Women and Children First: Bravery, love and fate: the untold story of the doomed Titanic. Gill Paul
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to put his plates down to wipe his shoes clean.
‘Bastards! I’ll get you later,’ he snapped at the guilty party, then turned to Reg. ‘Be careful with that pole by the soup tureens. They’ve put goose fat on it. I nearly came a cropper earlier.’
Stewards often grabbed that pole for balance as they swivelled round the corner to pick up a tray of soup dishes. It was a mean trick. Next time Reg passed John, he whispered to watch out for the pole and keep an eye on his feet at the hot press, because he didn’t have any time for accidents.
Reg kept his head down and worked hard, hoping to impress the chief steward with his diligence. It was after ten by the time the last diners drifted away to the smoking room or the reading room, or to one of the cafés to continue the party. Reg finished his own tables then helped John to sweep up any last crumbs and lay fresh linen for the morning.
‘I’m gasping for a smoke. You coming?’ John asked.
‘Let’s go outside,’ Reg suggested. ‘I fancy a breath of fresh air.’
John grinned. ‘Are you still looking for your mystery lass by any chance?’
‘Course not. Anyway, we’d better go down to the crew deck if we’re having a smoke. One more misdemeanour on my record and Latimer will make me walk the plank.’
They stopped by the dorm to pick up their cigarettes then made their way outside, and the second they stepped through the doorway in their thin uniform jackets, they clutched their arms and shivered.
‘Bloody hell. It’s chilly out here. The temperature’s plummeted since this afternoon.’
‘We must be getting close to Iceberg Alley,’ John said, peering out into the pitch black. ‘Wonder if we’ll see any?’
‘Only if you fancy sitting out here all night. I can just about manage five minutes for a smoke then I’m going in before my bits freeze off.’
They lit up and took simultaneous drags. The smoke they exhaled mingled with the mist of their breath.
‘How long have we got in New York?’ Reg asked. ‘Do you think we’ll manage any sightseeing this time?’
‘I think it’s a quick turnaround but we might get an afternoon.’
‘What do you fancy? Times Square? Broadway? You know me, I just like to have a wander.’
‘All right, I’ll come and have a wander with you. I fancy seeing Central Park.’
When they finished smoking, they flicked their cigarettes over the side and the glowing butts were instantly swallowed by the blackness. They made their way down to the mess and had a cup of tea with some of the other stewards, but most were too tired for conversation. It had been a long five days.
Reg and John were in bed by eleven, and Reg dropped off to sleep rapidly. His limbs felt like lead, his head sinking deep into the pillow, and even the sounds of the other stewards’ bedsprings creaking and their shoes landing on the floor with a clunk weren’t enough to keep him awake.
But at eleven-forty, he woke straight away and sat bolt upright when his berth was jolted, as if a giant hand had shoved it. He felt the ship juddering and heard a drawn-out scraping sound. He’d been on steamers for seven years and he knew right away that it was odd. It would take a lot of force for such a huge structure to be rocked in that way.
‘What the bloody hell was that?’ someone asked.
Reg was already out of bed and pulling on his trousers.
Chapter Fifteen
The engines had stopped almost immediately, and the silence that followed was eerie. They’d got used to the constant roar down there on E Deck and modulated their voices to be heard above it, so the next person who spoke sounded unnaturally loud.
‘The dampers are shut down.’
Reg didn’t know the speaker.
‘We definitely hit something. Maybe it was a whale,’ Bill speculated.
‘Poor thing. It’s going to have one hell of a sore head,’ someone else chipped in, and the mood of slight alarm lifted.
‘That’s going to take the shine off the paintwork. Maybe we’ll have to go back to Belfast for a repaint.’
Reg knew it wasn’t a whale, though. A whale wouldn’t account for that unearthly scraping sound, which had lasted several seconds, and even the largest whale couldn’t have jolted a ship of this size quite so hard. As he tied his shoelaces, he was turning over two theories in his head. Either it was a problem with a propeller – he’d been on a ship before where one of the propellers came loose and it caused a cacophony and made the ship judder like crazy – or they’d hit something solid and hard. Maybe another ship. Maybe an iceberg. Whichever it was, he had an overwhelming urge to get out on deck and see it.
‘Where are you going, man?’ John asked sleepily.
‘I’ll find out what’s happened and come back and let you know.’ He grabbed his jacket and before John could reply, he’d hurried out of the dorm and along the corridor to the staff deck at the front of the ship.
As soon as he opened the door and stepped outside, he found his answer. Small chunks of ice littered the deck, most of them no bigger than his clenched fist.
A seaman was idly kicking some around.
‘That was a close shave,’ he commented when he noticed Reg standing there. ‘Big as the Rock of Gibraltar, she was. Came out of nowhere.’ He had a Scottish accent.
‘We hit her, though,’ Reg said, peering backwards over the rail to try to see the berg, but the night was too black. He couldn’t make out a thing, apart from a sprinkling of stars up above.
‘Just a side swipe. Did you not feel us pull hard a-starboard? It’s as well someone up on the bridge had their eye on the ball.’
The ship had come to a standstill without her mighty engines powering her. Reg picked up a chunk of the ice and smelled it, and was surprised to detect a faint scent of rotting vegetation. Surely icebergs were just frozen water? It seemed odd.
‘It’ll be two or three hours before we’re on our way again,’ the seaman was saying. ‘Captain Smith isn’t one for cutting corners, so it’ll be a full inspection, prow to stern.’
His last words were drowned by a deafening hiss as the turbines, now at rest, let off built-up steam. Surely anyone who had slept through the collision would be woken by this?
Reg considered taking a piece of iceberg back to show the lads in the dorm. Maybe he could get revenge on one of those galley scullions who’d been messing around earlier by slipping it into their bed, so they woke up freezing cold and lying in a damp patch. More than that, Reg wanted to tell everyone in the dorm what he’d heard about the collision and see what they made of it. Maybe some of them had been on ships that struck icebergs before. There were lots of them about when you took the northern transatlantic route in the spring, because all the Arctic glaciers were melting and icebergs broke off and floated south.
He nodded goodbye to the seaman, picked up a chunk of ice and went inside, walking in the direction of the dorm. But as he passed the staff staircase, some instinct made him change his mind and head up to the boat deck instead. There were bound to be officers on deck and by eavesdropping on their conversations, he’d get more information. He wanted to know what was going to happen next. Had the ship been damaged? How long would they be stuck there before they continued on their way? He tossed his chunk of ice overboard as soon as he got out onto the boat deck and wiped his hand dry on his trouser leg.
There were lots of people standing around but the first person Reg recognised was Second Officer Lightoller. He was a stern, very formal man, always impeccably turned out, but