Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo (32 page)

The shock, cold, and horror they had witnessed rendered many mute, their senses numb.

At 8:30 A.M., Lifeboat 12, the last still afloat, was secured and the survivors unloaded. Harold Bride, the brave wireless operator from
Titanic,
had stayed on his station until the last possible instant, radioing the distress calls to sea. Ordered into a lifeboat, he had survived the ordeal.

Crewmen from Carpathia pulled him from the last lifeboat as much dead as alive. As soon as he reached the deck, Bride collapsed. The surgeon on
Carpathia
would need to administer stimulants to revive him enough to tell his story.

Captain Rostron had the 705 survivors safely on board—now what would he do with them? The
Olympic, Titanic’s
sister ship, was drawing nearer. She radioed
Carpathia
and offered to take survivors on board.

“Absolutely not,” Rostron told Second Officer Dean. “Can you imagine the shock to the survivors if they saw a near mirror image of their sunken vessel come alongside and ask them to come aboard? These people have suffered enough.”

“What, then, Captain?” Dean asked.

“New York,” Rostron said quietly. “We turn around and take them home.”

“Very good, sir,” Dean said.

“But first have the clergy aboard come to the bridge,” Rostron said.

THE SUN WAS burning brightly over the scene of the disaster at 8:50 A.M.

After a brief multidenominational ceremony to honor the dead, there was nothing more
Carpathia
could do. Captain Rostron ordered a course set for New York City.

At full steam,
Carpathia
was four days away.

A CROWD NUMBERING ten thousand milled around the Battery in New York City as
Carpathia
steamed past the Statue of Liberty, carrying the
Titanic
survivors. Captain Rostron had no way of knowing how much the story of the sinking of the great liner had captivated the public’s attention.

“Look at the crowds,” Rostron said to Dean, who stood alongside him on the bridge.

“That’s the last thing the survivors need,” Dean said quietly. Rostron nodded. The last few days had given him an opportunity to observe some of the survivors firsthand. Most were still suffering from a deep shock. Captain Rostron had noted two distinct feelings. The first was surprise. Surprise at how quickly they had been thrown from a floating palace into a freezing hell. The second was grief, tinged with remorse. Grief that others had died; remorse that they had somehow survived.

“I want you to take charge of boarding at quarantine,” Rostron said to Dean, “and keep the reporters from boarding.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said.

Rostron knew this was but a stopgap. Once
Carpathia
was moored along the White Star Pier on the East River and the survivors had disembarked, there was nothing he would be able to do to protect them from the hordes. Still, he wanted to give them as much time as possible to collect their thoughts.

UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN had fared better than most. Her hardscrabble existence in the mining camps of Colorado had given her an inner strength on which she could call in times of trouble. Even so, as
Carpathia
left quarantine and steamed up the East River, surrounded by tugboats and pleasure craft, she realized she was party to an event that defined an era. The great industrial age of which she was a part had shown its rotting underbelly. The ship that “God himself could not sink” lay far below the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, and people would no longer place their faith blindly in the creations of man.

Spitting into the water alongside, she turned to a crewman nearby.

“From this day forward,” she said, “I shall always be defined by what happened.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Brown?” the crewman asked.

“Whatever I do in the future will pale,” Brown said, “and when I die, the first sentence they write will be that I was a survivor of
Titanic.”

“You and the others,” the crewman agreed.

“I wonder why I lived when others died?” Brown said.

“I think,” the crewman said quietly, “that that is a question only God can answer.”

AT 8:37,
CARPATHIA
began unloading the
Titanic’s
lifeboats so she could moor. At 9:35 Thursday evening, she was finally tied fast, and the journey was at an end. Captain Rostron had done all he could. He and the entire crew of
Carpathia
had performed their jobs with honor.

“Lower the gangplank,” Rostron ordered.

Three minutes later, the first survivors struggled onto land. Not one of the survivors imagined their savior would meet a similar fate.

