On the surface, it was an innocuous looking document to modern eyes. Emma had identified it on her bullet list as June 1912 letter to Pirrie from Seaman’s Association in Belfast (re Ismay). The letterhead carried a crest featuring a sword and mitre. The addressee was given as Lord Pirrie, Harland & Wolff, and the contents described a series of incidents that placed Ismay front and centre, followed by an invitation for Pirrie to comment:
Sir, it is our manifest duty to inform you of actions reported to us concerning Joseph Bruce Ismay in relation to his management of events surrounding the Titanic disaster. You will have read in the press that JBI has dismissed the assertion of cowardice, and maintains he suffered from shock as a result of the collision…
Ismay was closer to panic than he thought possible. Instead of unsteadily negotiating a sloping boat deck listening to the cries of anguished men and women, he was focused on his personal future—and the view was worse than he ever imagined. How can this be? We’re supposed to be the rescuers, not the rescued.
Standing at the top of the metal stairs leading down to A deck, his attention was caught by movement to his right. A woman about his own height, a fur coat draped over her lifejacket, and wearing neat velvet slippers. She was carrying something small and pink.
‘Madam! Madam, what are you doing? I thought all the women had left! Are there any other ladies around? Tell them to come over to this staircase at once!’
She moved towards him with a questioning look, and held out a toy animal for his inspection. ‘My lucky pig. I left it in my cabin.’
He stared at it for a moment, incredulous at the woman’s behaviour, then took a firm grip of her left arm as two seamen rushed forward and took her right. Their assistance was considered a step too far.
‘Don’t push me!’
Ismay stood aside as the woman twisted out of their grasp. One of the seamen snarled. ‘If you don’t want to go, stay!’ Both walked away to seek out more compliant souls in distress, while the woman staggered in the opposite direction, leaving her slippers behind.
His world was falling apart. Literally sinking beneath him. Ismay could see the green water swallowing his creation, inch by inch. Chairman of the White Star Line, but barely in control of his own legs, he watched as his ship became a derelict like the other. This is not what we planned. Is Lord on his way with the Californian? Not for the first time, he wished he knew more about boats. Is that a ship’s light over there? Let it be the Californian. Did Lord see the rockets?
O hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea.
*
It is clearly manifest by the actions of JBI that his agenda following the disaster was of a personal nature. While we acknowledge his intention to relate first-hand the nature of the problems encountered, we find his desire to place himself in isolation totally suspect…
The shakes were starting again. The puddle of brandy in his glass rippled on the surface under his grip. Calm waters? One more mocking manifestation from the disastrous events of the last twelve hours. What manner of man was he that lived while others perished beneath? Tormented by matters beyond his understanding, Ismay lifted his eyes to the ceiling, unmoved that this one bore no golden embellishment. This was the Carpathia—a Cunard ship, the tiny doctor’s cabin shielding him from a world no longer familiar.
He looked at the pad on the table, on which he had written just one word: Containment. He needed to see it there in front of him. To focus. The worst of all possible disasters had happened. Now his priority must be to prevent the details spreading without restriction.
He was alone now. No valet to brush his coat sleeves five times apiece. No personal secretary to note his aspirations. He lacked a chief steward to enquire about the cut of beef for lunch. Braver men than he. No longer in this world for him to employ.
Above the hum of the ship’s engines he heard a man groaning. His detached sensibilities struggled to recognise the sound as his own.
*
‘I don’t get it,’ said Chrissie. ‘You could read this as being in support of the guy, right? Because he might have had some sort of mental breakdown from the stress of it all. But it’s like they want Pirrie to condemn him for some reason.’
‘Have you read the section at the inquiry?’
‘No. I’m still on the part where he’s deciding how to send news about the sinking.’
‘See what you make of Ismay a couple of months later,’ said Billie. ‘This was when he was getting a lot of flak in the press for being rescued, and his appearance at the British inquiry didn’t help either.’
