The Ship of Dreams : Chapter Three

Chapter 3 (Serialized Novel)

Geoffrey had always traveled light, but boarding Titanic with all his luggage accounted for, he could not but help the feeling that he was forgetting something. This sensation was compounded on even more during a bizarre incident that had taken place just before he had handed the R.M.S. officer his ticket.

There was an elderly couple ahead of him, running through the savings of what remained of their lower-middle-class savings account by the condition of their raggedy clothing, that had caused a bit of a scene upon boarding. When the husband went to hand their tickets over to the officer, his wife intervened, stopping this interaction dead in its tracks. After this, she took a considerable minute or two to plead with her husband that they reconsider boarding for the last time and that she still had a bad feeling about the whole thing. It was only when the officer had made a comment about them holding up the line for a ship that was close to sailing off that the husband assured her that nothing would go wrong on God’s unsinkable ship, at which point they crossed onto the ship, the reluctance of the wife all but apparent in both postures and in the way she hesitatingly made her way over the threshold. Looking back on the whole thing, it had been a total irritant to Geoffrey, who at the point was reminded of Dermot and his men and was beginning to think that everyone had gone quite mad.

In truth, this might have very well been the case to a varying degree. There are many ways in which this vast universe that we live in operates under certain universal laws. Many great minds have observed the way that the best way to comprehend such a vast abyss was to think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration, such as that of the brilliance of Nikola Tesla; they very same, to whom also had a connection with Titanic in his own right, in that his close friend and wealthiest investor in John Jacob Astor perished on the night of the tragedy — Astor being the not only being the wealthiest investor to Tesla but the wealthiest individual aboard Titanic in the absence of J.P. Morgan. In that way, Tesla was also connected to the ship insofar as he had a tremendous feud with Morgan, and this happenstance brought him to the mercy of the Titanic’s owner overnight.

Similar remarks have been made along these lines, not only from the man who invented the twentieth century. There is the sentiment that the energy that one puts out into the universe is the energy that the individual receives in return. That is that what the individual seeks out of the endless depth of space, seeks them in return, or that what one focuses on focuses on them in return.

It is a curious inquiry indeed to wonder if in any way, that said the tragedy was spoken into life, in a strict manner of speaking, considering the multitude of individuals who harbored feelings or skepticisms that the ship would sink, or that considered any of plenty of events to be ill-forsaken omens that the ship was destined to sail steadily towards its own demise, for thoughts in themselves act as a kind of thermal, kinetic, or potential energy, with words, are powerful vibrational conductors, acting to give creation to the actions and events around us, which could very well be viewed as the total sum of the frequency that we are generating or operating under. This, of course, coupled, and perhaps amplified by the pride-filled jokes of how the ship itself was so unsinkable that God himself could not very well sink that ship.

In this same light, it is also fascinating to note how, in all of humankind's efforts to document history, there is only ever this foggy sense of what happened, like history itself had Alzheimer’s, and nearly everything was subject to some Mandela Effect spectacle that makes everything subject to debate, and an issue of much controversy.

Further still, as far as universal laws or truths are concerned in this matter, one cannot help but consider that theory of chaos to which we have given an entire effect over to the movements of a butterfly. In the bread crumb trail of ominous events and other signs or red flags of catastrophic things to come, was it the first of these that gave rise to the end result, and which of these had the largest effect in the contribution towards the end result, or was it just some domino effect that took place and that was inevitable from the start?

For instance, a thick cloud of confusion surrounds the mere subject of the Titanic’s apparent christening. From what we remember of, A Night to Remember, it received a right proper send-off. But this is a matter of great uncertainty. On one hand, it seems that the White Star Line did not believe in these unnecessary rituals, and considered it a higher standard to perform such practices, with Harland and Wolff at Belfast being merely a place to make them and ship them. Yet, another still argues to the moon and back that it did in fact receive its christening and that the bottle itself never broke, both arguments considered to be negative premonitions in and of themselves. Of these, it is accurate that the Titanic never received said christening, although it has been depicted as such. Whether or not this was a sign of a doomed destiny is hard to tell, not to mention that it creates an argument of superstition, however, it is interesting to observe the way in which all of the tragedy sisters from the Olympics to the Britannic did not receive said christening, and each one saw some catastrophe at sea.

