The Triumvirate (eBook)

From his boyhood days until he was placed in command of the greatest liners in the world, he felt a strong attachment for the sailor’s life. He was a kindly, thoughtful and genial man. He never rose above his position, and I never knew him to forget that once he was listed on the ship’s books as merely an able seaman. He never forgot his friends and loved to cherish memories of the days spent in the little town in England.

He was never known to have flinched in the face of the most serious danger. The utmost confidence was always placed in him by the owners of the ships he commanded. He was thoroughly reliable and conscientious, and was loved by everyone who knew him. They could not help it, for he seemed to be a man who was a friend to all who understood him.1

Tall, full whiskered and broad. At first sight you would think to yourself, ‘Here’s a typical Western Ocean Captain. Bluff, hearty, and I’ll bet he’s got a voice like a foghorn.’ As a matter of fact, he had a pleasant quiet voice and invariable smile. A voice he rarely raised above a conversational tone – not to say he couldn’t; in fact, I have often heard him bark an order that made a man come to himself with a bump. He was a great favorite, and a man any officer would give his ears to sail under. I had been with him many years, off and on, in the mail boats, Majestic, mainly, and it was an education to see him con his own ship up through the intricate channels entering New York at full speed. One particularly bad corner, known as the South-West Spit, used to make us fairly flush with pride as he swung her round, judging his distances to a nicety; she heeling over to the helm with only a matter of feet to spare between each end of the ship and the banks.2

He came down to the pier and clapped his hand on my shoulder. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘they are making brave ships these days, and I am in charge of the bravest of them, but there will never be boats like the sailing ships we used to take out of Liverpool. Those were the clippers that made old England the queen of the seas.’ He said that the senior captain of the White Star fleet was a kindly, humorous, grave man, watchful from long sailing of the sudden and treacherous seas; gentle to those under him, but strict in the hour of duty.6

He was so different from the captain of the Finland, which vessel I took from New York to Antwerp on the outward trip across. The captain of the Finland was jolly and had plenty of time to converse with the passengers, but Captain Smith had little to say. He avoided talking with us although he was very courteous.

He made it a practice of speaking a kindly word to each man. It seemed to me that they would do anything for him. Captain Smith was always occupied. He spent but little time in his office, being at his post continually. The passengers did not meet him at meal time as he dined alone in a private apartment. He was my ideal of a captain. He was too occupied to say more than a few words when spoken to. From his accent I gathered that he was of Scotch descent.8

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We always made it a point to be together on trips across the ocean, and he took pride in informing me of new appliances which the ships upon which he was placed had … Captain Smith was a congenial old man, and one people could not help liking. I was with him last time last year when we crossed the ocean on the Olympic. The captain at that time said he expected to be put on the new Titanic, but expressed himself as preferring just a little to stay with the Olympic … Officers of the White Star Line and Captain Smith himself believed just as sincerely as anything that the boat [Titanic] could not sink.9

and that was hardly to be wondered at, for scarcely a well-known man or woman who crossed the Atlantic during the last twenty years but had at some time sat at his table. He read widely, but men more than books. He was a good listener, on the whole, although he liked to get in a yarn himself now and again, but he had scant patience with bores or people who ‘gushed’. I have seen him quell both …

He had lived his whole life on the sea and … used to laugh at us for talking as if we knew anything of its terrors in these days of floating hotels. He had served his apprenticeship in a rough school, and knew the sea and ships in their uncounted moods. He had an infinite respect – I think that is the right word – for the sea.

Absolutely fearless, he had no illusions as to man’s power in the face of the infinite. He would never prophesy an hour ahead. If you asked him about times of arrival, it was always ‘if all goes well’. I am sure now that he must have had many terrible secrets of narrowly averted tragedies locked away behind those sailor eyes of his.11

Late in the evening the captain’s boy would come with an invitation to his [Smith’s] room on the bridge, and I learned something of the things hidden away behind an exterior that some thought stern and grim. Those keen eyes of his had pierced far into the ugly side of life as it flaunts itself on the monster liner, but they had never lost their power of pity.

I saw him angry once, and that was when a passenger made a slighting remark about one of the captain’s old officers having gone wrong. ‘How do you know that’s true?’ he asked, sharply. ‘If you want to, you can always hear enough stories about every officer to ruin his reputation.’ And later on I found that Captain Smith knew that the story was all too true, and that he had given up one of his few, so highly...