Read Online The Other Side of the Night by Daniel Allen Butler - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Daniel Allen Butler
Tags: Bisac Code 1: TRA006010
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negotiation, an agreement drawn up between the government and Cunard was signed in October 1902. His Majesty’s Government agreed to finance the construction of two new ships—destined to become the Mauretania and Lusitania — at a cost of nearly £2,600,000, the sum to be repaid over a ten-year period at 2.75% interest, while an annual subsidy of £75,000 would help defray the operating expenses. In return Cunard guaranteed that control of the line would never pass from British hands—thus thwarting IMM in one deft stroke.
The Californian ’s part in Morgan’s grand scheme was, naturally, quite small. She was first and foremost a cargo carrier, destined for service between ports in England and the American Gulf Coast, as well as the Caribbean, with occasional crossings in the North Atlantic as well. The Leyland Line had acquired a well-earned reputation in the shipping world for being soundly managed and efficiently run, her ships earning the line handsome, if not extravagant, profits. Characteristically deep-laden, Leyland ships often sat so low in the water that it became something of a standing joke for other lines’ vessels to report that they “Passed four masts and a funnel bound west, presumed Leyland’s.” All jests aside, Leyland ships were known to be reliable and sturdy money-makers.
The Californian went through her sea trials on January 23, 1902, and as soon as she was certified by the Board of Trade she was readied for her maiden voyage. On January 31, she left Dundee, Scotland, and arrived at New Orleans on March 3. Her return trip brought her to Liverpool, which was her company’s home port, arriving on March 21. In April that same year, the Dominion Line—yet another acquisition of IMM—chartered the Californian for a series of five crossings between Liverpool and Portland, Maine. Once these were completed in December 1902, the Californian was returned to Leyland, which put her back on the southerly Atlantic crossings the following month.
For her first ten years in service, the Californian had four different captains. In 1911, she was given her fifth master, the man with whom her name would forever after be associated: Captain Stanley Lord.
Lord had been born on September 13, 1877, in Bolton, Lancashire, a British textile center (and near the birthplace of Arthur Rostron). He was the youngest of six surviving sons, a younger seventh brother having died at age seven; his family was middle-class, prosperous, and, according to Lord, his parents had plans for him to embark on a career as a businessman. But as so often happened in heyday of the British Empire, as a young boy Stanley Lord was captured by the romance of the sea, and he insisted that he was going to live the life of an officer in the British Merchant Marine. Even at a young age, Lord possessed a willful personality as well as considerable powers of persuasion, and he eventually won his parents’ grudging approval to be apprenticed to a Liverpool shipping firm, the J.B. Walmsley Company. At the age of thirteen Stanley Lord put to sea aboard a barque, the Naiad , out of Liverpool, for the South American run.
Perhaps Lord sensed something in himself that his parents never recognized, for he took to the seafaring life as if he had been born with saltwater in his veins. Serious, studious, he quickly learned the ways of sail, as well as beginning his studies for his Mates certificates (“tickets”), the first stepping stone along the path leading to command. After seven years under canvas, he switched to steam, having already earned his Second and First Mate’s tickets, signing on with the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool.
The degree of Lord’s determination to succeed at his profession, as well as a measure of his skills, was demonstrated when, by the age of twenty-four, he earned both his Master’s and Extra Master’s (“any tonnage, any ocean”) tickets, a feat many merchant officers five or even
The Californian ’s part in Morgan’s grand scheme was, naturally, quite small. She was first and foremost a cargo carrier, destined for service between ports in England and the American Gulf Coast, as well as the Caribbean, with occasional crossings in the North Atlantic as well. The Leyland Line had acquired a well-earned reputation in the shipping world for being soundly managed and efficiently run, her ships earning the line handsome, if not extravagant, profits. Characteristically deep-laden, Leyland ships often sat so low in the water that it became something of a standing joke for other lines’ vessels to report that they “Passed four masts and a funnel bound west, presumed Leyland’s.” All jests aside, Leyland ships were known to be reliable and sturdy money-makers.
The Californian went through her sea trials on January 23, 1902, and as soon as she was certified by the Board of Trade she was readied for her maiden voyage. On January 31, she left Dundee, Scotland, and arrived at New Orleans on March 3. Her return trip brought her to Liverpool, which was her company’s home port, arriving on March 21. In April that same year, the Dominion Line—yet another acquisition of IMM—chartered the Californian for a series of five crossings between Liverpool and Portland, Maine. Once these were completed in December 1902, the Californian was returned to Leyland, which put her back on the southerly Atlantic crossings the following month.
For her first ten years in service, the Californian had four different captains. In 1911, she was given her fifth master, the man with whom her name would forever after be associated: Captain Stanley Lord.
Lord had been born on September 13, 1877, in Bolton, Lancashire, a British textile center (and near the birthplace of Arthur Rostron). He was the youngest of six surviving sons, a younger seventh brother having died at age seven; his family was middle-class, prosperous, and, according to Lord, his parents had plans for him to embark on a career as a businessman. But as so often happened in heyday of the British Empire, as a young boy Stanley Lord was captured by the romance of the sea, and he insisted that he was going to live the life of an officer in the British Merchant Marine. Even at a young age, Lord possessed a willful personality as well as considerable powers of persuasion, and he eventually won his parents’ grudging approval to be apprenticed to a Liverpool shipping firm, the J.B. Walmsley Company. At the age of thirteen Stanley Lord put to sea aboard a barque, the Naiad , out of Liverpool, for the South American run.
Perhaps Lord sensed something in himself that his parents never recognized, for he took to the seafaring life as if he had been born with saltwater in his veins. Serious, studious, he quickly learned the ways of sail, as well as beginning his studies for his Mates certificates (“tickets”), the first stepping stone along the path leading to command. After seven years under canvas, he switched to steam, having already earned his Second and First Mate’s tickets, signing on with the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool.
The degree of Lord’s determination to succeed at his profession, as well as a measure of his skills, was demonstrated when, by the age of twenty-four, he earned both his Master’s and Extra Master’s (“any tonnage, any ocean”) tickets, a feat many merchant officers five or even
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