Unsinkable (6 page)

“You’ll be rubbing elbows with princes and millionaires, boy!” his father had assured him.

It was the talk of the crew. The guest list for the maiden voyage included the very apex of high society: European and British nobility, captains of industry, business tycoons, and wealth that was unimaginable to the likes of Alphonse Huggins. One passenger, a fellow named John Jacob Astor, might have been the richest man in the world.
Might have been!
That was the most astounding part. Not that he was the richest, but the fact that nobody could be sure if he was number one or not. Imagine having so much money that it was impossible to count, so all you could do was guess at how much there was!

Still, Alfie would have gladly traded all of Colonel Astor’s vast fortune to have Ma back.

He knew this was a child’s way of thinking. He was a man now — at least, he’d told the White Star Line that he was. With a sigh, he began to rustle through the racks of jackets, trying on one that seemed closer to his size. His hands emerged from the sleeves. Yes, this would do.

Back in the passageway, he tried to remember the quickest way back down to Number 5 Boiler Room, where Da would be. By strict rule, Alfie wasn’t supposed to be boarding the ship until sailing day, April 10. But he had nowhere else to go, and there were empty hammocks in the firemen’s quarters, where his father slept. On a ship the size of the
Titanic,
no one would be the wiser. No one who would report him, anyway. An engine crew was a brotherhood, Da had told him, slaving shoulder to shoulder in the same searing heat, choking on the same steam and smoke and coal dust.

Alfie hesitated. The
Titanic
was a marvel of engineering, but she was also a maze, with dozens of passageways on nine different decks. Da had brought him here via a wide passageway on E Deck that the crew had named “Scotland Road.” It was supposed to be the fastest way to get from one end of the ship to the other. But he was on F now. It made no
sense that going up could be the most convenient way to get down to the boiler room. Or did it?

As he stood, pondering his route, the door to the uniform room opened and out stepped a very young steward. Alfie was shocked. He’d been positive the compartment had been empty.

A stab of fear. I admitted lying about my age!

Spying Alfie, the boy spun around and began marching quickly in the opposite direction.

“Hello,” Alfie called tentatively.

The steward broke into a run and disappeared up the companion stairs at the end of the passageway.

Alfie frowned. Had the boy overheard the confession? In truth, the lad seemed even younger than Alfie, but appearances were often deceiving.

Nervously, Alfie reentered the compartment, scanning the racks of uniforms for the steward’s hiding place. He noticed the hatch leading to the deserted laundry. Had the boy come from there? Maybe he’d heard nothing at all….

Alfie’s eyes fell on a bundle of clothing concealed by a row of trench coats. A jacket, shirt, and trousers, worn and ragged and — he sniffed — plenty pungent, too.

It came to him like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
assembling in his brain. The young “steward” — a stowaway? A street boy who had exchanged his rags for a crew uniform in order to pose as a White Star employee?

I must tell an officer at once!

A moment later, rational thought returned. Until April 10, Alfie himself had no business being on board. And if the word got out that he was underage, he would be put off the ship.

Better not to call attention to himself.

What about the old clothes? Should he just leave them here? That would alert everyone to the fact that there was a stowaway.

If the crew began sweeping the entire ship to determine who belonged and who didn’t …

No, he had to get rid of them. But where? The trash? They’d be noticed there as well.

The image came to mind of the
Titanic’s
15-foot-high boilers, his father and his mates stoking fires hot enough to produce the steam to move the largest ocean liner in the world.

How long could a bundle of rags last in an inferno like that?

CHAPTER NINE

SOUTHAMPTON

W
EDNESDAY,
A
PRIL
10, 1912, 11:35
A.M.

The hustle and bustle on the dock was approaching hysterical proportions. The rush to board more than two thousand passengers and new crew members created nothing less than a mob scene. That was compounded by the relatives and friends who had come to see their loved ones off, and spectators anxious to catch a glimpse of the start of the famous maiden voyage.

The first-class boat train had arrived, and the cream of American and British society poured across the wharf toward the dream ship that would carry them to New York. These titans of the civilized world had to vie for dock space with their own baggage — thousands of crates, steamer trunks, and pieces of hand-tooled leather luggage of every conceivable size and shape. The crane loaded cargo containers that held everything from sacks of mail to a jeweled copy
of
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
bound for an American museum.

Farther aft, at the third-class gangway, steerage passengers swarmed. Most of them were emigrants, carrying all their earthly belongings in carpetbags and cord-wrapped parcels. White Star officials pored over their identification documents and steamer tickets.

No one bothered first class with such trifles. No sooner had Juliana and her parents stepped aboard than they were whisked to their staterooms by waiting stewards and made as comfortable as the wealthy were accustomed to.

Stateroom B-56 was as sumptuous as any chamber in Glamford Hall, the family’s country estate outside London. Juliana could not have been more excited. The suite provided bedrooms for her and her father, as well as accommodations for the maid and the valet. It was a glorious place to be spending the next several days, and she looked forward to the voyage as well as to seeing New York. There was one strangely puzzling development: Why was her mother weeping so?

Elizabeth, Countess of Glamford, clung to her daughter as if she expected never to see her again.

“Please calm down, Mama,” Juliana soothed. “It’s only a short stay. We’ll be home in two months!”

Her reply was only to sob harder. “My darling girl!” she managed.

Her husband, the earl, stepped forward and attempted to embrace her. She whirled away with an expression of deep resentment, and held her daughter once more.

