Titanic 2012: Curse of RMS Titanic

TWENTY ONE

Trinity came in sight of Titanic at anchor offshore at Cherbourg, France, a beautiful cove bathed in morning light on April 12 of 1912. As there was no pier large enough to accommodate the ship of ships gracing the harbor, boarding passengers must transport themselves and their bags via shuttle by boat-trains that were being de-boarded directly onto Titanic.

Once again, those aboard Trinity saw the familiar sight of four smokestacks as they approached. With Titanic at anchor, with waters as still as glass, and what with the boat- trains coming and going from Cherbourg pier to the giant ship, Ransom and the others were more hopeful this time of getting aboard and stating their case for quarantine before Titanic set sail for America.

Once again the beautiful schooner caught the attention of people aboard Titanic, and a wave of excitement filled the air as Trinity lowered her sails and came rushing at the monster ship under the deft hand of Captain McEachern, who this time brought her alongside Titanic only so far, not about to make the same mistake as before.

Ransom rushed to McEachern and pleaded, “Why have you stopped?”

“Can’t you feel that? Underfoot, man? Under your toes, man?” asked the captain.

Ransom, indeed, everyone aboard Trinity felt vibration created by the displacement of water—a kind of underwater shock wave that amounted to a huge draught shuddering through the schooner and the boat train. This even as Titanic sat in an idle position, all engines stopped. She still displaced a huge amount of water, enough to scuttle the schooner that was dwarfed before her.

Captain McEachern refused to go any closer to the massive ship and instead made for the piers at Cherbourg. Once docked, McEachern pointed to an enormous tender that had obviously been busy boarding goods and more passengers. “We’ll get you aboard the tender, and from there you’re on your own, Constable, and this voucher you gave me—” he waved the IOU overhead—“better be good in Belfast! Else I’ll send some men around to find you, sir.”

“I assure you—Chief Constable Reahall will honor your bill for services rendered, Captain.”

It took but little time for the gangplank from the schooner to make connection with the pier, and even here at the docks with Titanic hundreds of yards off and looking like a behemoth from Greek mythology sitting atop the ocean, the schooner was being sucked in and out and rammed against the boards. Crewmen worked to place cushioning rubber tires between the dock and the rails of Trinity to absorb the impact while Ransom, Declan, and Thomas rushed to get aboard the tender preparing to make its way out to Titanic.

“How will we gain access to the tender, much less Titanic?” asked Declan, panting as they rushed through the throng of people who’d come out to simply look at Titanic.

“I pray the French authorities will respect the badge!” he held up his Belfast shield, asking people to move aside as the three pounded their way to the tender which amounted to a large, floating pier stacked high with goods from French companies—some labeled for New York from Paris.

A large contingent of ticket-holders also filled the spaces of what appeared a hundred yard square platform about to ferry everyone and everything out to Titanic. While goods appeared to be loaded at one end, a queue with a gatekeeper and ticket puncher held up the final line of boarding passengers.

“Follow me, boys,” Ransom said to the young interns.

He pushed his way through the final crowd and flashed his badge at the gatekeeper and ticket man. “It is imperative I have a few minutes with your Captain Smith aboard Titanic. We have sent him messages and chased his ship all the way from Belfast. There is a murderer aboard and my two deputies and myself are here to apprehend him and take him off at the scheduled stop at Queenstown. We need your cooperation, sirs.”

“Murderer indeed, sir?”

“Aye—killed many a man this villain has. Will you help us to end his career? He could end the life of anyone here you are now boarding.” Ransom swept a hand in the direction of the men, women, and children in line. “Think of the loss of humanity should a bomb be placed aboard that monster ship of yours.”

The two men at the gate exchanged a look at one another, eyes wide, exaggerating their response moments before they both broke out laughing at Ransom. One commented on the youth of his deputies and the other the lengths to which people will go to get aboard Titanic. “Thought we’d heard it all, eh Wally?” said one to the other.

In the end, they were barred from the tender when the gatekeepers began calling for an armed guard who was nearby.

“All right… all right,” Ransom said, hands held high. “When murder occurs aboard that ship, sirs, it is on your head then. Come along, men!” Ransom led Declan and Thomas off.

“We might’ve shown them the pictures!” Declan said, slapping his leather bag beneath his armpit.

“Those two weren’t going to be moved,” replied Ransom, “but I think others will be. Come along.”

Ransom led them to where the goods were being loaded, and there he found the man in charge, and as it turned out, it was a fellow in uniform—an officer from the Titanic who’d earlier come over by life boat with the crew that now worked to get all the necessary goods aboard not just for the trip to New York but for the trip back.

“Sir, a word with you, sir.”

