The Ship of Dreams: Chapter 6

Chapter 6 (Serialized Novel)

Geoffrey paced back and forth throughout his spacious cabin as he scavenged the room for his life vest. Simple task it was, proved difficult with Geoffrey working against himself as he tore the room apart in his search. The outer world reflects one’s inner self, at least that is how the saying goes, and Geoffrey’s room was no exception.

He tore his quarters apart, leaving no stone left unturned in his attempt to find the object. Not that he had not already ravished through it prior. For as long as Geoffrey’s memory could care to serve him, he had always been a disorganized and untidy mess. He liked to attribute it to his introverted and introspective mind as if the degree to which his contents were scattered throughout a room was in equal proportions to the number of thoughts filtering through his mind.

But even he knew that was an excuse that he made to feel better about this little character flaw of his.

It was the same trait that, at the moment, had caused Geoffrey Archibald to stop in the center of his room, clenching his fists together to the point that his knuckles cracked (a nervous habit of his, out of frustration. Over the course of the last half hour, he had circled through the contents of the room at least three times, checking all the obvious places as he went. He had gone through the cabinets provided in the bathroom, looked under the bed, as well as inside of his closet, but all to no avail.

What frustrated him most as he stared out through the rounded porthole once again was the fact that he had started the day off in such high spirits. When he had wakened up that morning, he had been colored impressed. He simply could not believe how Titanic had allowed him a full night of interrupted deep sleep at sea.

Many a time he had traveled the world by ship, but it was the first time he found one that conversed the waters so smoothly that neither creak nor moan of metal could be heard at any location throughout the vessel. Although he did have to admit that part of the reason for this might have to do with the fact that he was stationed on B-deck, nine above the ship's bottom.
The result of this had been that he had started his day off with a new spring in his step. He found himself feeling rejuvenated and refreshed with a renewed sense of optimism. After a good night’s rest, he had gotten back to thinking. In his contemplations, he realized that he had been looking at the thing all wrong.

It had made him feel silly acting as if there was no story to write about. He had to give himself more credit than that. The fact of the matter was that he had a vast repertoire of potential stories to draw from, he would just have to dig a little deeper. Titanic carried with her some two-thousand souls. Not only that but there was not a person alive that was not somehow connected to the ocean liner.

The brilliant inventor Nikola Tesla, for instance, was rumored to be financed by and friend of John Jacob Astor IV. In fact, the word on the ship was that Tesla, who in his genius, was starting to be hailed as the man who would light up the world, had warned the world’s wealthiest man not to travel on Titanic. Unfortunately for Tesla, in the passing of his dear colleague, he would then be left at the mercy of none other than one J.P Morgan who had already long ago established himself as Tesla’s greatest adversary.

All that Geoffrey knew was that, given the right angle and with enough probing, Titanic’s passengers offered him the possibility of some two-thousand opportunities for a rich story. Scandal or otherwise he would find that story. He just hoped that it was one that provided him with a good antagonist. Everyone seemed to like being able to get behind some villain in shared hatred. It brought people together. And that was just in the passengers alone.

Even so, none of this helped him find his life jacket. He was running out of time before Titanic would hold its scheduled exercise, and he was getting to the point where he no longer cared enough whether they found the thing they were looking for. In a last-ditch effort, he crossed the room and pulled the doors to the closest open one last time.

There in the back, Geoffrey noticed for the first time an article that was of such an off-white color that it did not surprise him that he had not previously noticed it. He pulled the item out of the closet, letting out a scoff as he did so in his realization that it was indeed the life jacket.

Geoffrey held the thing out in front of him with a disapproving grimace on his face. The vest, which was to be one’s last line of defense in the extreme circumstance of being subjected to the freezing waters they sailed through, seemed for lack of better words, poorly made. The design seemed to be of a particular kind of cloth that was filled with a cork material, and that was held together by a couple of loose strings. Such a thing seemed hardly enough to suffice as a life-supporting device. Surely the great Titanic could afford better.