And it is impossible to say whether or not Geoffrey Archibald would have been as set in his ways, had he known the countless others that ostensibly surrounded the ship and the events that led up to her maiden voyage. Harland and Wolff saw a handful of deaths in the construction of Titanic alone, the most well-recalled being that of James Dobbins who died while knocking out supporting shoring timbers from the hull of the ship, the day in question that Titanic was launched from Belfast, along with men of the likes of Samuel Scott, the first victim of the tragedy sister who fell to his death in her construction.

Could it possibly have been a sign that Titanic was originally set to take this first transatlantic expedition in late March, but was delayed due to the incident of her older sister in the Olympics? And although he considered the claims made by Dermot to be nothing more than nonsensical hogwash, it was very well true that the coal conditions within the ship did cause a sizeable fire in her bunkers, that started ten days prior to Titanic’s departure, and that raged on well into the course of her trip; one that crew on the ship was ordered to keep their mouths shut about, as not to scare the passengers. At least they can say that it was finally extinguished, whilst the firemen continued into their final overtime, as they worked on it to the very end.

It was in this way that the portents of things to come flooded in. As Geoffrey grew irritated with the couple ahead of him, there was at this time another pair, to whom upon their boarding, did note an enigmatic dark figure issuing forth from the fourth tunnel of Titanic, which would become its most defining characteristic. While this is the case, it is worth noting that this feature was merely for looks or aesthetics and that it was non-operational. The dark figure that they saw at this, the highest point of Titanic turned out to be nothing more than a fireman covered in soot, but to them, they themselves viewed this spectacle as death incarnate himself, and as such, a warning sign to the passengers of what the future had in store.

Prior to his excursion on Titanic, writer William Thomas Snead received another one of these doomsday harbingers. Days before his trip, he had visited a kind of medium spiritualist who cautioned him to cancel his trip. According to the source, the Titanic was carrying what would later be aptly called the unlucky mummy, belonging to the Princess of Amen-Ra, which carried with her, a great curse that brought destruction to everything in its presence; folklore that Snead would go on to tell anyone who would listen throughout the duration of the trip. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this fact is the way that with some sort of prophetic clairvoyance, Snead went on to predict his own death.
Snead went on to tell everyone who would listen about this interaction that he had had, just days before the Titanic departed Southampton. It was later confirmed by a survivor following the accident when they were interviewed by the press. The man in question, a lawyer, by the name of Fredrick K. Seward that had been fortunate enough to find his way onto one of the lifeboats, recalled every one of the author's tales of the cursed mummy as he reported, “” Mr. Stead talked much of Spiritualism, though transference and the occult. He told a story of a mummy case in the British museum which, he said, had had amazing adventures, but which published with great calamities any person who wrote its story. He told of one person after another who, he said, had come to grief after writing the story and added that, although he knew it, he would never write it. He did not say whether ill-luck attached to the mere telling of it.”

In the decade prior to the incident, he would author works that told of ocean liners sinking in the Atlantic after being struck by an iceberg. There was also an issue of passengers dying due to a shortage of lifeboats, which Snead had hoped would speak to the fact that ships too often went out to sea with a shortage of lifeboats. When Snead was interviewed regarding his literary works, he was quoted saying that he believed he would die either by lynching or from drowning.

Reports and accounts of this similitude would have been enough to make Geoffrey sick to his stomach, but God alone only knows if it would have stopped him from following the Titanic story. How the goose-pimples would have risen across his skin if he ever had caught wind of the story of how all the lights in Belfast went out at around the same time Titanic went down as if she and the town she was built shared some kind of strong interdependence.

Other stories still were enough to send chills down any grown man’s spine. Two such tales bore with them a similar interrelatedness. The first that surfaced was that of a young girl that had been in a catatonic state of consciousness. At around the time of Titanic’s horrendous fate, the doctor observing her told that she stirred, exclaiming at the top of her lungs, “I see a big ship sinking. Oh, mister, can’t you the people in the water and Wally with his fiddle?”

Unfortunate as it is to say, the girl in the story died shortly thereafter. During the incident, however, the doctor in question thought nothing of it, other than that it was nothing more than feverish ramblings of a sickly girl. It did, however, make the doctor more than unsettled when he came to discover the news of the ship, and that his dear friend Wallace, ‘Wally,’ Hartley, perished in the event. Wall was one of the glorious bandmembers, to whom, with the greatest level of courage, played on into the night up until those closing moments.

There was another, concerning Bruce Ismay’s brother, that was almost interchangeable down to the very last letter. It was told that he had been extremely near comatose, leading up to the early hours of April 15th, 1912, when suddenly, he shot straight up into his awareness. At the time he came to, it is said that he cried out into the night, “It’s Bruce! Bruce is in trouble!”

