my hands. My heart was thudding as the news sunk in. But no tears came.

  “I feel simply terrible about Harry Molson,” the Major continued in a halting voice. “He was going to take another ship … but I persuaded him … to sail with me on the Titanic … And then there’s Mark Fortune and his son … both gone … And Mrs. Hays and her daughter have lost their husbands … young Vivian Payne, too … So, so many … ”

  The Major couldn’t continue. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. I think he was embarrassed about losing his composure in public. We sat in silence for a few minutes.

  “Do you know, I saw the oddest thing,” he eventually continued, trying to speak in a more normal voice. “When we passed by where she sank, there was a striped barber’s pole floating in the water. The barbershop was on C deck, so that pole must have been blown right out of the ship by one of the explosions we heard.”

  “Perhaps when the ship broke in two … ” Jack started to say.

  “Oh but she didn’t!” the Major interrupted. “She sank in one piece. I’m certain of that.”

  Jack and I locked eyes. I raised my eyebrows. We both knew what we had seen.

  After lunch we discovered that it wasn’t possible to walk very far on the crowded decks of the Carpathia. Titanic passengers sat huddled in groups everywhere and most of the lifeboats had been hoisted on board as well. I counted six of them stowed on the forward deck and saw that others had been put in the Carpathia’s davits. It was strange to think that these few boats were all that was left of the huge liner.

  Around four that afternoon, the Carpathia’s engines suddenly stopped. It had turned windy and chilly by then and most people had gone below, but Jack and I were still out on deck. We saw the captain walking toward the railing with a man in a minister’s collar. Behind them came some of the Carpathia’s crewmen, carrying four canvas bags. It took me a moment to realize there must be bodies sewn into those bags. We watched with heads bowed as the minister read from his prayer book. “In the midst of life, we are in death,” he said. As each canvas bag was brought forward, the minister then read out: “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep … ”

  After each body went over the side, we heard a sad, and very final, splash. When the burial service was finished I looked at Jack and knew that it wasn’t just the wind that was making his eyes water. We were both thinking of our fathers, wondering if they would ever have a proper burial. We stood together at the railing looking out over the grey sea, wondering if our fathers were floating on it somewhere.

  “My father taught me how to handle a sailboat,” Jack began to say, but couldn’t continue. I laid my arm across his shoulders as he put his forehead down on the railing and wept.

  I tried to think back for a similar memory. When I was small my father always seemed older than other boys’ fathers. Then I remembered being knocked over by a wave at St. Andrews when I was about four. My father had raced into the surf and carried me onto the beach and wrapped me in a towel. I remembered how he had called me “little man” as he rubbed me dry. Tears began pouring down my cheeks. I put my hands over my eyes, but hot tears trickled through them. Then I heard myself sobbing aloud. After a few minutes I stopped and pulled out my handkerchief and wiped my face. I suddenly thought about Johnnie, who had now lost both a brother and a father, and how awful he must feel. I wanted to find him and talk to him, but could understand that he needed to be near his family.

  At dinnertime, Jack and I lined up outside the dining saloon with the other men, waiting for the women to be served first. When we finally got inside I saw my mother sitting with Mrs. Fortune and Mrs. Hays and her daughter. I crouched down beside Mother and spoke with her briefly. She still seemed dazed. She said that she had rested but hadn’t slept.

  I decided to join the three Fortune sisters who were sitting at a nearby table. They were a very subdued group. I thanked them for taking in my mother. “I don’t think she’s given up hope that my father has survived,” I added quietly.

  “Yes,” said Alice Fortune, “our mother keeps talking about what a strong swimmer Charles is, and how he would have taken care of Father.” Her tone of voice made it clear that she had accepted the news that there were no more survivors. I had spotted Alice’s admirer, William Sloper, on the deck of the Carpathia, but thought it better not to mention him. The fact that he had survived while her brother had not, would no doubt be painful for her.

  The sisters soon finished their dinner and excused themselves, following my mother and theirs out of the dining saloon. I looked around the room for Jack and spotted Johnnie sitting with his sisters and Miss Bowen at a table near the wall. I stood up and waved to get his attention. When he looked up, I gestured to the empty seats at my table. He simply looked back down at his plate as if he had never seen me. I sat down, blushing.

  “Best leave him be,” said Jack, who had moved over to my table.

  “I guess he’s feeling very sad about his father,” I replied.

  “Oh that … and more,” sighed Jack. “Some idiot asked him if he dressed like a girl to get off the Titanic.”

  “No! I can’t believe it,” I said. “That’s just awful.” This made me more determined than ever to talk to Johnnie before we reached New York.

  After dinner, Jack and I walked around the ship, wondering where we might stretch out for the night. The Carpathia passenger who had lent us her cabin earlier had now taken in a woman and her child. We looked into the lounge but saw that it was full of women. Some of them had pulled the cushions from the sofas to use as pillows.

  “Maybe we should try the smoking room,” said Jack. “That’s usually a male domain.”

  The smell of stale cigar smoke hung in the air of the smoking room, but some men had already stretched out on the floo
r. Loud snoring noises were coming from a young fellow who was asleep on a pile of blankets.

  “Do you gents have any spare blankets?” said a female voice behind me.

  I turned to see three young women who had just entered the room. I pointed to the snoring fellow hogging the pile of blankets.

  “Of all the cheek!” said one of them. She stalked over and yanked on the blanket just beneath him. He rolled onto the floor with a thump and began cursing loudly.

  “And to think such as you were saved!” scolded the girl. We all applauded as the red-faced man made a hasty exit. Jack and I each took one blanket from the pile he had left, and I curled up under a table, using my sweater as a pillow. With my bruised back I had to sleep on one side, but I was soon fast asleep, though not for long. Someone decided to use the table above me as a bed. I woke up when I heard him wriggling about, trying to get comfortable. I dozed off again, but he kept getting up during the night and clomping off, only to come back and thump around again overhead. How can anyone need to pee so often? I wondered. I thought of moving, but sleeping bodies surrounded me. Too soon, morning light seeped through the smoking room’s portholes.

  “Did you sleep much?” asked Jack groggily as I joined him in the line for the toilet.

  “Not much,” I replied, yawning. “The fellow on the table above me kept thumping on and off it all night long.”

  “That’s Norris Williams,” he said, gesturing with his head as Williams clomped out of the room once again. “I heard that his legs are badly frostbitten. The ship’s doctor wanted to amputate them, but Norris refused. He’s determined to exercise them day and night.”

  “But — ”

  “He’s a champion tennis player and wants to play Wimbledon.”