“Your mother is not one for travel,” he explained, falsely jovial. “You know how I couldn’t coax her into my aeroplane.”

“That’s because she has an ounce of sense in her head,” Juliana teased, trying to lighten the mood. “Would that I had inherited it.”

A steward’s voice could be heard in the passageway. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”

This brought on a fresh bout of weeping.

Juliana would miss her mother, but she was secretly relieved when the Countess of Glamford was escorted off the ship, a steward solicitously holding each arm. She stood, still sobbing, on the dock, waving to her daughter at the rail. It was difficult for a single passenger to stand out aboard the largest ship in the world, but the hysterical countess was making sure everyone noticed her poor daughter.

What could be more embarrassing?

The answer to that came swiftly. A hansom cab
drove up to the edge of the gangway and out stepped two uniformed constables. With perfect gallantry, they helped two ladies alight — one a girl of about Juliana’s age, the other a buxom matron dressed, oddly, in purple, white, and green, who had a great deal to say to the policemen, none of it pleasant.

The constables were polite, their decorum never slipping, but their mission was clear: to put these two women aboard the
Titanic
and make sure they stayed.

Sophie Bronson was humiliated. “Mother, if we had arrived with a brass band, we could not possibly have drawn more attention onto ourselves.”

The famous Amelia Bronson was unrepentant. “I like attention. It’s good for the cause.”

“I was hoping,” Sophie told her ruefully, “that for this one special voyage, we could forget about the cause. It’s already too late for that. Perhaps there’s a stoker in the bowels of the engine room who hasn’t noticed us being kicked out of England, but everybody else has.”

Mrs. Bronson was triumphant in her outrage. “My role is to shed light on the kind of” — she raised her voice so it carried over the bustling dockside
— “injustice visited upon women by an unfair system!
So I’m quite pleased by all this,” she finished in her regular voice.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said the older of the two constables, “but we’re not visiting injustice on anybody. Our orders are just to make sure you’re aboard the ship and not to leave until she steams away with you still on her.”

Sophie sensed a long, loud reply brewing inside Amelia Bronson’s active mind. To stifle it, Sophie picked up a sizable leather bag and set it down firmly on her mother’s boot. Seeing a first-class passenger — a lady — actually handling her own luggage brought two porters scurrying over to take charge of their belongings.

A steward followed quickly to take their tickets and escort them to their cabin. “Will your maid be arriving separately?”

“We are women of the twentieth century,” Amelia Bronson snapped. “Quite capable of looking after ourselves — and of voting, too, and making other important decisions!”

“Mother …” Sophie gritted her teeth and gave her traveling companion a none-too-gentle push.

But the steward was well accustomed to high society and its quirks. “Very good, madam. If you’ll be
so kind as to follow me.” After a few instructions to the porters, he led Sophie and her mother through a dark-paneled foyer, over carpets as thick as the turf of a well-tended golf course.

A real elevator,
thought Sophie, hugely impressed. Just like the ones in the skyscrapers of New York and Boston.

Riding up in the car, seeing herself and her mother repeated in the polished brass and mirrors, Sophie was almost sad. This was the experience of a lifetime — the maiden voyage of this masterpiece of modern science and technology. Vast, luxurious, unsinkable — the
Titanic
was all that and more, because she also represented the promise of the wonders to come in this new century.

But Mother saw none of this. She was determined to keep her focus narrow. Suffrage, the cause — that was all that existed for her. It wasn’t that she disapproved of the magnificence of the great ship. She simply didn’t notice it. The
Titanic
was a means to get home so Amelia Bronson could hold rallies and disturb the peace of American cities, just as she had done in the English ones.

Their suite, B-22, was large and beautifully appointed. Even so, Sophie could not remain indoors. She wanted to be on deck, waving to the crowd. She
would not miss this historic occasion. Huge throngs had assembled to see the
Titanic
off, and Sophie intended to be a part of it all. This would be something she could tell her grandchildren. Far better than telling them how she had once spent a night in an English jail in the company of their sainted great-grandmother.

As she stepped out onto the promenade, she was as high up as the steeple of a cathedral. Southampton stretched before her, and beyond that, the deep green of the English countryside.

The horn sounded again — the signal for all ashore. High up, and close to it, the sound was almost deafening. When it died away, it was replaced by the excited chatter of the multitude on the dock, which seemed to have doubled as departure loomed.

Teeming humanity covered every inch of the wharf, except for one spot directly below. An elegantly dressed woman stood there, and those around were giving her a wide berth. She brandished a large white handkerchief, alternately waving it, weeping into it, and then blowing her nose. Even at this distance, Sophie could hear her wailing.

Is she looking at me? Sophie plotted the trajectory of the woman’s gaze. No, not at me, but someone on this deck, just a little farther down …

Sophie’s eyes lit on a slender figure, a young girl her own age, perhaps slightly older. Her heart leaped. Another girl! Someone to spend time with, to share the sights and sounds of this amazing voyage. Someone who had never heard of Mother and the cause.

Sophie caught her attention and waved shyly.

The girl’s back stiffened. Her reply was not an answering wave, but a curt nod. She turned on her heel and disappeared from the promenade.

Stung, Sophie lowered her hand and her gaze as well. What did she expect? When you arrive at the embarkation point under escort by the police who were expelling you from their country, you can hardly expect to be accepted.

So she was an outcast — and they hadn’t even sailed yet.