The watch that ends the.., p.29
The Watch That Ends the Night, page 29
$2440 in notes; £5 in gold; 7s. in silver; 5 ten-franc pieces;
gold pencil; pocketbook
Oscar Woody: Body #167
Watch; fob; chain and clip; 2 fountain pens; knife;
cuff links; 1 gold ring; keys and chain; $10.02; letters
Thomas L. Theobald: Body #176
Silver watch and chain; tobacco pouch; pipe; razor;
memo book; gold pin; comb; gold ring, marked “C. T.”;
knife; three studs; 4s. in purse
Rossmore Abbott: Body #190
Watch inscribed “Oxford Street Grammar School”;
chain and fob, with gold medal marked “Rossmore Abbott”;
pocket book, empty, and two knives
John “Jock” Hume: Body #193
English lever watch; cigarette case;
violin mute; empty purse
Wallace Hartley: Body #224
Nickel watch; gold chain; gold cigar holder;
telegram to Hotley, Bandmaster
Titanic;
stud; scissors; 16 cents
John March: Body #225
Gold watch and chain; fountain pen;
diamond tie pin; gold ring, letter M.
The dead lay waiting. On display.
The rich will come to take their loved ones away.
The poor will wire ahead for the effects.
The unidentified will simply wait.
Such is the case with body number four. A boy.
A child who wasn’t even two years old.
Unidentified: Body #4
Grey coat with fur on collar and cuffs;
brown serge frock; petticoat; flannel garment;
pink woolen singlet — brown shoes and stockings
A boy who won’t play ball. Or roll a hoop.
Or stoop and learn to tie his laces.
Or learn to tell the time.
Or carry a watch at all.
I had convinced myself that it was better not to feel.
Detachment made me better at my job I thought.
But here is this lonely forgotten boy. The age of my own.
Sleeping upon ice he will never learn to skate.
I have been so long among the dead,
I have become a kind of corpse myself.
Just as I “set the features” of the deceased,
I create my own personal mask as well.
I am the undertaker, keeping emotion at bay:
My grief is a smile. My sobs are laughter.
Easy jokes are my whispered prayers.
Bodies are as driftwood: silent curiosities
to be shaped, polished, and gracefully displayed.
Finally I leave the dead behind till tomorrow.
And I walk to the pub for a pint with the boys.
They listen to the tale of my recent voyage of sorrow.
Then we raise our glasses. We make some noise.
And we drink to the children who will never be full grown.
And we drink to the travelers who never made it home.
THE SHIP RAT
NOTES
AUTHOR’S NOTE
On Wednesday, April 17, 1912, the RMS Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ship in the world, was due in New York, carrying 2,207 men, women, and children. It never arrived. Instead, that same day, the cable ship Mackay-Bennett, a much smaller and less glamorous vessel, set out from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to collect the bodies of Titanic’s passengers and crew left floating in the Atlantic.
So what happened?
Beginning that night of the sinking, April 14 to 15, a sea of information (some reliable, some not) began to accumulate. Now, one hundred years later, it’s still pouring in. Learning about the Titanic disaster is a lot like learning the banjo. Easy to play, difficult to master. While The Watch That Ends the Night is fiction, it is born of painstaking (and sometimes simply painful) research.
The truth is how you tell it. In order to write The Watch That Ends the Night, I’ve allowed fancy to play within the confines of fact. When it comes to historical fiction, history is the birdcage; fiction is the bird. The included biographies will help somewhat to distinguish bird from cage.
Let me apologize in advance to any Titanic enthusiasts who might discover historical errors within these pages. Careful readers will note that Captain Smith’s final count of souls on board does not match the numbers in the Miscellany that follows. Like many Titanic facts, the numbers of lost and saved vary among sources. The same inconsistencies exist in the numbers of passengers in each of the three classes. I’ve chosen to base my final numbers on Encyclopedia Titanica in general and on Lester Mitcham’s research in particular.
But my aim in writing The Watch That Ends the Night was not to present history. My aim was to present humanity. The people represented in this book lived and breathed and loved. They were as real as you or me. They could have been any one of us.
And that is why, after a century, the Titanic still fascinates.
