“I see you are made for it—Ransom.”
It was not lost on either of them—or the young interns who were meant to overhear it—Ian’s calling him Ransom again at this juncture. Alastair met his eye. “Come with us,” he urged the other policeman. “It could make a new man of you. One you might actually like.”
“This old carcass is too far along to change now.”
“It’ll make you young again to give chase to the greatest ship on the high seas! Think of it man. If we succeed, you become a hero—whether you like it or not. And a changed man in the bargain.”
“Changed man or a better man?”
“Both!”
Reahall took a moment to consider it, but only a moment. “No… no more talk of my joining you on the Trinity. I’ve set you up for failure, Ransom; you must know that I’ve no hope of success. This is a Hail Mary is all.”
“A long shot, I understand, Ian.”
“And I clear my conscious of it while… while not going anywhere near this disease ever again.”
Ransom recognized pure fear when he saw it in a man’s eyes, so he shut up about Reahall’s joining them in attempting to stop Titanic from leaving Southampton. Ian was right about its being a long shot. Ransom surmised that only God or one hell of a ship’s captain, or some act of nature that might delay Titanic beyond Easter dress-up-day might make it possible for them to even attempt to talk to Captain Edward Smith about quarantining Titanic.
For the moment, this mad dash of theirs to get to the party on time was merely step one.
Titanic had indeed arrived in Southampton just after midnight for provisioning and staffing while Alastair Ransom sat in a Belfast jail. And by April fifth, Good Friday, Titanic was “dressed” in an array of flags and pennants for a salute to the people of Southampton, England, and what the English jokingly termed “the US Colonies” while Ransom had cooled his heels in jail. And by April 6th recruitment for the remainder—and majority—of crew members while docked in Southampton was underway. This while Ransom had played chess and paced his cell.
General cargo began to arrive marked for Titanic yet in Southampton. Cargo bound for merchants in New York, Chicago, Richmond, and indeed every corner of the US. Cases, boxed sets, bundles, pounds—silk bails, furniture, auto and machinery parts, crated books, mail sacks, crates of cognac, brandy, wine, plants, orchids, vats of Dragon’s Blood dye, rolls of Linoleum, stores of feathers, linens, ribbons, hats, scarves, shoes stamped for pick up by Wells Fargo and American Express Delivery, some goods going to Marshal Field’s of Chicago, and some to Macy’s in New York. Then there was the fleet of automobiles. The final total cargo included 559 tons and 11,524 separate pieces of equipment, as well as 5,892 tons of coal. All of which required loading aboard. Few men working the docks in the shadow of the monster ship could resist the call to go to sea aboard this history-making ocean liner.
By April 8th fresh food supplies were being taken aboard as Alastair Ransom, Thomas Coogan, and Declan Irvin raced for Southampton aboard Trinity. But by this time, all final preparations aboard the largest ship ever to set sail were being overseen by the ship's builder. Thomas Andrews saw to it all, down to the smallest detail—including written invitations on each place setting on each table for first class ticket holders. Andrews wanted every detail to be perfect, with nothing left to chance. The ship was his greatest pride and joy, and it would make his career. Builders the world over would be seeking him out.
Even as Ransom stretched and yawned, having slept out on the open deck of Trinity, even as the young interns and Trinity’s crew gathered about her bow railing at dawn on April 10th, Captain McEachern wailed, “There’s she is, our prey!”
An unusually large man-made object on the horizon had everyone’s attention: Titanic. Captain Peter McEachern joined Ransom at the rail. They had spoken at length about his purpose the night before. “It’s her—Titanic yet in the slip built for her at Southampton. We’ve made it, Constable Ransom.”
“Aye, Captain, against all odds, we’ve caught her.”
In the distance, Titanic’s signature four smoke stacks rose from the horizon as if Poseidon’s trident had grown a fourth prong. Unmistakable, Ransom thought.
Ransom had seen no more reason to hide his identity either from the young doctors, the captain of this ship, or the world. He’d had a dream while in Ian Reahall’s jail, a dream so real, so powerful he considered it life-altering, as strong as any premonition. It was a strange yet clear story of his death—as he’d seen himself go down into the sea to freeze and drown. But today, here and now, the chase alone—and now the end of the chase—the prize at hand—brought a smile to Alastair Ransom, and he muttered to himself, “Well done old man… well done.”
At 7:30am, April 10th aboard Titanic, Captain Edward J. Smith boarded to fanfare, and why not? It was announced in every paper that while this was Titanic’s maiden voyage, it was also Smith’s last before retirement, and save for the accident while guiding Olympic, the troublesome one with the naval vessel Hawke, which had so delayed Titanic’s completion at Harland & Wolff, Smith had not a single mishap in his long career. So came a shrieking boson’s whistle followed by cheers, all proper naval protocol in welcoming Smith aboard under a brisk, cool morning wind.
Finally, Titanic with full crew wanted now to find the open sea. Officers William Murdoch and Charles Lightoller and others had spent the night on board. Once on the bridge and at the helm, after greeting all his officers, shaking hands with First Officer Murdoch and Second Officer Lightoller, Smith received the sailing report from Chief Officer Henry Wilde. All looked in order. In fact, by 8am, the entire crew stood on the foredeck while Officers Lightoller, Murdoch, and the ship’s physician and assistant physician mustered in every man—filling rosters in ledgers. His majesty’s Royal Navy had nothing on the White Star Line for keeping lists. Once mustering in was complete, Lightoller led a lifeboat drill cut short by orders brought to him from the bridge as Captain Smith realized how few lifeboats—sixteen wooden structures capable of holding sixty, perhaps seventy each—had been made available to his command. As a result, Smith decided it a rather unnecessary exercise that might just as well be conducted again after they were underway, if at all. Smith felt confident that what Ismay and Andrews had said about Olympic and Titanic was true—that she was indeed unsinkable; after all, when Olympic had struck The Hawke with such force, any other cruiser with so gaping a hole if of standard size surely would have sunk! But not Olympic, Titanic’s sister.
Titanic’s feel under his command seemed identical to Olympic. In fact, the larger sister ship would make the all-too familiar North Atlantic at this time of year a routine crossing. With a good wind at his back, it would be as easy for Smith as reciting a The Lord’s Prayer.
As a result of his orders to stand down on any lifeboat exercises at this time, Second Officer Lightoller ended his lessons of the morning rather abruptly, this after using only two starboard boats, Number 11 and 15. By now the clock had come around to 9:30am, so with second and third class boat-trains, what amounted to cargo vessels, now arriving, passengers had begun to board ship. This boarding of passengers continued until 11:30am as Trinity in the distance had coalesced in the human eye from a speck on the horizon to a beautiful schooner in full sail, racing toward Titanic at 17 knots.