As it would turn out, Geoffrey was not wrong in his evaluation of the life preserve. In the following months after the tragedy of Titanic, a widescale inquiry would go into effect that would forever change the rules and regulations of maritime safety procedures. One that would not only increase the number of lifeboats required by any ship at sea but one that would investigate this matter of cork jackets, calling ocean liners to refashion the stuff they were made of.

Of course, correct as he was, it was an issue that he would never become privy to. As such, he simply disregarded these thoughts and feelings and threw the thing over himself. And, like a madman he fumbled with its string, securing them firmly around his waist as he darted towards the exit.

Geoffrey hastily jogged the length of the hall to the far opposite side of B-deck. This was where the dining parlor was located. The dining parlor being where Titanic held its divine church services, events, and with it the scheduled lifeboat drill. Even in his jog, it was a distance that took him ten minutes to traverse.

He knew that he was late, but he had still expected to show up to a tremendous congregation gathered to participate in the practice. So, it came much to his surprise to arrive at an empty hallway, save a few stragglers who were either conversing amongst themselves or looking over some note that was tacked to the outside of the doors.

Curious, Geoffrey made his way over to the small group hanging around the door making sure as to not bump into anyone as he treaded through them. There in the center of it was a letter marked with the White Star Line official insignia that was written in bold letter face. It read: LIFEBOAT DRILLS CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. SINCERELY, WHITE STAR LINE STAFF AND OFFICIALS.

Honestly, Geoffrey did not find the announcement that shocking. The captain undoubtedly must have felt that the whole thing was unnecessary, having more important exigencies to address in what would be his last job. This would certainly appear to be the case when considering how the lifeboat drills went for the most part as if they had all but been forgotten. It was the unsinkable ship after all, was it not?

Really, he was glad that the drill had been canceled. Sure, he did not like that it meant that he had wasted his time, but still, now he would have the rest of the day to find a lead in his story. Now, all he had to do was to figure out a location that would serve as a large enough social hub for this purpose. You could lead a fish to water, and all of that. Luckily for him, from where he stood there was an abundance of water to go around.

One hour later at precisely 11 o’clock a.m. Geoffrey stepped down onto Titanic’s sizable boat deck that glistened in the afternoon sunlight. The first thing that he noticed as he walked along the great promenade was that of the nearing French coastline. It was a magnificent sight to take in the background of endless waves.

Geoffrey had decided to take up his post here because he was certain it would be the place where the most people would pass through. Again, Geoffrey found that he was still correct in his every assumption. And as he strolled along its length the other thing that he could not help to notice was something that made the notion of a lifeboat drill some irrelevant and almost absurd even. He was perplexed at how it seemed Titanic carried no more than twenty lifeboats on her, not even half of which were collapsible.

Try as he might he could not come up with an explanation for what seemed like careless consideration on the part of White Star Line. Perhaps it had been a mistake, something that went overlooked but when bearing in mind the attention to detail placed on the rest of the ship, he figured that was hardly the case.

He would have been every bit as frustrated as Andrews had he learned that the company had, in a large and heated debate, chosen space for passengers over the number of boats aboard Titanic; an argument that Andrews had vehemently fought against but ultimately lost. Geoffrey would have been even more heated had he heard the exchange between J. Bruce Ismay and the ship's designers.

In their conversation on the topic, Ismay was reported sardonically saying to Andrews, “Control your Irish passions, Thomas. Your uncle here tells me that you proposed for sixty-four lifeboats and that he basically had to pull your arm to talk you down to thirty-two. Now I will remind you as I reminded him that these are my ships. And, according to our contract, I have the final say on their design. I will not have so many little boats, as you refer to them as, cluttering up my decks, just so that they can embody fear into their passengers.”

From just behind him came the thundering shrill of the pistons sounding from the interior of the massive tunnels. With it, a slight jerk could be felt as Titanic’s propellers reduced the number of their revolutions and along with them the ship’s speed. The combined effect signaled to the ship’s passengers that she was preparing to come to a stop.

