Hearing footsteps and piping voices on the companionway behind me, I drew breath and found my smile. Bruce Ismay’s children were having a private tour of the ship before the passengers boarded.
‘Feeling nostalgic, EJ?’ their father asked as he joined me. His smoothly polished hair, brows and waxed moustache were perfect but brittle-looking, as though they might chip or break off were he to be so careless as to brush against a doorjamb, say, as the ship rolled. Even his skin was smooth, just a suggestion of a shadow where he’d been shaved that morning. I looked in vain for a nick or scratch that might make him human.
‘A little,’ I acknowledged, but in truth my feelings were more akin to those of a war-weary general. The past year had been draining and I just wanted this trip to be over.
‘It’s not fair,’ the younger boy complained. ‘Mama’s taking us down to the West Country, but I wanted to come with you, sir. And Papa, of course.’
‘Well now, I’m honoured, young man.’ This child was fair and round-faced – in looks he reminded me of his grandfather. I ruffled his hair. ‘Next time, perhaps.’
‘But next time won’t be the maiden voyage, will it?
Bending close to his ear, I said, ‘Shall I let you into a little secret?’ As he grinned and nodded, I said, ‘Maiden voyages are very much overrated. Wait until next trip – I would if I were you.’ But he looked at me with disappointment in his eyes, as if to say, what kind of secret is that?
In compensation I showed him the telegraphs, the means by which we communicated orders from the bridge to the engine room. I showed him the chart for Southampton Water, and the clock from which we took time for our star sights and noon position.
‘What’s a star sight?’
‘One of the mysteries of navigation,’ I said. ‘We measure the height of the stars above the horizon, and work out where we are from there.’
I was ready for him to ask me how we did that, but after a look that would have withered nettles, he turned his attention to the ship’s wheel. He was just a child – not so much like his grandfather, after all. Still, it seemed to me I’d been interested in such things when I was his age, pestering my brother Joe to tell me how he found his way by the stars across the oceans of the world.
With a wry smile I turned to greet Mrs Ismay as she came up the steps. Beautiful, rather distant, she had none of Mrs Ismay senior’s warmth and charm; just as Bruce has none of his father’s, I could hear Ellie say. We had expressed those reservations many times, but the facts remained the same: this new generation was not the old, and we had little power to influence them.
Noting the time, I left White Star’s Chairman to answer his children’s questions, and went to attend to more pressing matters. The crew should be signing on. Board of Trade officials would shortly be checking numbers in each department and – with the aid of the ship’s doctors – looking for signs of ill-health. First in the crew and then in the emigrant passengers. If they could not pass muster before officials in New York, it was pointless them travelling with us, since we would have to bring them back. Generally without payment. Naturally, the company was not keen on that idea.
Food, water and sanitary arrangements suitable for an emigrant ship had been checked and certified earlier. While the crew mustered at their emergency stations for a lifeboat drill, Captain Clarke of the Board of Trade asked to see two of the boats lowered into the water. Fortunately a breeze had sprung up and the fog was rapidly dispersing. The junior officers took eight men each, lowering away with ease before rowing around the grey dock and raising them again with the aid of the steam winch. I’d always thought lifeboats awkward things, but these new Welin Quadrant type, installed for the first time aboard Olympic, were surprisingly efficient.
With a sharp whistle, the 2nd and 3rd Class Boat Train announced the arrival of several hundred over-excited passengers. Rising noise told me they were pouring off the train and flooding through the Customs shed.
By contrast the wheelhouse was a sanctuary of calm, woodwork and brassware gleaming, senior officers ready and waiting. I took a sheaf of reports from Mr Wilde. All public areas had been checked; in the cargo holds everything from china to cheese, champagne to sheep skins, was safely stowed. From the victualing department my Chief Steward, Mr Latimer, reported everyone in place and ready to receive the first wave. Our 1st Class guests were due to arrive just half an hour before sailing.
At 11:30, above the babble of voices, I heard the whistle of the second train as it approached the crossing on Canute Road. The big green locomotive pulled slowly into the docks and halted with a swish of steam on the far side of the sheds. I felt my stomach tighten in anticipation; but then our pilot, George Bowyer, arrived on the bridge, dispelling anxieties with the warmth of his greeting. George’s family had been pilots, he liked to inform me, since Nelson left for Trafalgar. Certainly he had been piloting our ships since White Star’s move to Southampton in ’07, and we knew each other well.
In the chartroom we went through the usual check list, discussing the state of the tide and the south-westerly breeze; the fact that once we were clear of White Star Dock, there were several ships laid up alongside at Dock Head, reducing the width of the navigable channel. Single moorings were common there but close on the port side were two Atlantic liners, double banked. Neither had been there six days ago, when we came in.
