Thunderstruck

vessels, and the Montrose, despite its age and modest decor, carried the latest apparatus.

TO BE SUCCESSFUL, KENDALL knew, a captain needed more than skill at navigation and ship-handling. He had to dress well, be charming, and possess a knack for conversation, while also owning the mental wherewithal to monitor a thousand operational details, including whether the lifeboats were adequately secured, whether the correct foods and wines had come aboard, and—a new responsibility—whether the ship’s Marconi set and aerial were in good repair and ready to receive the inevitable flurry of trivial messages that engulfed a liner upon departure. Although the jokes, bon voyages, and riddles were utterly predictable, they nonetheless reflected the wonder with which people still treated this new and almost supernatural means of communication. First-time passengers often seemed mesmerized by the blue spark fired with each touch of the key and the crack of miniature thunder that followed, though shipping lines had learned from experience that wonderment faded quickly for passengers whose cabins were too close to the wireless room. They learned too that it was prudent to locate Marconi sets a good distance from the wheelhouse so as not to distort the magnetic field registered by the ship’s compass.

Before each voyage Kendall tried to read as many newspapers as he could to keep himself up to date on current events and thereby arm himself to meet his nightly obligation to host guests at his table. Amazing things were happening in the world, so there was a lot to talk about. A year earlier Louis Bleriot had flown his airplane across the English Channel, from Calais to Dover. While on display at Selfridge’s department store, the craft drew 120,000 admirers. Science seemed foremost on people’s minds; talk of X-rays, radiation, vaccines, and so forth infused dinner conversation. If such talk ever lagged, there was always the compelling subject of Germany, which by the day seemed to grow more pompous and bellicose. Another foolproof way to inject life, if not violence, into a moribund conversation was to comment upon the apparent decline of morality, as made evident most shockingly in Bernard Shaw’s recent play, Misalliance, which Beatrice Webb, the social reformer, called “brilliant but disgusting,” with “everyone wishing to have sexual intercourse with everyone else.” If all the above failed to ignite a good conversation, one could always talk about ghosts. The whole country seemed engaged in the hunt for proof of an afterlife, with the exploits of the venerable Society for Psychical Research often in the news. And if by chance a conversation became too heated, too lively, one could recall anew how one felt upon the death of King Edward and remark upon how eerie it was that Halley’s comet should appear at nearly the same time.

Shortly before his passengers were due to board, Kendall bought a copy of the continental edition of London’s Daily Mail, an English-language newspaper distributed in Europe. The edition was full of fresh detail about the North London Cellar Murder and the escalating search for two suspects, a doctor and his lover. Back in London, the ship had been visited by two officers from Scotland Yard’s Thames Division, patrolling the wharves in hopes of thwarting the couple’s escape.

Everyone loved a mystery. Kendall knew at once that this would be the mainstay of conversation throughout the voyage—not aircraft or dead kings or haunted country houses, but murder at its most loathsome.

The question at the fore: Where were the fugitive lovers now?

THE JOURNEY BEGAN IN TYPICAL fashion, with Kendall greeting his second-class passengers as they came aboard. Passengers always seemed at their best at the start of a voyage. They dressed well, and their faces bore an appealing flush of excitement and apprehension. They stepped from the boarding ramp carrying few belongings, but this did not mean they were traveling light. The bulk of their baggage—typically multiple trunks and valises— was stowed belowdecks or delivered to their staterooms. Many chose to keep with them a small carrying case containing their most important belongings, such as personal papers, jewels, and keepsakes. Nothing about the passengers struck Kendall as unusual.

The Montrose eased from the wharf amid the usual squall of white handkerchiefs and began making its way down the River Scheldt toward the North Sea. Stewards helped passengers find the ship’s library and its dining room and lounges, known as “saloons.” Despite the modest proportions of the Montrose, its second-class travelers felt as pampered as they would have felt on the Lusitania. The stewards—and stewardesses—brought blankets and books to passengers, and took orders for tea, Belgian cocoa, and scotch, and carried pads and envelopes upon which passengers could write messages for transmission via the Marconi room. Kendall made it a point to stroll the deck several times a day looking for untidy uniforms, tarnished fittings, and other problems, and trying always to greet passengers by name, a good memory being another attribute necessary for the captain of a liner.

Three hours into the voyage Kendall saw two of his passengers lingering by a lifeboat. He knew them to be the Robinsons, father and son, returning to America. Kendall walked toward them, then stopped.

They were holding hands, he saw, but not in the manner one might expect of father and son, if indeed one could ever expect a boy on the verge of manhood to hold hands with his father. The boy squeezed the man’s hand with an intensity that suggested a deeper intimacy. It struck Kendall as “strange and unnatural.”

He paused a moment, then continued walking until he came abreast of the two. He stopped and wished them a pleasant morning. As he did so, he took careful note of their appearance. He smiled, wished them a fine voyage, and moved on.

He said nothing about the passengers to his officers or crew but as a precaution ordered the stewards to gather up every newspaper on the ship and lock them away. He kept a revolver in his cabin for the worst kinds of emergencies; now he placed it in his pocket.

“I did not do anything further that day or take any steps because I wanted before raising an alarm to make sure I was making no mistake.”

WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS CAPTAIN Kendall would discover that his ship had become the most famous vessel afloat and that he himself had become the subject of breakfast conversation from Broadway in New York to Piccadilly in London. He had stepped into the intersection of two wildly disparate stories, whose collision on his ship in this time, the end of the Edwardian era, would exert influence on the world for the century to come.

DISTRACTION

IN THE ARDENTLY HELD VIEW of one camp, the story had its rightful beginning on the night of June 4, 1894, at 21 Albemarle Street, London, the address of the Royal Institution. Though one of Britain’s most august scientific bodies, it occupied a building of modest proportion, only three floors. The false columns affixed to its facade were an afterthought, meant to impart a little grandeur. It housed a lecture hall, a laboratory, living quarters, and a bar where members could gather to discuss the latest scientific advances.

Inside the hall, a physicist of great renown readied himself to deliver the evening’s presentation. He hoped to startle his audience, certainly, but otherwise he had no inkling that this lecture would prove the most important of his life and a source of conflict for decades to come. His name was Oliver Lodge, and really the outcome was his own fault—another manifestation of what even he acknowledged to be a fundamental flaw in how he approached his work. In the moments remaining before his talk, he made one last check of an array of electrical apparatus positioned on a demonstration table, some of it familiar, most unlike anything seen before in this hall.

Outside on Albemarle Street the police confronted their usual traffic problem. Scores of carriages crowded