It was a process that Geoffrey could have done without, and as such, he marked it as one of the few drawbacks to traveling Titanic. Due to the ship’s size, there was not a port in the whole world, save perhaps for the one in Belfast which had constructed her, that could house the size of Titanic.

The result of this was that the Titanic was forced to throw it is three anchors overboard, coming to a sudden halt just before the port so that ferries could instead bring its new load and cargo onto the Titanic. It was something that he hoped that they would be able to do without when they reached their destination in New York, but he was doubtful.

Nevertheless, this procedure brought Geoffrey’s attention away from contemplating the matter of lifeboats, to the fast French coastline that lay directly in front of them. Geoffrey, however, did not register the mass of land nor the tugboats in the water as a conventional vocation place or as a doorway for people to leave their lives in France behind in order to travel to a new world, nor as a place for people to escape to France.

What Geoffrey did see was the reason that the stop had been planned years prior, probably at around the same time as the ship’s conception even. It was one that concerned precious cargo and the social elite transporting their valuable collections. Goods such as these outnumbered the passengers three to one, with an estimated value at around six million dollars, which by today’s standards would have equated out to roughly two hundred million. These included the likes of the French oil painting, La Circassienne au Bain, which was worth an estimated six-hundred-thousand, and that would ultimately end up being lost to the sea along with the unprecedented and unnecessary loss of human life.

More specifically, what Geoffrey saw before he was the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909 and others like it that had been recently established. The consequence of these tariffs was that they created regulations that placed a tax of up to twenty percent for such items to be transported to individuals’ private homes. So, what he really saw was a means for the wealthy to try and find every effort that would allow them to operate around such policies.

The thought alone disheartened them as he looked the length of the ship at the Queenstown port. From his vantage point, he had a wonderful view of a young boy, no more than eight, dressed in a little brown three-piece suit, spinning a top along the deck with his father. Geoffrey was quite sure that there was someone nearby, perhaps a family member or friend, who was photographing the whole thing, immortalizing the joyous event into all of eternity. Geoffrey would never be the wiser that the picture would go on to be one of the most iconic in years to come.

It brought a wry smile to his face that masked his saddened heart. As he looked at the coastline just beyond, Geoffrey knew that he was really viewing the primary reason, or so it would seem, that J.P Morgan had flaked last minute. Even though the business typhoon had expressed him every confidence in the Titanic’s reliability in transporting his own private collection, it was this fact that resulted in his decision to move it via another means, and with it himself. That, along with his supposed poor health, was the rumor.

Geoffrey tried fancying himself in Morgan’s position and just couldn’t bring himself to do so. He could never imagine himself being able to afford and own his own ocean liner, least alone the company that built it and using it to move large art collections. Nor could he envisage for himself affording the luxury of making such rash last-minute decisions that could possibly affect the overall trajectory of his life at large. It must be nice he thought to himself when he finally abandoned the effort.

For the moment, Geoffrey’s thoughts lingered on how fascinating he found the White Star Line, in its entirety, to be. It had seemed that everything that Mr. Morgan touched turned to gold. That, however, was not the case for this one organization. In all transparent honesty, the company had a horrible track record and could be viewed as its one and only failure. That much Geoffrey felt that he could relate to, imagining how much it must have upset him. Then again, there was a part of him that wondered if one J.P. Morgan ever lost so much as a night’s sleepover such things. Just another luxury of the fabulously wealthy he thought to himself.

At that precise moment in time, two things happened as if all at once. The first was that Titanic came to one final jolting stop, which was then followed as if in synonymity with the screech of a woman shrieking out at the top of her lungs.

Geoffrey turned himself around in the direction that the scream had come from. What he saw was a handful of passengers looking in the same direction, albeit their heads were craned upwards towards the great giant stacks that reached out into the heavens. He noticed that come were pointing up at the fourth and final tunnel with looks of combined awe and confusion. Geoffrey was even quite sure that he heard a nearby woman exclaim loudly, “My God, it’s the face of death!”

