New York. Please stay in the vicinity and pick up any bodies. Rostron.’
Cyril Evans held the message tight in his small, dirty hands. Pick up bodies ? This was an important message – direct from the captain of the Carpathia to the captain of his own ship – but he did not rush it to the bridge. It was not what he had expected. For a moment he sat at his desk and thought.
It had been the morning of his life. These hours and minutes had been the reason he’d studied so hard at the Marconi school. The Californian had been closest to the scene of the rescue, and in the cacophony of crisscrossing signals, all on the same frequency, operators were obliged to listen to him first. ‘We are at the Carpathia now,’ he tapped out to the world the moment his ship arrived at the scene. ‘I can see her taking up the boats. She is only a mile away. Titanic foundered about two a.m.’ Evans had wound the magnetic detector as tight as it would go; he had tapped at his Morse key with frantic energy. Inspector Balfour on the nearby Baltic asked him again to keep quiet and keep out, but this time Evans kept going. He had precedence. He took scribbled notes of what has happening, hoping that when the Californian arrived in Boston the newspapers would ask him all about it. This was his chance to become a hero, just like Jack Binns.
But then this message about picking up bodies. It gave him pause. He did not know what notes to make. No one would want to hear about bodies. As he smoothed the yellow Marconi paper, smudging its pencilled letters, he began to imagine them coming aboard, hauled up at the end of a hook by the ship’s derricks, wet and bloated, to be laid out on the foredeck hatches. Would the captain then bury them at sea? No, he thought, it would be pointless to pull them up only to send them back again. But how would they be stored? Would the rich, perhaps, be laid out in the empty passenger cabins, amid the satinwood and teak and woollen quilts? And the poor lie on ice on the rough wooden pallets of the ’tween decks? Jack Binns had never spoken of cargo hooks or refrigeration, or faces twisted in death.
Evans wanted to screw up the Marconigram and throw it into the sea. But he knew he must not. He put on his coat and took it up to the bridge.
* * *
Herbert Stone knew something of what it was like to drown – or at least to gasp for air and to suffocate. Once, as a young boy, he had tried to please his father by taking hay to their cattle. But he was forgetful and left a gate open, so that a calf escaped and drowned in a bog. As punishment, his father took him into his workroom, a small space cluttered with splintered wood and tools and animal skins, and struck him hard across the face. Blood rose hot in Herbert’s cheeks and tears burned his eyes. When he could not stop his sobs, his father stuffed his mouth with a turpentine-soaked rag, whispering in his ear as he did so, ‘What are you? A girl? ’ Mucus bubbled and blocked his nose; he was not able to breathe. He struggled and tried to cry out, but his father held the rag even tighter in his mouth so that he ‘would know how the drowned calf felt’. Herbert punched and struck with his arms but he could not break free and he thought he must die. But at last he made himself still and quiet, and, desperate for air, locked his wide unblinking eyes onto his father’s. In his mind he begged his father to stop. He imagined the word ‘sorry’ passing from him to his father. He concentrated; he willed the word through. And at last the rag was removed. As he gulped in air – cool, soothing, wonderful air – his father enfolded him in his arms and rocked him gently. ‘My dear, dear son,’ his father said. ‘See? You’re a good boy, really.’
Years later, as a junior apprentice, he had been forced to share a cabin with a senior boy who was fierce and cruel. Between them they were assigned only one bucket of wash water per day. The senior boy would use
Cyril Evans held the message tight in his small, dirty hands. Pick up bodies ? This was an important message – direct from the captain of the Carpathia to the captain of his own ship – but he did not rush it to the bridge. It was not what he had expected. For a moment he sat at his desk and thought.
It had been the morning of his life. These hours and minutes had been the reason he’d studied so hard at the Marconi school. The Californian had been closest to the scene of the rescue, and in the cacophony of crisscrossing signals, all on the same frequency, operators were obliged to listen to him first. ‘We are at the Carpathia now,’ he tapped out to the world the moment his ship arrived at the scene. ‘I can see her taking up the boats. She is only a mile away. Titanic foundered about two a.m.’ Evans had wound the magnetic detector as tight as it would go; he had tapped at his Morse key with frantic energy. Inspector Balfour on the nearby Baltic asked him again to keep quiet and keep out, but this time Evans kept going. He had precedence. He took scribbled notes of what has happening, hoping that when the Californian arrived in Boston the newspapers would ask him all about it. This was his chance to become a hero, just like Jack Binns.
But then this message about picking up bodies. It gave him pause. He did not know what notes to make. No one would want to hear about bodies. As he smoothed the yellow Marconi paper, smudging its pencilled letters, he began to imagine them coming aboard, hauled up at the end of a hook by the ship’s derricks, wet and bloated, to be laid out on the foredeck hatches. Would the captain then bury them at sea? No, he thought, it would be pointless to pull them up only to send them back again. But how would they be stored? Would the rich, perhaps, be laid out in the empty passenger cabins, amid the satinwood and teak and woollen quilts? And the poor lie on ice on the rough wooden pallets of the ’tween decks? Jack Binns had never spoken of cargo hooks or refrigeration, or faces twisted in death.
Evans wanted to screw up the Marconigram and throw it into the sea. But he knew he must not. He put on his coat and took it up to the bridge.
* * *
Herbert Stone knew something of what it was like to drown – or at least to gasp for air and to suffocate. Once, as a young boy, he had tried to please his father by taking hay to their cattle. But he was forgetful and left a gate open, so that a calf escaped and drowned in a bog. As punishment, his father took him into his workroom, a small space cluttered with splintered wood and tools and animal skins, and struck him hard across the face. Blood rose hot in Herbert’s cheeks and tears burned his eyes. When he could not stop his sobs, his father stuffed his mouth with a turpentine-soaked rag, whispering in his ear as he did so, ‘What are you? A girl? ’ Mucus bubbled and blocked his nose; he was not able to breathe. He struggled and tried to cry out, but his father held the rag even tighter in his mouth so that he ‘would know how the drowned calf felt’. Herbert punched and struck with his arms but he could not break free and he thought he must die. But at last he made himself still and quiet, and, desperate for air, locked his wide unblinking eyes onto his father’s. In his mind he begged his father to stop. He imagined the word ‘sorry’ passing from him to his father. He concentrated; he willed the word through. And at last the rag was removed. As he gulped in air – cool, soothing, wonderful air – his father enfolded him in his arms and rocked him gently. ‘My dear, dear son,’ his father said. ‘See? You’re a good boy, really.’
Years later, as a junior apprentice, he had been forced to share a cabin with a senior boy who was fierce and cruel. Between them they were assigned only one bucket of wash water per day. The senior boy would use
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