Of all these, however, the one that is by far the most intriguing is one that has to do with a cat. That is right, a cat, that the crew observed as belonging to the ship, and to which they had gone so far as to name. Its name was Jenny. While some of the workers of Titanic had already been given this sense of impending doom, throughout the timeline of her short history, such as when one of the construction workers was accidentally sealed into the ship’s tremendous double hull, this sensation was further expanded upon as of what became of Jenny. Jenny was notably seen with her litter of kittens all throughout the gargantuan ocean liner, up until about the time Titanic set sail, at which time, Jenny and all her offspring abandoned the ship. This too was regarded as a forewarning of bad things to come. Nevertheless, these all paled in comparison to the omen that was witnessed by the largest audience, for the Titanic did not have a smooth, joyous, and merry launch as we have all seen it. No, quite far from it.

Having dropped his luggage off with the bellhop, Geoffrey waltzed onto the wide promenade that made up the monumental bow of the ship, joining the crowd of first-class passengers that had flocked to this section of Titanic in order to give their final farewells to the friends and family they left behind them at the colossal port. For a minute, Geoffrey was temporarily blinded as the sun did beam down upon him, reflecting off the planks of wood underneath his feet.

It was as if all of the ships had been waiting for him, for as he walked onto this great space at the stroke of 12 p.m. at Southampton, England on April 10th, 1912, a great whistle did sound from behind, indicating that highly anticipated moment of departure. A wide smile spread across his face as he embraced the finer things that were included with his first-class admission. There was no doubt in his mind that he may never in the entirety of his life, experience something of this magnitude again, so he made sure to savor every last moment at the surface level of exactly what it was. Oh, to be alive at the height of the industrial age, he thought to himself at that moment.

From there Geoffrey made a graceful glide over to the port side railing of the bow that faced the city of Southampton, as the Titanic glided into the water, slowly at first, but still gathering speed at a noticeable rate. Here, he positioned himself between two groups of people, who, like the rest of the passengers on Titanic’s deck at that time, had taken to waving their merry good-byes to those at the Southampton pier that was hoping to give the ship a right proper send-off. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, and as such, Geoffrey was almost tempted in joining in, but he reframed from doing so. He just leaned on the railing, with a bright smile spread across his boyish face. There was, deep down, a part of him that was slightly saddened by the fact that he had no wife, children, or anyone for that matter to wave goodbye to, and it was on this thought that this decision was made.

What a stimulating start Titanic had, and with it all of Southampton did witness the sheer size and power of the great leviathan; a testimony that would almost speak of disaster, or at least of a disaster very nearly diverted. As Titanic’s three two-and-a-half stories, bronze propellers began to swirl into life, the ship gaining momentum at this point, in the background of the all the waves, cheers, shouts, whistles, and everything else that made up the ambiance of celebration at Southampton, there sounded a sharp snap, that has been described as a revolver going off, that reverberated throughout the area on that fateful day.

To date, Titanic’s propellers were the third largest of any ocean liner ever built, but back in its time, they were unquestionably the largest to be seen by the likes of man. Design is what is in the thing, and it was this quality that was supposed to separate the ship from all competitors, and there was no exception in the case of the ship’s paramount propulsion system.

At the height of the golden age of shipbuilding, a new methodology for powering these sorts of steamships had emerged in the form of turbine propulsion, and it was this system that was utilized throughout the Cunard Line of steamships, which were the White Star Line Olympic class ships greatest contender.

Struggling financially, White Star Line was not as familiarized or up-to-date in creating vessels that operated by these means, and so the final decision as to how Titanic was to be powered, came from an innovative mindset of combing what was known and reliable in unison with what was new and effective. And so the two, larger, outer, three wing propellers operated from the power generated by the gigantic four piston-cylinder steam engine, while the smaller four wing blade propeller, functioned by way of a small steam turbine, that reused the steam created by the ship that would have otherwise been the exhaust generated by Titanic. It was estimated that the combined power supplied by this set-up was enough to push the Titanic to around twenty-four-and-a-half knots.

Prior to the point that Captain Smith had given the order, “Let’s see what this ship can do,” as a cue to activate the enormous propellers, it had taken six regular size tugboats to pull the Titanic through the large waterway channel that had held it; their names respectively were that of the Albert Edward, Ajax, Hector, Hercules, Neptune, and the Vulcan. Two of the vessels detached promptly as this order was given.