Writing a historical novel is like making soup. You spend a lot of time gathering ingredients, but eventually you’ve got to start cooking, even if you are missing one or two spices. I regret that I was unable to read all the forthcoming books due to mark the centennial of the Titanic sinking. I also regret not being able to obtain a rare copy of Frank Goldsmith’s out-of-print autobiographical book, Echoes in the Night. I’m sure I may have gotten a few things wrong;
the biographical notes, following, will reveal a couple of them. But if you are
a connoisseur of all things Titanic, please be kind to the cook. And just enjoy the soup.
THE MYSTERY SHIP
Most Titanic historians agree that there was a ship within sight of the sinking ocean liner that night. Many eyewitnesses, both passengers and crew, claimed to have seen a ship’s lights. But what ship was it? The American and British inquiries both identified the SS Californian, whose ice warning Phillips had abruptly cut off earlier that evening. Crewmen aboard the Californian testified that they saw white rockets launched at intervals, yet neither the ship’s captain nor the officers on duty made any attempt to communicate via the ship’s wireless. Be warned: among Titaniacs, the mystery ship’s identity is an incendiary issue. In The Watch That Ends the Night, I have chosen not to name any particular ship because its identity is not relevant to my story. The fact is that a ship was there. And for whatever reason, that ship did nothing.
CHARACTER NOTES
OLAUS ABELSETH ♦ THE IMMIGRANT
Olaus Jørgensen Abelseth was born June 10, 1886, on a farm east of Ålesund, a small fishing village in Norway. Eventually he moved to South Dakota and established a farm there before returning to his homeland for a visit. He set out for the return trip with five other Norwegians, including his cousin Peter Søholt and his brother-in-law, Sigurd Moen. As I’ve depicted in my tale, Abelseth waited with his group and many other third-class passengers on the ship’s stern deck. By the time the men were called up onto the boat deck, the boats were all gone. By the time that all three jumped overboard, the ship had begun to plunge. Olaus eventually climbed aboard Collapsible A, the same swamped raft containing Rhoda Abbott, mother of Eugene and Rossmore. Although Abelseth did attempt to help a man who died in his arms, it was not the mysterious stoker, Thomas Hart, as I’ve depicted here. And although Olaus did write a postcard to his girlfriend, Marie, once he was safe in New York, most of his correspondence in this book is fiction. A notable exception is the final sentence of his final letter, which is taken directly from a letter he wrote to his sister, Inga. Olaus testified before the United States Senate’s inquiry into the sinking and eventually returned to his farm in South Dakota. He married a Norwegian named Anna Grinde and had four children. Anna died in 1978 at the age of one hundred. Olaus, who had been twenty-five years old the night Titanic sank, died in 1980, at ninety-four.
THOMAS ANDREWS ♦ THE SHIPBUILDER
Thomas Andrews Jr., born February 7, 1873, in Northern Ireland, was the nephew of Lord William Pirrie, principal owner of Harland and Wolff shipbuilders. He was reportedly an active, inquisitive, and intelligent fellow who kept bees and excelled at building ships, a career he was thoroughly groomed for. His somewhat gushing biography, by Shan Bullock, depicts Andrews as a man’s man, liked by all. He was certainly well known to the ship’s crew. Chief baker Charles Joughin even baked Andrews a special loaf of bread. He was reportedly concerned over the massive emigration from Ireland, which leaves one to wonder if he felt conflicted building the very ships that were facilitating that exodus. As Titanic was sinking, Andrews went from deck to deck urging passengers and crew to put on their life vests. Bullock records the story of Andrews standing in the smoking lounge with his own life vest on a chair nearby. In reality it was not Thomas Hart but a steward who found Andrews there and tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to save himself. When he went down with the Titanic, Thomas Andrews left behind a wife and young daughter. He was thirty-nine years old.