Death it was not. The source was that of a face, but it was human instead of divine. One of the stokers, or firemen as they called them, who was completely covered in coal, found it in his heart to be a kind of practical joke to climb the large dummy tunnel and poke his head at the top. In his mind, this act had a sort of double purpose in that it also provided him with what was arguably the best view that the ship could offer.

This one stoker in question was not alone in displaying what could be viewed as atypical behavior amongst the White Star Line’s crew. Another of his likes was rumored to have packed up his things, leaving his post and with it the ship, claiming that he felt as if something was not right. What Geoffrey quickly observed in the wake of these events, and those that would follow is the way in which they brought with them a queer kind of mood on the ship that was dark and pessimistic, and that vaguely reminisced the atmosphere when Titanic had first set sail.

It was made more evident to him as the boatload of new passengers clambered their way onto the Titanic from the gangplanks that were connected to and brought them on from their respective ferries. At this point, Geoffrey had sat himself down at one of the benches that the ship’s deck believing that it gave him just the right angle to witness the events unfolding on the ship around him.
And as they were loaded onto the Titanic, Geoffrey observed an elderly woman, one Mrs. Hart, shaking her head dismally at her husband. He watched as she looked gravely up into his eyes and was just able to hear her say to him, “I fear that we may never reach New York. So much so that I think I shall hardly be able to sleep. Just as Geoffrey noticed with a deep sense of admiration as he watched Mr. Hart, the gentleman that he was, console his wife, as he comforted and reassured her that she had nothing to worry about, that there were, after all, traveling on the safest ship in all the world.

As Geoffrey paid notice to these things and the dark mood that seemed shared amongst the passengers, he could not help but be fascinated by the human condition. What and how was it that this group of individuals all allowed themselves to lend their thoughts to such negativity?

For him, he felt it was a tremendous demonstration of the complexities of human emotions as to how an individual could house such conflicting beliefs about one thing in specific in what he thought was referred to as cognitive dissonance if he was not mistaken.

How was it that someone could on the one hand be so excited and enticed by a thing, just to turn around in the same instance to harbor such fears and worries, expecting the worse in the outcome? If one felt so strongly in this belief of impending doom surrounding a thing, in this case, the Titanic’s journey itself, then how could they go about buying the ticket, least of all bringing themselves to go through the torment of boarding it while struggling with these thoughts? Why didn’t they just get off as the opportunity presented itself if that was truly how they felt? Could it be that whatever was waiting for them at their destination was of such importance to subject oneself to such feelings of dismay, enough so to convince themselves that the risk was worth it?

One could not ignore how similar this shared feeling of angst was to the ship's first moments at sea and the events that surrounded it. Realizing this, Geoffrey’s mind returned to wondering if people projecting these feelings, thoughts, fears, and worries somehow went out into the ethers bringing these things to be from the energy that was put into it and because that is where the individual’s attention is as if it were the stuff of manifestation.

It seemed unlikely and the sort of thing a lunatic would go on about, but it certainly seemed the case in the near-accident that Titanic had. In any case, Geoffrey hoped and found himself wishing that these people would just cease in their doomsday opinions. Titanic could not, as one Officer had so perfectly observed, “Be sunk by even God himself.” Couldn’t people just accept that and get on with their lives? Or did they all need one Mr. Hart to remind them of this obvious fact as well?

Perhaps, this was why there was the idiom to expect the best but prepare for the worse in the first place because at that moment it seemed to be part of this human condition to do just the opposite. That it seemed we expected the worse, and perhaps prepared for it as well.

Unfortunately for Geoffrey, he found to come to find that this bleak cynicism was something that would not fade away. As the Titanic set back out to sea with the sun descending in its course behind the horizon, he encountered a great many who expressed ideas of the similitude.