“Can you not see, I am hard at it, sir, and time is of the essence?”

Alastair Ransom introduced himself, again flashing his badge in the sun, its reflection blinding the officer, “And I must speak face-to-face with Captain Edward Smith to impart facts of a highly confidential nature.”

“What is your concern, Constable?”

“Surely, your captain has gotten Marconi messages to the effect that death itself is aboard your ship, messages from the Belfast authorities.”

“Messages of death aboard?” asked the officer. “I am Second Officer Charles Lightoller, Constable, and it is unlikely Captain Smith would share such wireless messages with me, but if such were so, rumors most surely would’ve reached me.”

“And surely there must be rumors among the crew? The officers perhaps? The men receiving the messages from my boss to yours? Any whispers of sabotage… anarchists, for instance?”

“Anarchists? Aboard Titanic?”

“It is a possibility. Surely your wireless operator put our message into Smith’s hands.”

Lightoller, a man with the features of a boy, took off his officer’s cap and ran his fingers gingerly through his thinning hair. “The Marconi Company men are extremely professional, sir, and not given to loose tongues; they value their jobs, after all.”

Lightoller looked to be a bright young officer with a future ahead of him, Ransom thought, if he’d only listen. “Mr. Lightoller, please, just have a look at our evidence you have a killer aboard Titanic, and that before you set sail for New York, you must allow us to bring this to your captain’s attention. Declan! Show him the photographs—the results of this… this fiendish murderer quite possibly lurking about the shadows in the depths of Titanic this moment.”

Declan snatched out the photos they’d brought with them for Charles Lightoller’s perusal. Lightoller gasped at the images of the bodies—before and after dissection—and he hardly knew what he was looking at.

“This killer,” Ransom said in his ear, “works fast and he spreads a horrible disease wherever he goes, Mr. Lightoller—a plague, and if that plague gets underway as Titanic gets underway—Charles, can I call you Charles, son?”

“Yes sir… sounds bloody serious; something… something…”

“Something your captain needs to take seriously, Charles.”

Lightoller swallowed hard. “All right, come on aboard; I’ll see to it you have an audience with Captain Smith.”

“Good… good.” Ransom and his young associates stepped aboard and found comfortable places to sit about the crates. Lightoller hurried the loading and soon all passengers had been welcomed aboard.

The huge floating tender began now making its way toward Titanic, and Ransom and the young interns relaxed; Ransom’s words to Lightoller had gotten the right reaction. He’d couched the danger in the perfect terms to move the man—that and the photographic evidence. Lightoller had stepped off, muttering, “To burn a man to death like that—awful… just awful.”

The images in the photos did look like men who’d been incinerated; there was no way to capture the true appearance of a victim of this thing—certainly not on a grainy, two-dimensional, black and white photograph. Still the photos had had the desired result, to get them aboard Titanic and before the only man capable of stopping the ship where it sat and ordering a quarantine.

They would then set up a proper method of determining how to hunt this thing down, trap it, and destroy it… destroy the carrier. Fear also ran high that at some point—left to flourish, this thing would accomplish its single-minded purpose to reproduce and would replenish its kind.

Declan, Thomas, and Ransom went to the other side of the tender and creeping up before them was the huge open hatchway at sea level where all passengers, trunks, bags and crates were to be loaded onboard. For Thomas and Declan, it recalled the night Pinkerton Agent Tuttle shouted down at them to stay off the ship, that Tuttle didn’t know where Anton Fiore might be. For Alastair it recalled standing before this gaping wall of blackness with Reahall at his back telling him he knew his darkest secrets. The same night those two interns knocked at his door and had dragged him into this crazy, madcap chase after an unknown killer none of them knew enough about—a killer toward which they’d run. Reahall had been smart enough to run in the opposite direction.

Then Ransom had someone, a young woman of obvious breeding and some wealth, carrying an umbrella over her head, speaking in his ear, saying, “I was to’ve traveled on the seventh, you know, on the George Washington for New York, but when I heard of this fantastic wonderful new boat was leaving on the 10^th, three days after Easter Sunday I changed my passage, and why not? I covered the spring fashions at the Easter Sunday races! You know, to learn Titanic will dock in New York the same day as George Washington! What a boon!”

“I see, reporting on the Easter parade of fashions, is it, ma’am?” he replied, unsure what else he might say when he realized the couple she stood with were the well-photographed Astors—Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor. Astor was the richest man on the globe, an American tycoon on his way to New York via Titanic.

“Oh, where are my manners?” the lady traveling with the Astors said, a surprisingly gabby aristocrat indeed, he thought now. “I am Edith… Edith Embler; I write a fashion column syndicated to the newspapers.”