JOHN JACOB ASTOR ♦ THE MILLIONAIRE
John Jacob Astor IV, born July 13, 1864, in Rhinebeck, New York, is often depicted as shallow, whiney, arrogant, and something of a dim bulb. But he invented several devices, including a bicycle brake, a “rain inducer,” a pneumatic road-improver, and a process to convert peat into fuel for automobiles. And he wrote a science-fiction novel titled A Journey in Other Worlds that shows quite a bit of imagination. He was also a businessman and land developer. In a time before television and movies, the filthy-rich members of upper-crust society were the topic of gossip, headlines, adulation, and judgment. The forty-seven-year-old Astor’s divorce and remarriage to the eighteen-year-old Madeleine Force caused something of a scandal. As far as I can tell, stories of Astor being crushed when the foundering Titanic’s forward funnel fell are not correct. His body, Number 124, was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett on April 22. As I’ve depicted in this book, his effects included a gold watch and a small fortune in cash and coins. Nineteen-year-old Vincent Astor traveled to the makeshift morgue in Halifax to identify his father’s body and arrange for its transportation back to New York. On an unrelated note, J. J. Astor’s private yacht, Nourmahal, was apparently involved in not just one, but two collisions of its own — one with a ferry, the other with a second yacht, North Star, owned by the Vanderbilt family.
GEORGE BRERETON ♦ THE GAMBLER
Cardsharps and con artists were fixtures on board luxury steamships at the turn of the last century. Enter George Andrew Brereton, of Los Angeles, California. He was on the passenger list as George Brayton, although it is unclear if Brayton was an alias or a simple typo. Brereton’s shipboard activities are a mystery, as is the exact lifeboat in which he descended. Some suggest that he left the ship in lifeboat nine, rather than thirteen, as I have depicted. What is certain, however, is that upon safely arriving in New York, Brereton (with an accomplice) attempted to lure fellow survivor Charles Stengel into a scheme to fix the results of horse races. Stengel wanted no part of it, and a fight ensued. By the time authorities arrived, Brereton had vanished. Years later, in 1933, Brereton was caught and arrested for trying to run a similar scam in San Jose, California. And on July 16, 1942, George Brereton shot and killed himself in the house where his wife had committed suicide twenty years earlier.
HAROLD BRIDE ♦ THE SPARK
Most, though not all, of the wireless transmissions included in this book are real. I have kept the distress signals in the order of transmission, though the actual time may be off by ten minutes or so. In reality Titanic’s first distress signal was sent out at 12:27 A.M. (April 15), a bit later than I’ve depicted it here. The final distress signal was likely sent out just after 2:00 A.M. (a bit earlier than I’ve depicted). Some suggest that faint signals (including the famous v v v v) heard by the Virginian after 2:00 A.M. were from Titanic, though this has been called into question. Harold Bride received one thousand dollars from the New York Times for his exclusive story. His buddy Harold Cottam got $750. Guglielmo Marconi himself testified at the United States Senate inquiry. After the sinking, the Marconi Company’s stock increased in value by four hundred percent. Bride married in 1918 and worked as a radio operator until 1922, when he moved to Prestwick, Scotland, and became a salesman. Like many other passengers and crew, Bride allegedly did not like to discuss the Titanic. He died at the age of sixty-six on April 29, 1956.
MARGARET BROWN ♦ THE SOCIALITE
Although Margaret Brown is arguably the most famous of all Titanic passengers, this was not the case in 1912. She was far from the backward and boisterous woman depicted in the modern stage musical and the movie based very loosely on her life. Known to most as the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” she was never called Molly in her lifetime. And although she came from a humble social and financial situation, she was actually part of what would eventually be termed the middle class. Her husband, J.J. Brown, earned his fortune as a foreman in the mining business through hard work more than luck. And she never hid her fortune in the woodstove! Far from being ostracized, she became a fixture in Denver society, active in philanthropy and politics. She had an interest in drama, and she studied languages, including German, French, and Russian.
Although it seems reasonable to assume that two rich ladies traveling unescorted may have met, the close shipboard friendship that Brown strikes up with the fascinating Helen Churchill Candee is fictional. Many of Candee’s remarks regarding fashion, furniture, and gender relations in this book come directly from her own writings.
Their lifeboat officer, QM Robert Hichens, was sent to prison after attempting to murder a man in 1933. During that time he attempted suicide. He was released four years later and eventually died aboard a cargo ship on September 23, 1940.
In July of 1920, Margaret Brown and two of her nieces were passengers aboard the wooden steamer Quinneseco when a coal-bunker fire nearly burned through the hull, forcing them to make an emergency landing in Halifax.
