The Titanic Plan

• Title Page
  
• PROLOGUE
  
• CHAPTER 1
  
• CHAPTER 2
  
• CHAPTER 3
  
• CHAPTER 4
  
• CHAPTER 5
  
• CHAPTER 6
  
• CHAPTER 7
  
• CHAPTER 8
  
• CHAPTER 9
  
• CHAPTER 10
  
• CHAPTER 11
  
• CHAPTER 12
  
• CHAPTER 13
  
• CHAPTER 14
  
• CHAPTER 15
  
• CHAPTER 16
  
• CHAPTER 17
  
• CHAPTER 18
  
• CHAPTER 19
  
• CHAPTER 20
  
• CHAPTER 21
  
• CHAPTER 22
  
• CHAPTER 23
  
• CHAPTER 24
  
• CHAPTER 25
  
• CHAPTER 26
  
• CHAPTER 27
  
• CHAPTER 28
  
• CHAPTER 29
  
• CHAPTER 30
  
• CHAPTER 31
  
• CHAPTER 32
  
• CHAPTER 33
  
• CHAPTER 34
  
• CHAPTER 35
  
• CHAPTER 36
  
• CHAPTER 37
  
• CHAPTER 38
  
• CHAPTER 39
  
• CHAPTER 40
  
• CHAPTER 4 1
  
• CHAPTER 42
  
• CHAPTER 43
  
• CHAPTER 44
  
• CHAPTER 45
  
• CHAPTER 46
  
• CHAPTER 47
  
• CHAPTER 48
  
• CHAPTER 49
  
• CHAPTER 50
  
• CHAPTER 51
  
• CHAPTER 52
  
• CHAPTER 53
  
• CHAPTER 54
  
• CHAPTER 55
  
• CHAPTER 56
  
• CHAPTER 57
  
• CHAPTER 58
  
• CHAPTER 59
  
• CHAPTER 60
  
• CHAPTER 61
  
• CHAPTER 62
  
• CHAPTER 63
  
• CHAPTER 64
  
• CHAPTER 65
  
• EPILOGUE
  

The Titanic Plan

Michael Bockman

Story By

Ron Freeman

License Notes
:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in a database or retrieval system, except for brief quotation in reviews or articles, without prior written permission of the author and publisher
.

Cover Design: Evelyn Bernhard

www.thetitanicplan.com

for Ron

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The Titanic Plan
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PROLOGUE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1907

It was his favorite hymn: “
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee…
” He sang it open-throated and with vigor, hardly caring that his booming voice was decidedly off-key. “
Let the waters and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed…
” He didn’t hear his coarse singing anyway, all that filled his ears was the harmonious blend of 3,000 fellow Christians finding comfort in God. And he was happily among them, just one of the legions, a foot soldier in Jesus’ army. Marching with these troops there was no weight on his shoulders, no responsibility other than to praise God and bask in his glory. “
Be of sin the double cure; Save from wrath and make me pure…
”

As the swirl of joyous voices echoed through Richmond’s Grand Convention Hall, a young man hurried down the center aisle, stopped at row 17 and handed a telegram to a thin, dry priest on the aisle. Who handed it to his wife next to him, who handed it to a crimson clothed bishop next to her and on down the row until the telegram reached an imposing, white-haired man in the center of the aisle who was so wrapped up in the glory of the hymn that it took his assistant three attempts to get his attention. Disturbed by the intrusion, the imposing, white-haired man glared at his assistant, his ice blue eyes glowering hawk-like over his tremendous strawberry nose. There was no mistaking that look of displeasure. There was no mistaking the man. The last thing J. Pierpont Morgan wanted was to be brought back into the earthly realm when he was dancing so rapturously in the kingdom of God. And so he turned away, closed his eyes and raised his voice even louder. “
Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Savior, or I die.
”

The message delivered to Morgan was one of alarm. Fear was building within the financial community like a magma dome within a volcano. Perhaps it would deflate itself, perhaps it could be deflated (maybe with Morgan’s help) or, most likely, it would blow up and set in motion a chain of events that would plunge America into economic chaos.

