Read Online Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Daniel Allen Butler
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man in this city!” 7
The Major was returning to Washington after an extended visit to Italy that had been ostensibly a diplomatic mission to the Vatican for the President, but had actually been a convalescence. For years Major Butt had been a close friend and confidant of Theodore Roosevelt, and had become close friends with William Taft while Taft had been Roosevelt’s vice president. Once close political allies if not actually friends, Roosevelt and Taft began feuding almost as soon as Roosevelt left the presidency and Taft filled it. What this did to Archie Butt was put him in between the two men, and he found it nearly impossible to maintain his loyalty to Taft, his commander-in-chief, without turning his back on all the years he had spent as Roosevelt’s friend. The situation had grown worse as Taft and Roosevelt, who had come to bitterly dislike each other, began vying for the Republican nomination for the Presidency in the upcoming election in November. In the end the strain had proven more than Butt could take, and he had asked Taft for a transfer to another posting. Taft instead gave him the assignment to the Vatican, hoping that the trouble with Roosevelt would die down in Butt’s absence, and his jangled nerves would recover. Apparently Butt was unable to completely shake off his depression: in a last letter posted to his sister-in-law before the Titanic sailed, he wrote, “If the old ship goes down, you’ll find my affairs in shipshape condition.”
Accompanying Major Butt was his close friend Frank Millet. Like Butt, Millet had been many things in his time: one-time drummer-boy in the American Civil War and war correspondent in the Spanish-American War and several of the innumerable Russo-Turkish wars. His world travels had enabled him to become a well-known author and raconteur, but Millet was best known for his paintings. Historical subjects were his favorites, and copies of his work, such as “Wandering Thoughts,” “At the Inn,” or “Between Two Fires,” hung in homes on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite his American birth, Millet now lived in the Cotswolds, by all accounts a happy man.
There was one other American officer aboard the Boat Train, Col. Archibald Gracie. An amateur military historian of private means, he had just published a book on one of the lesser known campaigns of the Civil War, called The Truth About Chickamauga. Although it was the sort of book that only another military historian could love, filled with seemingly endless accounts of troop movements and dispositions, and the comings and goings of countless officers and men, it had entailed a tremendous amount of detective work, and now Colonel Gracie was taking a well-earned rest.
Not all of the famous passengers aboard the Boat Train were Americans. There were several Englishmen of note as well, among them Henry Forbes Julian, one of the leading metallurgists of the day, who had created new processes for recovering precious metals from ores, and Christopher Head, former mayor of Chelsea and currently a member of Lloyd’s of London. But there was one among them who, at the height of his powers, wielded more influence than even J. P Morgan.
William T. Stead was characterized by Geoffrey Marcus as “half charlatan—half genius.” Barbara Tuchman called him “a human torrent of enthusiasm for good causes. His energy was limitless, his optimism unending, his egotism gigantic.” In the 1880s Stead had been the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, a Liberal daily, and his crusades had garnered a readership for the Gazette so great that at one time it even included the Prince of Wales. The range of his campaigns included railing against life in Siberian labor camps, decrying Bulgarian atrocities in the Balkan wars, and denouncing slavery in the Congo. He espoused with equal passion the causes of baby adoption, housing for the poor, and public libraries. Stead became the center of a national scandal when he published an
The Major was returning to Washington after an extended visit to Italy that had been ostensibly a diplomatic mission to the Vatican for the President, but had actually been a convalescence. For years Major Butt had been a close friend and confidant of Theodore Roosevelt, and had become close friends with William Taft while Taft had been Roosevelt’s vice president. Once close political allies if not actually friends, Roosevelt and Taft began feuding almost as soon as Roosevelt left the presidency and Taft filled it. What this did to Archie Butt was put him in between the two men, and he found it nearly impossible to maintain his loyalty to Taft, his commander-in-chief, without turning his back on all the years he had spent as Roosevelt’s friend. The situation had grown worse as Taft and Roosevelt, who had come to bitterly dislike each other, began vying for the Republican nomination for the Presidency in the upcoming election in November. In the end the strain had proven more than Butt could take, and he had asked Taft for a transfer to another posting. Taft instead gave him the assignment to the Vatican, hoping that the trouble with Roosevelt would die down in Butt’s absence, and his jangled nerves would recover. Apparently Butt was unable to completely shake off his depression: in a last letter posted to his sister-in-law before the Titanic sailed, he wrote, “If the old ship goes down, you’ll find my affairs in shipshape condition.”
Accompanying Major Butt was his close friend Frank Millet. Like Butt, Millet had been many things in his time: one-time drummer-boy in the American Civil War and war correspondent in the Spanish-American War and several of the innumerable Russo-Turkish wars. His world travels had enabled him to become a well-known author and raconteur, but Millet was best known for his paintings. Historical subjects were his favorites, and copies of his work, such as “Wandering Thoughts,” “At the Inn,” or “Between Two Fires,” hung in homes on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite his American birth, Millet now lived in the Cotswolds, by all accounts a happy man.
There was one other American officer aboard the Boat Train, Col. Archibald Gracie. An amateur military historian of private means, he had just published a book on one of the lesser known campaigns of the Civil War, called The Truth About Chickamauga. Although it was the sort of book that only another military historian could love, filled with seemingly endless accounts of troop movements and dispositions, and the comings and goings of countless officers and men, it had entailed a tremendous amount of detective work, and now Colonel Gracie was taking a well-earned rest.
Not all of the famous passengers aboard the Boat Train were Americans. There were several Englishmen of note as well, among them Henry Forbes Julian, one of the leading metallurgists of the day, who had created new processes for recovering precious metals from ores, and Christopher Head, former mayor of Chelsea and currently a member of Lloyd’s of London. But there was one among them who, at the height of his powers, wielded more influence than even J. P Morgan.
William T. Stead was characterized by Geoffrey Marcus as “half charlatan—half genius.” Barbara Tuchman called him “a human torrent of enthusiasm for good causes. His energy was limitless, his optimism unending, his egotism gigantic.” In the 1880s Stead had been the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, a Liberal daily, and his crusades had garnered a readership for the Gazette so great that at one time it even included the Prince of Wales. The range of his campaigns included railing against life in Siberian labor camps, decrying Bulgarian atrocities in the Balkan wars, and denouncing slavery in the Congo. He espoused with equal passion the causes of baby adoption, housing for the poor, and public libraries. Stead became the center of a national scandal when he published an
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