The deafening bang that was heard by all came as a direct consequence of this order, which has been argued by many that it was given too soon. Titanic had reached a speed of six knots as the blades initially began to turn, and the sheer force of them created a tremendous suction issuing from the wake at the stern of the ship.

Immediately after that, the Titanic had passed two other ships that were also in the harbor at the time. The names of the ships were that of the Oceanic, and ironically enough the New York which was securely tied to it. For the most part, New York had basically been a decommissioned and abandoned ship as a direct consequence of the coal strike. As the Titanic passed by, Captain Smith issued the order to have the port or left side propeller with the intention to ease the Titanic's maneuver around these vessels. The suctioning effect that spawned from this was more than both the Oceanic and New York could withstand.

All observers of the event had remarked on the way that Titanic eclipsed all other ships in the harbor, and as such, as it turned past them, the pulling effect that they were subjected to was enough to roll Oceanic over to a sharp tilt to its side, sending her gangways crashing into the water. In a domino-like effect, the piercing pops that were heard came from the snapping of the six hawsers that had secured the New York to the Oceanic, which pushed New York out to sea, and into a collision course with Titanic.

Once again Geoffrey was overtaken by a feeling of impending doom, and all at once, he was seized by the sensation of experiencing some kind of déjà vu, as he all at once felt a severe chill that took him over, which left him gasping for breath, as if for whatever reason he could not breathe. It had been quite some time since the last time he had traveled, and watching the whole ordeal had left him possessed by terror, and clenching at his chest as if that small gesture would help him in catching his breathe.

From out of nowhere, a loud voice echoed out throughout the pier exclaiming, “Titanic to Vulcan. Titanic to Vulcan. Escort remaining crew from off New York. Repeat, escort remaining crew from off New.” This rescue order of sorts was issued by Titanic’s Third Officer Herbert Pittman from his post on the bridge via its booming megaphone. Pittman gave the order knowing full well that while New York had been left where it was a part of the strike, a kind of skeleton crew remained on board.

Geoffrey watched awestruck, his mouth gaping wide open from the state of suspense that he found himself in, as he took in the chaos of the scene that was unfolding before him. The whole thing was a fiasco right from the jump, and it put him in a state of utter disbelief. Never in all his years could he have predicted the grand scale mess that was unraveling in the Southampton channel. Then all at once, it occurred to Geoffrey as to what might have sparked the fleeting sense of precognition that had overcome him. There was no denying the fact that the whole debacle was in many ways eerily like the events that led up to the Olympics’ collision with the HMS Hawke, which was also Captained by Edward Smith.

However, to be fair, it was entirely understandable, because even as one of the most well-esteem Captains of his time, the Olympic class ships were almost twice the size of any other ship that he oversaw at the time. This was somewhat ironic considering that just prior to the trip, Smith was quoted saying,” I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster.”

It was one of those events where time does become relative to itself with all an hour which was the time that it took for the whole incident to take place seemed like all an eternity. However long that hour was for any of the passengers aboard or otherwise there were two individuals in question who had the best view of those foretelling initial moments of the Titanic, and it was of the ship’s general electricians George Ervine and middle Alfred Middleton to whom saw the whole thing atop Titanic’s fourth and inoperable tunnel.

In the hours following Ervine would send wire back home conveying the whole scene as he wrote, “As soon as the Titanic began to move out of the dock, the suction caused the Oceanic, which was alongside her berth altogether and bumped into the Oceanic. The gangway of the Oceanic simply dissolved. Middleton and I were on top of the after funnel, so we saw everything quite distinctly. I thought there was going to be a proper smash-up owing to the high wind, but I don’t think anyone was hurt.”
Those would not be the only letters written pertaining to Titanic’s sendoff. That same day, a local paper would go on to document the near-collision in an in-depth feature piece describing the play-by-play in an article entitled Largest Liner’s First Voyage — The Titanic Draws Another Vessel from Moorings — Exciting Start. Exciting is an understatement.

For some inexplicable reason, Geoffrey found himself frozen in place on the vast promenade deck as the ship’s propellers started back up and finally began to distance Titanic from the other vessels in that crowded port. Many of the passengers had already made their way back inside when he started shaking on the spot as if just processing some sort of trauma, which indeed he was. It was not until Oceanic, New York, the Vulcan, and all other vessels were but specks on the horizon when Geoffrey’s little shudder did cease at which point, he decided to follow the crew back inside.