The day the dire telegram was delivered to Morgan, the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, was feeling “just bully.” He was on the move, which was his natural state of being. Earlier that week he had completed a trip down the Mississippi River on a paddle steamer accompanied by twenty state governors. The patriotic and the curious lined the banks of the old river to catch a glimpse and pay their respects to the country’s leader as he passed by. He then headed to the countryside for a hunt. Deep in the Louisiana canebrakes, making a kill of “three bears, six deer, one wild turkey, twelve squirrels, one duck, one opossum, and one wildcat,” Roosevelt got word of the first hints of a Wall Street panic. If it worried him, he didn’t show it. Wall Street was the domain of the forces he did battle with – the corporate powerhouses, the money trusts, the robber barons. “Those money men could take care of themselves,” Roosevelt declared to a group of reporters covering his trip.

Unfortunately, he was wrong.

The first major crack in the system occurred when overzealous speculators tried to take over a major mining firm, the
United Copper Company.
To make the deal, the speculators wove together financial backing from a consortium of banks and trusts, including the very prominent and stable
Knickerbocker Trust
, headed by Morgan’s friend, Charles T. Barney. The takeover bid not only fell apart, but ultimately left the mining company, two brokerage houses and a bank in ruins. When word got out that the
Knickerbocker Trust
was a major player in the fiasco, the first snowball started rolling. Spooked
Knickerbocker
depositors began withdrawing their money, money the trust had already speculated on other deals. Many of the
Knickerbocker
depositors were state and national banks across the country, all uninsured and all bracing for a cash run by their own depositors of everyday Americans.

Trying not to add to the sense of panic, Morgan decided to stay at the Episcopal Convention until it ended on Saturday, October 19. When everyone at the convention joined hands and sang the final hymn, Morgan, as he always did, surrendered to the power of God. He believed he had a bargain with the Lord: Morgan would maintain the stability of America’s financial markets, and God, more often than not, would bless him with a healthy bottom line.

Morgan left for New York that evening. His train was held in Washington D.C. at midnight. Morgan sat alone on the rear platform of his private car, the only light in the night being the glow from the tip of his cigar. Arriving in New York City the next morning, Morgan was rushed by cab to his ivy-covered mansion at the corner of Madison Avenue and 36th Street. He didn’t even change clothes, dashing next door to his library – a solid marble building that resembled an impenetrable fortress guarded by two life-sized stone lions, their haunches taut as if ready to spring on some unsuspecting prey. Waiting for Morgan in the library’s inner sanctum were his closest associates, who laid out a chilling scenario of the unfolding events that would “make all previous panics look like child’s play.”

Monday morning, October 21, the board of directors of the
Knickerbocker Trust
met with Morgan at his Wall Street office. They spelled out the dire trouble: they had $60 million on deposit, but only $10 million was fluid cash. If there was a run, the
Knickerbocker
would fail. They pleaded with Morgan to use his backing to help save the trust. Morgan listened, smoked several cigars, weighed what it would take, reflected on the risk involved, smoked a few more cigars and stared impassively at the desperate directors. The only thing agreed upon was that the
Knickerbocker Trust
would open for business the next day and try to weather the storm.

Long before dawn a restless crowd began gathering outside the
Knickerbocker Trust
building at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. There was a chill in the autumn air. When the doors opened at 8 a.m., jittery depositors pushed into the building, desperate to cash their accounts out. Just over a mile south, on Wall Street, dark suited men, their heads topped by black derbies, waited for the dreaded, inevitable news. As clocks struck noon through Manhattan, the
Knickerbocker Trust
had paid out $8 million. By 2 p.m. it was over; the last funds were withdrawn; the formidable
Knickerbocker Trust
had failed. Those who understood the crisis realized that a financial Armageddon was at hand.