SIX YEARS LATER

A pair of tugs began pushing
Carpathia
from the pier in Liverpool. July 15, 1918, was a typical summer day in Great Britain—it was raining. But it was not the type of rain that plagued the island in the North Sea in winter, spring, and fall. This sprinkle was a halfhearted affair, lacking purpose and strength. At first it came from the north, then switched directions from east to west. It ebbed and flowed like a dying tide, at times opening to pockets of sunlight and dry air.

Captain William Prothero stood on the bridge as the tugs pushed his ship from port.

The Great War that now enveloped Europe had begun nearly four years before, yet it was only some fifteen months since the United States had entered the conflict. The prowling German submarines had finally wrested the country from neutrality. The
Lusitania
had been sunk in 1915, scores of other ships since. At first the German submarines were an annoyance, now they were threatening the very concept of open seas. Losses of 100,000 tons a month had now grown to nearly a million, with no end in sight. Cargo ships, passenger carriers, warships—all were fair game for the fleet of German U-boats.

Captain Prothero was a stout man with a black mustache that perched on his upper lip like a bristle brush. Those who served under him found him to be a consummate professional, firm but fair. While Prothero believed in protocol, he was not without a sense of humor.

“I hear there’s a chance of rain later,” he said to his second officer, John Smyth.

“In England?” Smyth said, smiling. “In summer? I find that hard to believe.”

Prothero thanked a steward who entered the bridge with a silver pot of tea, then poured himself a cup and added milk and sugar. “Would you check with the wireless shack,” he said to Smyth, “and see if they have received the latest warnings?”

“Very good, sir,” Smyth said.

Prothero sipped the tea and stared at his chart. The thought of German submarines was never far from his mind. They hid in wait off the ports until the ships had cleared and were in deep enough water to make salvage impossible. To reduce their losses, the Allies had taken to traveling in convoys with gunboat escorts, zigzagging through the water like snakes and running their vessels at the fastest possible speed so they might outrun any torpedoes that were fired. Even so, hardly a day went by when a ship was not sunk or fired at. The battle in the North Atlantic was a watery war of attrition.

A BEAM OF light pierced the clouds and lit a patch of water directly ahead of
U-55.
Commander Gerhart Werner stared at the patch of sea through his binoculars.
U-Boat 55,
like most in the German fleet, spent a great deal of time above water— in fact, as much as was safely possible. Batteries could be recharged while it surfaced, fresh air allowed into the always foul-smelling hull.

No matter what Werner and his crew tried, there was no way to wash away the smell of diesel fuel, sweaty bodies, and fear that permeated every square inch of the inside of
U-55.
The smell was part of the duty, and the duty was hazardous at best.

Werner turned his binoculars from the spot of light and scanned the horizon. Five days before,
U-55
had managed to board a small cargo ship at sea off Cork, and he was hoping for another. Before scuttling the vessel, the Germans had raided the stores for fresh food. Ham and bacon, potatoes, and some dairy. The confiscated food was a welcome change for his crew. For the most part, they survived off tins of meat and cans of vegetables from their pantry. At times the cook could make fresh bread, but it was not often—flour soon went bad in the galley, and yeast grew a strange fungus that looked like fur.

Submarine duty was not for a budding gourmet.

Swiveling in the conning tower, he turned to the stem. There a seaman was reeling in a perforated barrel they had been dragging behind on a line. The crew’s clothes were inside, along with a measure of powdered soap. After being agitated by the current and rinsed by the seawater, the barrel was being brought back on deck so the clothes could be unloaded and hung from a line running from the conning tower to a stern support.

Wemer stared to the west, where the sky was clearing. Hopefully, the weather would hold and no ships would approach. Then the clothes would have a chance to dry some before they needed to dive once again. Just then, Second Officer Franz Dieter climbed through the hatch in the conning tower with a folded slip of paper in his hands. Saluting Werner, he handed him the paper.

“There is a convoy assembling off Liverpool,” Werner said.

“Yes, sir,” Dieter said.

