Chapter 2 #2
For the next two days, they enjoyed the delights of the extraordinary ship.
Bert joined them for lunch again and he seemed more at ease around Victoria, and she was comfortable with him.
They walked around the deck several times and she made him laugh with her stories.
She knew he was widowed and had no children, but nothing else personal about him.
The fourth day was even colder than the days before, but Victoria took a brisk walk around the deck to get some air, and she had been invited to take a tour of the boat before lunch, to see the enormous galley and several behind-the-scenes spaces.
She met her father for lunch at their table.
Bert had said the night before that he had work to do.
He reappeared at teatime, and then disappeared with Alfred into the gentlemen’s lounge for cigars.
She didn’t think it was a good idea with his weak lungs and frowned at her father, but he winked at her, followed Bert from the room, and disappeared into the smoking room, where the men in first class took refuge to escape their wives.
She went back to the cabin to read, and eventually dress for dinner.
She wore a shimmering gold dress that night, with her mother’s diamond earrings, and Bert joined them for a brandy after dinner.
He would have liked to invite Victoria to go dancing, but didn’t think it was his place.
He was old enough to be her grandfather.
He was sixty-two years old, although he didn’t look it and was strong and vital, and she was twenty-three.
He thought people might be shocked and her father might not like it, so he didn’t ask, and when both men finished their brandies, they all went back to their staterooms. They had just walked into their cabins when the ship gave a sharp jolt, and then stopped.
It almost knocked Victoria off her feet and she grabbed the desk to steady herself.
She wasn’t worried about it, even when she looked out the porthole and saw an iceberg nearby.
The ship was said to be unsinkable and she had met Thomas Andrews, the ship’s architect, who had confirmed it.
When she looked outside, there were chunks of ice on the deck. She poked her head into the hall to see if anyone knew what had happened. She was still wearing her gold gown, and Bert came out of his room further down the hall and walked toward her, still fully dressed too.
“What was that?” she asked him, curious more than worried.
“I think we might have hit an iceberg, or shaved it a little too close,” Bert said. There were stewards hurrying down the hall, and they reassured the passengers that everything was fine.
Victoria put on her long sable coat and she and Bert went outside to look at the iceberg.
The ship had stopped. Others had gone out on deck, to pick up chunks of the ice that had fallen on the deck.
They were about to go back to their cabins, when they heard a grinding sound, and saw the lifeboats being lowered, and Bert and Victoria exchanged a look, and questioned one of the deckhands walking past, heading toward one of the lifeboat stations.
“Is this a drill?” Bert asked him, and he shook his head.
“No, sir, it’s not,” he said solemnly. As soon as he said it, an alarm sounded, which they had heard during a lifeboat drill on their first day as they left port.
“Put your life vests on,” the deckhand told them.
“Dress warm and go to your lifeboat station,” he said and hurried off, as Bert walked Victoria back to her cabin, and then went to change his clothes.
Victoria checked on her father. He was sitting in a chair, smoking a cigar, looking undisturbed.
“We have to go to our lifeboat stations, Papa. I think we hit an iceberg. They were lowering the lifeboats a few minutes ago.”
“It’s probably a drill,” he said, enjoying his cigar.
“Apparently not. Put on some warm clothes and your life vest. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She went to change into a thick wool dress and boots.
She put a heavy sweater over her dress, and took out a heavy wool coat she had worn on one of her walks around the deck.
She wasn’t going to wear her luxurious sable coat in a lifeboat and damage it.
And it seemed ostentatious for a lifeboat drill.
She put on a warm hat, grabbed a wool scarf and some gloves, and just in case it was for real, even though they said the ship was unsinkable, she grabbed the case with the jewelry she’d brought on the ship, most of it her mother’s, and shoved it deep into an inside pocket of her long coat.
She buttoned the coat and put her life vest on over it.
Her father was similarly dressed when she went back to his cabin, and they left his cabin together to go to their lifeboat station, which was the same as Bert’s.
She had seen him there the first day when she didn’t know who he was.
Now they were friends. Things happened quickly on a boat, and lasting friendships were formed more easily than on land.
People looked concerned. Two officers were standing by, and several deckhands, to help people into the boats.
“Women and children first,” one of the officers said, and for a moment no one moved.
“Why do we have to leave the boat?” someone asked. “Can’t they radio for help if there’s a problem?” No one had explained what the problem was, if there was one or if it was serious.
“They already did. Help is on the way.”
“If the boat is unsinkable, why can’t we just wait in our cabins?
It’s freezing out here,” someone said. There were chunks of ice in the water, and people were afraid the lifeboats would overturn and drop them into the freezing water.
For several minutes, no one stepped forward.
Suddenly Victoria remembered Bridget and Robert, their valet and maid in third class, and she asked if she could go and get them, and the officer told her they had their own lifeboat stations, and she needed to get into the lifeboat now.
Instead, Victoria took two giant steps backward and stood between her father and Bert.
“Get in the boat, Victoria,” her father said sternly, shivering in the cold. She took her own scarf off and wrapped it around his neck. “You heard the officer.”
“I’m not leaving you, Papa. I’ll get in the next one. The boat’s not going to sink, and I’m not leaving you.”
“You need to do as you’re told. I’ll be fine.
We’ll have a drink when they bring you back on board.
” It was one a.m. on a freezing cold night.
They could see other people getting into the lifeboats, and Victoria continued to stand at her father’s side.
She noticed that some of the other lifeboats were being lowered half empty into the water, with women and children in the lifeboats, and the men still standing on deck.
For the next hour, the lifeboats were loaded, in no particular order.
Some of the men got in with the women, others remained on deck, promising their women they would come in the next one.
Some of the officers in charge allowed men to get in the lifeboats if there was room for them, others didn’t, and as a result, many of the boats were lowered half empty.
It was obvious that the situation was serious, and the bow of the ship had begun pointing nose down, as people began to understand the gravity of the situation, and the deckhands helped passengers into the boats with greater urgency.
“Come with me, Papa,” Victoria said to her father. “You’ve been sick, I’m not leaving you here.”
“I’m not going to push women and children out of the way.
I’ll get the next one. You have to go now,” he said in a voice of command she had never heard him use before, and she realized that he was afraid for her.
She didn’t want to upset him. She hugged him tight, and Bert lifted her into the lifeboat, then took a step back to stand with her father.
The last thing Victoria saw on the deck of the Titanic was her father and Bert standing together side by side, as the lifeboat she was in was lowered to the water, and hit it hard.
She could see other boats still coming down, some almost empty.
She could no longer see her father and Bert, and hoped they had gotten into the next boat, as her father had promised.
She hoped he didn’t get pneumonia again from being out in the cold for hours.
Once the lifeboat she was in touched the water, she could see the bow of the enormous ship pointing down into the sea, the stern raised above the surface, and she realized that it was going down.
It was two a.m. They were somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, and she had no idea how far they were from land.
The lifeboat rocked every time someone moved.
There were women and children in the boat she was in, and she kept looking up at the lifeboats being lowered, wondering which one her father was in, and if Bert was with him.
All she could think of now was her father as she clung to her seat, and stared at the enormous ship, with its stern high in the air.
She saw someone dive off the back of it into the freezing water.
When the lifeboat Victoria was in was lowered out of sight, Bert and Alfred walked to the next lifeboat station where they were still filling one of the last boats.
They almost didn’t get all the women and children in, and after they finally did, Bert gave Alfred a hand to help him in.
Alfred looked at the younger man, and shook his head.
“I’m not going,” he said in a low voice, and Bert looked shocked.
“You have to, for Victoria. You can’t leave her like this.”