‘Could be awkward, getting past,’ George said.
I nodded, signifying my awareness of the problem. Out on the bridge the noise was so overwhelming it was difficult to make ourselves heard. A stiffening breeze had cleared the docks of mist, and below us on every deck, people were leaning out and shouting to friends and well-wishers ashore. Every stretch of quay – and indeed, every high point around – seemed to be thronged with waving, laughing people. The windows of the dock offices were alive with flags and handkerchiefs; the Isle of Wight ferry was standing off, its decks crammed with sightseers; there were small boats everywhere.
As the gangway came up, Chief Officer Wilde headed to his station on the fo’c’sle to supervise tug hawsers and the casting off of mooring ropes, while 1st Officer Murdoch went to the poop on similar duties.
The scent of departure was in the air, firing excitement in the crowd. Steam, smoke, a touch of sulphur adding keenness to blood already roused and impatient for action. As the bridge clock came up to noon I gave orders to sound the steam hooter, three satisfying roars which brought forth eager grins from all on the bridge and answering calls from vessels around the port. Not so many as last year – not many had steam to blow – but ahead of us, White Star’s Oceanic was sounding, and even Majestic, my favourite command, managed a whoop of farewell from astern.
Laid up ships are a sad sight, and fanciful though it was, their calls sounded to me like cries of appeal as we moved out.
With tugs fore and aft we came off the berth, inching slowly out of the dock and into the channel where the rivers Test and Itchen meet. With such a massive ship we needed assistance, but with the manoeuvre complete the tugs were slacking off. As George called, ‘Slow ahead port and starboard engines, Captain,’ I gave the order to 4th Officer Boxhall. A ringing of the telegraphs and seconds later I felt the response, a sudden vibration as bronze propellers bit deep and the ship moved forward under her own power.
We were barely under way – in fact we were just abeam of the American Line’s New York, moored outboard of Oceanic at Dock Head – when I heard cracks like gunshots and yells of alarm on every hand. Both ships dipped and rose in the swell, ropes flying everywhere.
God Almighty! ‘Full astern both!’ I barked.
‘Full astern it is, sir!’ Boxhall rapped back. With the strident ring of the telegraphs I saw the New York had broken free of her moorings and was swinging broadside towards us, sucked in by the wash.
The tug Vulcan tried to get a wire aboard to no avail. Slowly – too slowly – we ceased forward movement and began to move back, but the other was still coming on. Then the wind caught her bow, swinging her stern towards us. As George hung over the side, I took the telegraph, rang down to stop one engine, briefly keeping full astern on the other to swing our bow away. I swear we cleared New York’s stern with just a couple of feet to spare.
As we stopped abaft Oceanic, my heart was pounding. George’s chest was heaving. The junior, scribbling times and orders for the log book, was the colour of calico.
The crowd, like Romans at the arena, elbowed for better views, while we, with grandstand seats, watched tugs struggling to get lines aboard the New York. At last they did, but not before she’d drifted out into the stream, turned in an arc, and ended up in the mouth of the river Itchen.
George could mutter all he liked about idiots who had no idea how to tie up and make a ship safe, but a foot or two closer and the American liner could have finished this maiden voyage before it began. A pity, with hindsight; but at the time, after Olympic’s run of ill-luck, another accident hardly bore thinking about. Even as I clamped imagination shut, anxiety escaped like a swarm of bees: I could hear the buzzing in my ears.
Inevitably, as word rippled through the ship, more and more passengers left the wonder of their cabins to view the wonder of this crisis. Their concern and curiosity touched me on the raw. Squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath and strode back into the wheelhouse.
The drama cost us a precious hour, but while George and I occupied ourselves with fresh calculations for the changing state of the tide by Calshot Spit, Bruce Ismay was pacing the Boat Deck like an expectant father. Not until the New York was secured and Oceanic tied up like a Christmas parcel, were we able to proceed.
No one mentioned it, but I’m sure Bruce – and my senior officers too – were in mind of the encounter with HMS Hawke the previous September. George Bowyer had been pilot that day too.
Suction and the power of the wash. If we’d been in any doubt before, the facts had just been presented in the most heart-stopping way.
George was concentrating on the navigable channel, willing some enthusiastic sailboat owners to sail off elsewhere, and I – yes, I was doing the same. But it was as though only half my mind were engaged. I barely noticed the crowds along the Weston shore, or the staff and patients lined up by the Royal Victoria Hospital. The Hamble on one side and the New Forest on the other might not have existed. It was an April day with the Isle floating ahead of us like a blue-green mirage between sea and sky. Yet all I could see was that September noon, with a cruiser slinking through the haze off Cowes like an old grey cat.
Was it really only half a year ago? It felt like an eternity.