Unable to bear any more of it, Geoffrey made his way from his reconnaissance spot to the bow of the ship, leaning over its rail to get a better view of the sunset. Here he thought that he just might be able to escape it all and find a place where he could hear himself think.

Then, off to his immediate right, there was a movement that sparked his attention and curiosity. Craning his neck, he looked over his shoulder to see what the source was, and what he saw was two White Star Lines Officers that had stationed themselves leaning over the rails just as Geoffrey had done, as if in unison. Sporting their all-black suits with golden embellished each man light themselves a cigarette, and in their exhales, it seemed as if they were trying to blow out all of their stress and all the things that bothered their minds.

“So, do you think it’s as they say,” Officer Wilde asked of his superior through a thick cloud of smoke? “That she leaned too far over. Or that there’s something more to it? Perhaps she was trying to jump?”

“I don’t know. The whole propeller thing did not seem all that compelling. I mean, I know that the things are damn near the size of a three-story building, but there’s no way anyone’s seeing them in these waters, and she seemed bright enough to know as much. And no one would be crazy enough to jump. It could be, oh, what is the word they're using nowadays? Hysteria? But she hardly seems like the crazy type. Especially dressed as nice as she was. The ravishing thing too. No, does not seem the thing. But I just do not know. Good thing that lad was there. Guess poor immigrants have their uses after all.”

“Good thing too. That is the crazy part about all of it. If no one had caught onto it, and she had gone belly over, no one would have been the wiser about it. Titanic would be one passenger less, and no one would have even known about it. Really makes you think. At the same time, I hear that something as many as ten passengers usually pass during a trip like this. Usually the elderly. Cannot take the stress. From what I hear, they even keep a kind of morgue in the kitchen for the kind of thing,” Wilde went on.

“God, that’s enough. I do not even want to know. Anyways, so what about you? Do you think you got yours out in time?”

“Yeah, I suppose I did. I would say that I sent it through about two hours before the word came through that the Marconi system went down. Now that’s something for you. I would never have thought that to happen. Not only that, it seems that we broke some kind of protocol. I guess when these types of things happen, the operator isn’t supposed to try and fix it themselves but that’s exactly what we did. But hey, it worked though,” Wilde responded. “What about you,” he went on.

“Same here, two or three hours before. What of it? What did yours say?”

“Told the family basically everything we talked about yesterday. That I felt that something was off. That I had this odd feeling in my gut that things just weren’t right. And what about you? What did yours say?

“Same. Wrote home saying that I feared that the ship shared a connection with Olympic, and shared the same fate as the other cursed ships that she is a part of. That I feared that she would not go without incident. And how I plan on putting in the papers to transfer when we arrive in New York. Also told them about the warnings. Anyways, that reminds me. Do you think that you could do a search of the ship for the keys to the bridge’s cabinet? It seems we’ve lost them, and the binoculars are locked up in there.”

“Sure thing. I’ll get right on it,” Officer Wilde answered, and with that, the two men put their smokes out, and left their spot on the bow, each going in opposite directions.

“Christ. Even the bloody Officers are buying into this tomfoolery,” Geoffrey let out as the men finally disappeared out of sight.

He had had enough. The pessimism gave him material to think about. Not enough for a story. No, there was not anything to be found in the insecurities of others. Just as he wasn’t going to write about some depressed woman. Although there was something there. Something that the Officers had mentioned. What had they meant by the warnings? Maybe searching that avenue would be where he would find his angle.

Geoffrey let out aside. Yes, he had things to think over, but it was another day down and he was nowhere closer to writing his article. Trying not to feel defeated, Geoffrey turned from his spot on the deck. Deciding to call it a day, he started on the trek back to his cabin looking forward to the long night's sleep. As he did so, the idea for a headline popped up in his mind’s eye. CONTROL GROUP TITANIC: THE SOCIAL ELITES GROWING IRRATIONAL FEAR OF TRAVELING BY OCEAN. Geoffrey let out a muffled chuckle at the thought of this as he continued forward on his way.