“I see.”

“And you, sir?” She put up an umbrella to secure herself from the sun.

“Oh… just a fellow traveler.” He had to swerve to avoid being struck by her umbrella.

“One with a badge, I see.”

He realized he’d revealed his badge when speaking to Lightoller and had forgotten about it until now. “You are quite observant.”

“Are you the least bit worried, sir, about this platform toppling over? Do you feel that frightful current below our feet?” she asked.

She was right, and more and more people aboard the tender that Declan had said was built for Olympic, were being shoved off their feet, despite a calm, glassine-looking surface. Some were knocked off their feet by the powerful draught that seemed bent on sucking anything too near Titanic into her hull.

Edith Embler grabbed onto Ransom who’d steadied himself via the rail as did John Jacob Astor and his wife. Edith’s umbrella fell from her hand and was claimed by the sea. She shouted, “My word! Well… I mean a boat that can cause such upheaval and calamity from this distance? I mean in a sea so calm as this? Why it’s dangerous. I wish I’d gotten on the George Washington.”

“Oh, please, Edie—we’d have missed you terribly had you left earlier,” replied Mrs. Astor.

As they drew nearer Titanic, the groundswell of this invisible force below the pristine surface and below the platform welled up, shaking the tender violently, causing a collective gasp. Now with everyone aboard the half expecting to go under, holding onto anything stable, the tender reached Titanic and pounded her side with such force that Ransom feared the tender would be split in two. But somehow it all held, and crewmen waiting aboard Titanic at its cargo hold shouted, “Lower your anchors!” even as these men began lowering Titanic’s gangplank. At the same time, Lightoller rushed to the captain of the tender and pleaded that he drop all of his anchors into the water to steady her—and now.

“Look at that, boys,” Ransom said to Declan and Thomas, pointing. Ten men on either side of the Titanic’s gangplank stood like sentinels to hold it in place and steady. Even so the gang-plank shook and swayed and eddied and flowed and pulled to one side then the next like an angry dragon being held against its will.

Ransom and his party held back while cargo and passengers unsteadily moved across, and remaining behind with them stood Edith Embler, feet planted. She had waved the Astor’s off sometime before. Astor had taken his wife’s arm in his and with absolute aristocratic bearing, they had marched onto and across the enormous, moving metal floor which doubled as a cargo loading point above the waterline. Mr. and Mrs. Astor set the standard, and so Ransom worked at keeping his sea legs the whole while.

The cargo and all others now across, Ransom offered Miss Embler his arm as Lightoller returned and said, “Please, ma’am, you must get on board, now or never.”

“I want my bags returned, and I will not get on that ship, sir.”

“Your bags could be anywhere by now, and we haven’t any more time to waste in France, Miss, please.”

“I will help you across,” Ransom assured her.

“I will not be bullied by either of you handsome men.”

Lightoller then said, “All right, take another boat, but your luggage must remain.”

“But my wardrobe… and besides, I have many orders and purchases for clients. Three thousand dollars worth of the latest in Paris fashion.”

“It will be held for you in New York; we must cast off—orders from Captain Smith himself, ma’am.”

“Well then… can I apply for insurance on my luggage?”

“That’s ridiculous! This ship is unsinkable.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Miss Embler,” said Ransom. “You’d be best to take the next ship.”

“Oh bother. Those bags are worth more than I am at this point; should I lose them, I lose all. I’d best remain with my purchases.” She took hold of Ransom’s arm and together they all finalized the boarding at Cherbourg, and the giant gangplank was lifted, and the tender moved off like an enormous tugboat, anxious to return to its moorings.

At last inside Titanic, Ransom said good-bye to Edith and stepped aside to allow busy men dressed in well-starched white uniforms, signaling their status as kitchen staff supervisors overseeing the stocking of the gigantic pantry and cold storage, some shouting when a worker dropped a crate of ketchup that spread about the walkway like blood. Other kitchen staff moved about the crates, selecting tinned goods and loading up wheel-barrows full with wrapped baked bread, already planning for the next meal aboard Titanic. At the same time, all the lifts were full and taking passengers and cargo to the upper decks. A pair of pursers were busy making certain all voyagers aboard were pampered with clean linens, soaps, perfumes, and piles of foodstuffs.

Lightoller passed off his duties here to a junior officer named Boxall. He then called out to Ransom to follow him, adding, “We’ll have to take the stairwell. I hope you appreciate the fact I’m abandoning my post for this. It’d better be legit, gentlemen.”

The last Ransom saw of Edith was of her fearfully standing before one of the enormous elevators, tentative about stepping inside. He imagined her a wonderful lady and he feared for her and every man, woman, and child aboard Titanic.