The Other Side of the Night (9 page)

Preparations for the crossing were understandably hasty, although by no means incomplete, not with Stanley Lord on the bridge. There were some gaffes—Cyril Evans, the wireless operator, mistakenly obtained a map for the South Atlantic, rather than the North, for example—but for the most part they were readily corrected, and on April 5, the
Californian
left Liverpool bound for Boston as scheduled. Never a fast ship, she was given fourteen days to make the crossing.

Assisting Captain Lord with the watch-keeping duties on this crossing were three officers and one apprentice officer. The Chief Officer was George Frederick Stewart, who was 35 years old, the same as his captain. He held his Master’s certificate but had yet to earn his Extra Master’s ticket; until he did so he was unlikely to be given a command of his own. He was a competent, reliable seaman who had considerable experience on the North Atlantic run, something Captain Lord valued. The Second Officer (on a ship as small as the
Californian
there was no need for a First Officer) was Herbert Stone, a young man of 24, who was a newlywed. Stone was an intriguing individual, for while he gave the appearance of being a calm and competent officer, he was gravely insecure about himself, and worried constantly that he might lose his situation with the Leyland Line. His recent marriage caused him particular anxiety, for with a wife to support he could ill-afford, literally, to find himself “on the beach” without a posting. Not much is known about Stone’s family, but something in his past caused him to look up to Captain Lord as a sort of father figure, for whom Stone would do almost anything in order to win approval.

Charles Victor Groves was the
Californian
’s Third Officer, and the most distinct and promising of the lot. Like Stone he was 24 years old, and although serving as Third Officer, he already had his Second Mate’s ticket. Born in Cambridge, he had been educated in the Perse Grammar School, a British “public” school, or what would have been known as a private school in the United States. Not surprisingly, he possessed a better formal education than any other officer aboard the ship; indeed he was better educated than most officers in the British Merchant Marine. His apprenticeship was done with the steamship company of Runciman’s, and he had already worked passages in the South Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Before joining the Leyland Line to gain experience in the North Atlantic he had spent some time with the P. & O. (Peninsular and Orient) Line. This meant that he alone of all of the
Californian
’s officers had any firsthand experience with large passenger liners. In many ways Groves was, with the exception of Captain Lord, the most experienced officer aboard. The Apprentice Officer was named James Gibson. Twenty years old, he had already spent over three years at sea, so that while he had not yet stood for any of his Mate’s certificates, he was not entirely without experience.

Cyril Furnston Evans, to give him his full name, was typical of the wireless operators serving on the smaller ships who carried only a single Marconi man. His workday was usually sixteen hours long, beginning at 5:00 a.m. and lasting until 11:00 p.m., although he normally would not spend the entire time at his set. It was already well known among wireless operators and enthusiasts that their apparatus had much greater range at nighttime than during daylight hours, so Evans would work until lunch was served at mid-day, then take a nap until mid-afternoon, rising to go back to his set until 11:00 at night. By then almost all essential traffic would have been passed, and he would have some time for idle chatter with other operators, provided that he wasn’t interfering with messages being transmitted or received.

The first eight days of the April 1912 passage proved to be uneventful, although the weather, while still mostly sunny and breezy, was growing steadily colder as the
Californian
progressed westward. On April 14, wireless activity seemed to increase, as more and more ships began reporting encounters with drift ice and icebergs. Due to the unusually warm winter in the Arctic, the amount of ice that broke off the Greenland glacier, as well as the pack ice which drifted down from the Arctic icecap on the Labrador current, was much greater than ususal. It also meant that because of the sheer volume of ice drifting down from the north, the resulting ice fields would stretch much farther south than usual.

