Shadow of the Titanic (eBook)

One

A FANCY-DRESS BALL IN
DANTE's HELL

Sunday, April 14, 1912, dawned bright and clear. There was a feeling of optimism in the air, a sense that anything was possible. The ship seemed to glide over a sea of glass. For first-class passenger Colonel Archibald Gracie, the RMS Titanic was a 'floating palace,'1 a high-class hotel that cut through the waters of the Atlantic with a majesty and power he had never experienced before. As he stood on the first-class deck, he noticed that the sea was so level he could barely make out a ripple.

Since Wednesday, when the ship had departed Southampton on its maiden voyage to New York, Gracie had taken advantage of every luxury. After all, this was a liner that had cost $7.5 million to build, a ship that carried 800 bundles of asparagus, one and a quarter tons of fresh green peas, 36,000 oranges and 16,000 lemons, 75,000 pounds of fresh meat, 11,000 pounds of fresh fish, 4,000 pounds of bacon and ham, 7,500 pounds of game and poultry, 1,000 sweetbreads, 40,000 sausages, 40,000 fresh eggs, 6,000 pounds of fresh butter, not to mention the 1,500 bottles of wine, the 20,000 bottles of beer and stout, or the 850 bottles of spirits. For the gentlemen on board there were 8,000 cigars, which they could enjoy while discussing the news of the day.

It's not surprising then that on that Sunday morning, after a few days of self-indulgence, Colonel Gracie felt he should take a spot of exercise. He rose early, before breakfast, and played a half-hour game of squash with Fred Wright, the professional racket instructor, followed by a swim in the heated saltwater swimming pool. The exercise refreshed his body and his spirit, erasing, for a few moments at least, a slight uneasiness that hung over him. 'The pleasure and comfort which all of us enjoyed ... seemed an ominous feature to many of us, including myself,' he said, 'who felt it almost too good to last without some terrible retribution inflicted by the hand of an angry omnipotence.'2

Lady Duff Gordon--the London-based couturier known as 'Lucile'--remembers how extraordinary it was to see and taste strawberries in April in mid-ocean, while another first-class passenger, Marjorie Newell Robb, was still able to recall in 1981, at the age of ninety-two, the feel of 'carpets that you could sink in up to your knees,' the 'fine furniture that you could barely move,' and the 'very fine panelling and carving.'3 Many second-class passengers spent their time riding between floors in the elevator, which was described as 'a great new attraction on the boat.'4 The tang of novelty hung in the air--in fact, one could even smell it. In a letter second-class passenger Marion Wright wrote to her father from the ship on April 11, she said, 'It is lovely on the water, except for the smell of new paint, everything is very comfortable on board.'5

For thirteen-year-old Madeleine Mellenger (later Mann) the ship was nothing short of a floating miracle. She was traveling with her mother, Elizabeth Anne, in second class to make a new life for themselves in America. Her father, Claude Alexander Mellenger, a London journalist, had brought the family to the point of ruin through years of what she later described as 'his extravagance and high living.' After Mellenger finally deserted them, Elizabeth was forced to take a position as a lady's maid and traveling companion with the wealthy Colgate family of America. For Madeleine, the Titanic became a...