Chrissie shivered. It seemed cold in the room, but she felt sure her discomfort was at least partly prompted by the strange world presented to her through the papers in her hands. She skimmed ahead to the next paragraph:
Furthermore, you are hereby notified that JBI made an ill-advised verbal attack on Rufus Isaacs KB, Attorney-General, on the eve of his appearance at the British Commission of Inquiry earlier this month…
Seven weeks. Or, to be more accurate: fifty days and a few hours. That was the distance between his former life and the one he endured now. Ismay sitting in another room, wood-panelled in Victorian formality, inhaling the smoke from his cigar. The physical shakes had stopped. Containment was now the order of the day. Especially today.
Had he done enough?
His isolation was no longer a material thing, waiting alone for his name to be called. Morgan had been noticeably distant. Too busy, as always. Pirrie? Ah, well… ill, apparently. But compliant. There would be no trouble there. The unions? Paid off.
But questions remained.
While the Americans had focused on issues at surface level, the British inquiry would go deeper, of that he was certain. There would be a lot of questions. In that regard he must trust in the beneficial ear of the inquiry commissioner, Lord Mersey, and in one other: leading counsel for the inquiry, Attorney General Sir Rufus Isaacs. He thought back to the advice offered him by the fellow over dinner last night.
‘Speak clearly and with confidence,’ Isaacs had said. ‘Deuced bad acoustics in the Drill Hall but it can’t be helped. All we’ve got available, they tell me. Mersey has complained he can’t hear some witnesses, but you’ll be no trouble, eh?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Got to bring up the question of speed, you realise that? It’s already been raised, and I want you to be quite firm about when you understood the boilers to have been lit. Let’s get rid of this notion of a record crossing. Not in the equation, eh?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Good. One thing, old chap: Tomorrow I’ll need a little more meat on the bones than “of course not”. So, feel free to give as good as you get.’
‘Of course, Sir Rufus. By the way, how’s your brother Godfrey? Is he still the managing director of Marconi?’
The fellow’s reaction had made Ismay smile, especially when he followed up by referring to the matter of shares in the new company. Isaac’s face had turned a satisfying shade of red at the realisation his profiteering venture had reached outside ears. Ten thousand shares at £2 each bought on the day that news of Titanic’s fate reached London. Half of them sold for double that price two days later as soon as they were put up for trading on the stock exchange. Sir Rufus had done well out of the sinking—together with his colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
A door rattled open. ‘Calling Mr Joseph Bruce Ismay.’
Yes, Sir Rufus. I shall certainly give as good as I get from you, or maybe even better. Picking up his cane and gloves, he walked from the room with a straight back.
*
In the small hours of Sunday morning the occupants of room 529 in a Manchester budget hotel were still trying to come to terms with Emma’s Titanic Document.
Robin attempted to sum up all that he had learned. ‘If we accept what we have read here, then it starts with a fraudulent attempt to boost the White Star Line business when it was facing considerable losses. It continues with the disaster itself because Titanic was speeding far more than was safe and hit the iceberg. Then it gets worse because Ismay and other powerful figures did everything to shift the blame while walking away squeaky clean. Is that a fair summary?’
‘Just about,’ agreed Billie. ‘Don’t forget some of them profited financially.’
‘That’s true,’ said Chrissie.
Robin drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘So where’s the damage?’
‘What? You mean to Titanic?’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘To the government. And to Gris in particular. Because if this Emma person is to be believed, people have been killed to stop this document getting out. Something’s missing.’
Billie stood up and stretched. ‘I think you’re right. That’s what’s been bothering me. This stuff would have embarrassed the government in 1912. The situation in Northern Ireland was sensitive enough even then. And when you take the timing of Patrick Faulkner’s death into account, just before the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Gris clearly saw it as a threat for similar reasons in 1985. But today? Okay, there’s a fair bit of damage to Churchill’s name, but not enough for people to be killed to prevent it getting out. So there must be something in here that Peter Gris sees as a personal threat to him. What have we missed?’