It was 9:00 a.m. on the morning of April 14 when Evans took down a report from the Cunard liner
Caronia
that told of “bergs, growlers, and field ice at 42N, from 49 to 51W.” It was a general report, not addressed to any specific ship, but Evans thought it important enough to take up to the bridge immediately. At twenty minutes before noon, the Dutch liner
Noordam
reported ice in much the same area, and at 1:42 p.m. a message from the
Baltic
was picked up which read: “Icebergs and large quantity of field ice in 41.51 N 49.9 W.” This one, too, went straight up to the bridge. A few minutes later the
Amerika
, a German ship, sent a warning about ice, mentioning that she had passed two large bergs at 41.27 N, 50.8 W.

The
Californian
made her own ice sighting later that afternoon. Just after 5:00 p.m., Third Officer Groves came up to the bridge to briefly relieve Chief Officer Stewart, who customarily took his dinner with Captain Lord. Groves found both Stewart and Lord on the bridge, scanning the horizon. About five miles to the south, three large bergs could be clearly seen, but no other ice was in sight. After a few moments, Lord and Stewart went below, the Chief Officer making a brief detour to the wireless office to instruct Evans to send out a message about the ice just spotted.

Evans tapped out the warning of his own at 6:30 p.m., when he signaled the
Antillian
, Captain Lord’s old command, to tell her of the icebergs, giving the
Californian
’s position as 42.5 N, 49.9 W. An hour later he contacted the new White Star liner
Titanic
to inform her of “three large bergs five miles to southward of us,” at 42.3 N, 49.9 W. Not long after that, yet another message arrived, this one from the Atlantic Transport liner
Mesaba
. She had sent out a detailed warning, reading, “Lat. 42 N to 41.25 N, Longitude 40 W to 50.30 W, saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs, also field ice.”

Evans’ key went quiet again as he spent the next few hours listening to the traffic passing between other ships, as well as that being sent to and from Cape Race in Nova Scotia, which was just coming into range of the
Californian
. Quite a bit of it seemed to be coming from the
Titanic
, Evans noted, much of it paid, personal messages from passengers to friends and family ashore. Some of it seemed extraordinarily frivolous, one message reading, “NO SEASICKNESS. ALL WELL. NOTIFY ALL INTERESTED. POKER BUSINESS GOOD. AL.” Evans could only marvel at the idea of having enough money to waste on sending such trivia.

At 8:00 p.m. Third Officer Groves returned to the bridge to take over the watch from the Chief Officer. Stewart relayed the gist of the wireless messages which had been received during the day, and then stood by for about a quarter-hour while Groves’ eyes adjusted to the darkness before turning in. The Captain came to the bridge some time later, warning Groves “to keep a sharp lookout for this ice” and reminding him that extra lookouts had been posted far forward, at the extreme bow of the ship, a section known as the “eyes.”

The night was extraordinarily clear, with the stars remarkably bright and distinct, and while there was no moon, visibility was excellent. The sea was unusually calm. And it was
cold
— by 10:00 p.m. the air temperature was down to 24 degrees Fahrenheit. The
Californian
continued steaming along at 11 knots on a course of S. 89 W. until a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., when Third Officer Groves spotted several small, white patches in the water dead ahead of the ship. Turning to Captain Lord, he remarked that it looked as if the
Californian
had encountered a group of porpoises.

Captain Lord knew better. One look was all he needed before he strode to the bridge telegraph and rang for FULL SPEED ASTERN on the engines. The white patches were ice—growlers and small bergs that were the fringe of a huge field ahead. Within minutes the
Californian
’s screw was biting hard into the water at it began churning in reverse, and the ship shuddered its entire length, pitching forward slightly, as she came to a stop. As always, prudence was Lord’s watchword, and as the
Californian
came to a stop, he decided that he would rather deal with the problem of negotiating a passage through the ice in daylight. Another masthead light was illuminated, so that the
Californian
now showed two of them, the international visual warning of a ship “not underway.”

