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.
Many of the passengers aboard Titanic pointed to the teak-wood sailing ship that looked for all the world like the past trying to catch the future of shipping in these waters—a sense of sadness filtering into some who watched the merchant ship. She flew the Union Jack as did Titanic. But while Trinity might leave men with a sense of both wonder and longing for the open seas, Titanic left men in wonder at her sheer power, her size, and her speed alone. Titanic promised so much for the future of mankind, while making ships like Trinity obsolete relics of a fast disappearing past.
No schooner could possibly keep up with the White Star giants; no schooner could hold a tenth of what Titanic held in the way of ocean-going merchandise; no other ship, save the largest of the Cunard Line, could compete with a ship that had not one but three giant piston-operated, motorized propellers in the water.
By 11:30am, with the second and third class passengers in place, tucked away in the lower decks, came the arrival of the first-class boat-train, a far nicer transport than enjoyed by second and third class passengers. This train had arrived from London at dockside, and from it the first-class passengers were boarded in orderly fashion. Each party escorted to waiting cabins. By noon, Titanic was prepared to cast off.
From the bridge, the captain gave the order, and using a familiar signal, the great steam whistle, the necessary tug boats were given the go ahead to move the massive ship from the newly built dock, created especially for Olympic and Titanic.
All appeared in order as the tugs, working like bulldogs, moved the 53,000 tons called Titanic, and soon—perhaps too soon—the tugs had her in the River Test. She would soon be in a smooth downstream passage under her own steam. Cheers from the crowd gathered at the docks, and return cheers from every deck aboard Titanic, filled the air, sending birds screeching into the air. The noise only increased when onlookers and passengers alike saw that Titanic, a ship as large as the tallest of skyscrapers, free of the tugboats, was now operating under its own steam.
All the jubilation was suddenly cut short, replaced by gasps and then silenced when spectators saw how the water displaced by Titanic's movement parallel to the docks caused all six mooring ropes on a typical-sized ocean liner, belonging to a rival shipping line, to snap and break. This sent the Cunard line’s New York twisting, her stern to swinging wildly toward White Star’s Titanic. Quick orders from Captain Smith and swift action by Wilde at the wheel narrowly averted a collision with New York; in fact, they’d come within a mere four feet of scuttling New York and possibly damaging Titanic before she started her maiden voyage.
Alastair Ransom and others aboard Trinity thought it certain that Titanic would strike the standard-sized cruise liner near her. For an instant, Ransom imagined Titanic having to be towed back into Belfast for repairs. He pictured Titanic’s long, painful limping voyage back to Belfast. The White Star Line embarrassed again—as they had been with Olympic.
Alastair then imagined everyone spending this afternoon disembarking with rain checks to board the next White Star ship leaving for their destination—disappointing men like Titanic’s chief operating officer, J. Bruce Ismay, the architect, Thomas Andrews, John J. Astor and family as well as other prominent families, not to mention Major Butt, rumored to be on a secretive mission as an envoy to and from the