“That means they are still several hours away,” Werner noted. “Have the men check the torpedoes and the batteries, and mop the inner deck. Then allow them to rotate topside four at a time. Provided no ships pass by, each group will be allowed to spend ten minutes in the fresh air.”

“Yes, sir,” Dieter said, climbing below.

CARPATHIA
STEAMED THROUGH the Irish Sea approaching Carmel Head. In the next few hours, she would enter St. George’s Channel, then follow the curve of Ireland along her southern shore. Once past Fastnet Rock on the southeast tip, the convoy would set a course west for Boston.

Captain Prothero stepped from the bridge and glanced back at the stern. Now that they had reached cruising speed, the powerful twin-screws of his command whipped the water into a foamy froth that trailed behind the vessel for nearly a mile. Far to the rear, past six other ships of the convoy, was a trailing British destroyer. Far to the front, nearly a half-mile distant, was the leading destroyer. The destroyers would stay with them through St. George’s before turning back.

After that, the convoy of seven needed to rely on themselves.
Carpathia
had been selected as commodore ship for the trip across the Atlantic Ocean, and with good reason—Prothero was a skilled captain who had made the crossing many times before. Last year, while captain of
Carpathia,
he’d had the honor of transporting the first American troops to Great Britain to join the Great War. After safely dropping off the soldiers,
Carpathia
had been on her way to London to replenish her stores when a torpedo had fired off Star Point. Prothero had ordered an evasive action and the torpedo had run past
Carpathia,
instead striking a U.S. oil tanker running nearby.

Another incident bears noting. Not long after the near miss by the torpedo, Prothero saw what he thought was a lifeboat on the water. Watching through his glasses, he was surprised to see a German U-boat surface nearby to retrieve the object. Prothero reported that the Germans were using decoys, thus saving a few more ships.

In short, there were few captains with the breadth of experience possessed by Prothero.

COMMANDER WERNER HAD yet to leave the conning tower. His people were farmers, and his ancestral genes were used to open spaces. The cramped inner hull of a U-boat was as foreign to him as Chinese fireworks, so he spent as much time abovedecks as possible. Even with his dislike of confined spaces, Werner was a competent leader.

He and the crew of
U-55
had more than a handful of kills under their belt.

“That’s the last of the rotation,” Dieter said. “The men are now being fed in shifts.”

“What’s our location?” Werner inquired. “Still approximately a hundred miles off Fastnet Rock,” Dieter noted.

“It will be night soon,” Werner said, “so we might as well remain above water. Why don’t you take the first watch?”

“Yes, sir,” Dieter said.

“Unless we see something that makes me change my mind,” Werner said, “we’ll just wait for the next convoy to happen along.”

Werner began climbing down the ladder in the center of the conning tower.

“Sir?” Dieter said.

“Yes, Dieter,” Werner said, pausing.

“We’re down to four torpedoes.”

“Duly noted,” Werner said.

WHEN
CARPATHIA
PASSED Fastnet Rock, it was 11 P.M. and pitch black.

Already, there had been trouble. One of the ships in the convoy was having problems maintaining speed. She could make the prescribed ten knots, but when she did, the huge volumes of smoke from her funnels could be seen nearly twenty miles away.

Prothero knew that at sunrise they would be sixty miles into the Atlantic Ocean, and if the skies were clear, the plume of smoke would be a beacon to any nearby U-boats. The captain of the vessel reported that his engineers were working on the problem with little result, and Prothero knew it was a lost cause. Most likely the ship’s bunkers were filled with bad coal. There was no way to change that while at sea.

Prothero walked
Carpathia’s
passageways toward his cabin.

He would deal with the problem in the morning.

IT SMELLED LIKE feet. Werner’s pillow smelled like feet. Rolling over on his back, he stared at the deck above his hammock bunk. As soon as these last four torpedoes were expended, U-55 could make her way back to the submarine base at Bremerhaven for a long-needed cleaning and refit. Hopefully, he would receive enough liberty time to go home and see his wife. His wife was a fine cook and housekeeper—her house never smelled of feet—and she had yet to serve Werner meat from a can.