At 11:00 p.m. Captain Lord went below to the chartroom, intending to pass the night stretched out on the settee there. He left specific instructions with Groves to be called if anything was sighted, although any disturbance seemed unlikely. “Absolute peace and quietness prevailed,” Groves later recalled, “save for brief snatches of ‘Annie Laurie’ from an Irish voice which floated up from a stokehold ventilator.” The ship drifted quietly on the current, her bows slowly swinging round until she was pointed almost due east. The sea was amazingly calm and the visibility was exceptional, the stars standing out in the night sky with diamond-like intensity.

At about a quarter past eleven, Groves noticed the glare of a ship steaming up over the horizon from the east. Ablaze with lights from bow to stern, the newcomer rapidly came abeam of the motionless
Californian
, passing along her starboard side some ten miles away. Groves, who knew the look of a passenger ship well, could soon see that she was a large liner, with brightly lit decks piled one on top of the other. Around 11:30 he went down to the chartroom, knocked on the door, and told Captain Lord about the newcomer. Lord suggested that Groves try to contact her by Morse lamp, which he did, but gave up after a few moments when he received no reply.

About 11:40 Groves saw the big liner suddenly seem to stop and put out most of her lights. This didn’t seem unusual to Groves; as an old hand of the Far East trade he was familiar with the P. & O. custom to dim their lights around midnight to encourage the passengers to take to their cabins and get to bed. It didn’t occur to him that the stranger’s lights might have disappeared because she had made a sudden, sharp turn, and was now sitting bow-on to the
Californian
.

Captain Lord too had been watching the new arrival from the port hole in the chartroom, but unlike Groves, who was standing one deck higher and had a much clearer view of the other vessel, Lord didn’t believe the ship was much larger than his own
Californian
. He had stepped over to the wireless office at 11:15 and asked his operator, Cyril Evans, if he knew of any other ships nearby, but he made no specific mention of the ship to the south. When Evans replied, “Only the
Titanic,
” Lord told him to warn her that the
Californian
had stopped and was surrounded by ice. Now, just a few minutes after the stranger had made that sharp turn, he was back on the bridge, peering intently at the distant ship through his glasses. When Groves informed him that the stranger was a large passenger liner, Lord remarked casually, “That doesn’t look like a passenger steamer.”

“It is, sir,” Groves replied. “When she stopped she put most of her lights out—I suppose they have been put out for the night.” Carefully Groves ventured his opinion that he thought her to be not more than ten miles off. Lord gave a noncommittal grunt, then announced he was returning to the chartroom, where he was to be informed if any other ships were spotted, the other ship changed bearing, or anything else unusual occurred.

Meanwhile, in the wireless office, as soon as the Captain had left, Evans slipped on his headphones, adjusted his set, and began tapping out to his friend Jack Phillips on the
Titanic
, “Say old man, we are surrounded by ice and stopped.” Evans hadn’t bothered to ask Phillips for permission to break into the
Titanic
‘s traffic, give a position, or even properly identify himself, but just barged right in, so it was little wonder that Phillips tapped back furiously, “Shut up! Shut up! You are jamming me! I am working Cape Race!”

Despite the seeming harshness of Phillips’ rebuke, Evans knew that it wasn’t personal—he
had
interfered with the
Titanic
’s signals. Peeved at himself for making such an amateurish mistake, Evans pulled the headphones off and shut down his set. Captain Lord hadn’t asked for an acknowledgment from the
Titanic
, and Evans wasn’t about to face Phillips’ ire a second time by asking for one, or—an even more frightening prospect—risking his captain’s wrath by reporting the consequences of his mistake.

The
Titanic,
wherever she was, was so close that her powerful transmitter nearly blew his ears off when Phillips had responded. Evans had had enough; his day was done. So just a few minutes before 11:30, he pulled on his pajamas and settled into his bunk with a book. After perhaps a quarter-hour had passed, Evans put down the book, turned out his reading light, and drifted off to sleep. His workday was over. Certainly nothing was going to happen in the middle of the night that would require his services.