Mrs. Brown spent three days making floral tributes and placed a wreath on all 150 of Halifax’s Titanic graves. Margaret Tobin Brown died of a brain tumor on October 26, 1932, at the Barbizon Hotel in New York.
EUGENE DALY ♦ THE BAGPIPER
On January 4, 1913, Daly, who survived the sinking on upturned collapsible B, filed a claim against the White Star Line to cover the loss of five hundred dollars cash, two suits of clothes worth fifty dollars, and a set of bagpipes worth fifty dollars. He was also seeking a further ten thousand dollars for “personal injuries to the lower half of my person, which injuries are of a permanent nature.”
Years later, Daly’s only daughter claimed that her father had actually recovered completely and remarked that he was a lively step dancer. In his final years, although he used a cane and had both bad hearing and bad eyesight, he would walk to church every day. According to his daughter, Daly would stop oncoming Bronx traffic as he slowly crossed a busy intersection — upright and stately as a king. “If any driver honked at him,” his daughter remembered, “he would whack the bonnet of the car with his cane and yell in his loud brogue, ‘ What’s yer hurry? When God made time, he made plenty of it.’” Good advice from a man who survived the Titanic. Daly’s time finally ran out on October 30, 1965. He was eighty-one.
FREDERICK FLEET ♦ THE LOOKOUT
Not surprisingly, Fred Fleet was thoroughly questioned at both the U.S. and British investigative hearings. Soon after the sinking, Fleet left the White Star Line. For the next twenty-four years, he was employed on Cunard and Union-Castle ships. In 1936 he left the sea for good, taking a job as a shipbuilder with Harland and Wolff, the company that had built Titanic. In his twilight years he sold copies of the Daily Echo on a street corner in Southampton. He had married Eva LeGros in 1917 and was reportedly very devoted to her. The marriage lasted forty-eight years and produced one daughter, two grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren. In 1965, twelve days after his wife, Eva, died, he visited his family one last time. Then Frederick Fleet returned home and hanged himself in his back garden. He was seventy-seven.
FRANKIE GOLDSMITH ♦ THE DRAGON HUNTER
Frankie and his mom, thirty-one-year-old Emily Goldsmith, made their way to Detroit as planned. They found a house near Navin Field, where the Detroit Tigers played baseball. Unfortunately, the roar of the crowd would remind the boy of the sound of the Titanic passengers dying in the water. Frankie got a job as a milk-cart driver and later became a professional photographer, a craft he honed as a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force during World War II. He married in 1926 and had three sons with his wife, Victoria.
Later in life he began to speak publicly about his Titanic experience, becoming a frequent guest at meetings of the Titanic Historical Society, which eventually published his memoir, Echoes in the Night. Frank remembered quickly joining a gang of about eight boys near his own age. Young Willie and Harold could have been part of that gang, though it’s just my guess. And even though Rossmore and Eugene Abbott were much older, they almost certainly met Frankie while aboard Titanic, since the Abbott boys’ mother, Rhoda, and Frankie’s mother had become close friends during the journey.
Frank and Victoria Goldsmith relocated to Florida, where he died of heart failure on January 27, 1982, at the age of seventy-nine. A couple of months later, on April 15, the anniversary of the sinking, Frankie Goldsmith’s ashes were scattered into the sea, reuniting him at last with his father. I’ve corresponded with Frankie’s grandson Thomas, who remembers his grandfather’s Titanic tales, including the “Eenie-Meenie-Epatic” counting rhyme. Rossmore and Eugene’s mother, Rhoda Abbott, was the only woman who went down with the ship and survived. She never recovered from the grief of losing her two boys.
THOMAS HART ♦ THE STOKER
Titanic lore tells us that an impostor boarded the ship posing as Thomas Hart, of Liverpool, whose papers had been stolen. The impostor allegedly went down with the ship. A wonderful story . . . if only it were true. From the very beginning, the story of Thomas Hart and the mysterious impostor contained more holes than the Titanic itself. But sometimes a falsehood is so ironic and compelling that writers are loath to muddle up the details with the truth. I
