Titanic

"THE SHIP OF DREAMS"

The gleaming white superstructure of Titanic rises mountainous beyond the rail, and above that the buff-colored funnels stand against the sky like the pillars of a great temple. Crewmen move across the deck, dwarfed by the awesome scale of the steamer.

Southampton, England, April 10, 1912. It is almost noon on ailing day. A crowd of hundreds blackens the pier next to Titanic like ants on a jelly sandwich.

On the pier horse drawn vehicles, motorcars and lorries move slowly through the dense throng. The atmosphere is one of excitement and general giddiness. People embrace in tearful farewells, or wave and shout bon voyage wishes to friends and relatives on the decks above.

A white Renault, leading a silver-gray Daimler Benz, pushes through the crowd leaving a wake in the press of people. Around the handsome cars people are streaming to board the ship, jostling with hustling seamen and stokers, porters, and barking WHITE STAR LINE officials.

The Renault stops and the driver scurries to open the door for a young woman dressed in a stunning white and purple outfit, with an enormous feathered hat. She is 17 years old and beautiful, regal of bearing, with piercing eyes.

It is the girl in the drawing. Rose. She looks up at the ship, taking it in with cool appraisal. "I don't see what all the fuss is about. It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauretania." A personal valet opens the door on the other side of the car for Caledon Hockley, the 30 year old heir to the elder Hockley's fortune. "Cal" as he likes to be called, is handsome, arrogant and rich beyond meaning. "You can be blaze about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic. It's over a hundred feet longer than Mauretania, and far more luxurious. It has squash courts, a Parisian cafe... even Turkish baths."

Cal turns and gives his hand to Rose's mother, Ruth Dewitt Bukater, who descends from the touring car being him. Ruth is a forty five year old society empress, from one of the most prominent Philadelphia families. She is a widow, and rules her household with iron will. "Your daughter is much too hard to impress, Ruth." Cal says. "So this is the ship they say is unsinkable." Ruth says. "It is unsinkable. God himself couldn't sink this ship." Cal speaks with the pride of a host providing a special experience.

This entire entourage of rich Americans is impeccably turned out, a quintessential example of the Edwardian upper class, complete with servants. Cal's valet, Spicer Lovejoy, is tall and impassive, dour as an undertaker. Behind him emerge Two maids, personal servants to Ruth and Rose. A porter scurries toward them, harried by last minute loading. "Sir, you'll have to check your baggage through the main terminal, round that way--"

Cal nonchalantly hands the man a fiver. The porter's eyes dilate. Five pounds was a monster tip in those days. "I put my faith in you, good sir. See my man." The porter nods eagerly, "Yes, sir. My pleasure, sir." Cal never tires of the effect of money on the unwashed masses. "These trunks here, and 12 more in the Daimler. We'll have all this lot up in the rooms."

The White Star man looks stricken when he sees the enormous pile of steamer trunks and suitcases loading down the second car, including wooden crates and steel safe. He whistles frantically for some cargo-handlers nearby who come running. Cal breezes on, leaving the minions to scramble. He quickly checks his pocket watch. "We'd better hurry. This way, ladies."

He indicates the way toward the first class gangway. They move into the crowd. Trudgy Bolt, Rose's maid, hustles behind them, laden with bags of her mistress's most recent purchases... things too delicate for the baggage handlers. Cal leads, weaving between vehicles and handcarts, hurrying passengers (mostly second class and steerage) and well-wishers. Most of the first class passengers are avoiding the smelly press of the dockside crowd by using an elevated boarding bridge, twenty feet above. They pass a line of steerage passengers in their coarse wool and tweeds, queued up inside movable barriers like cattle in a chute. A health officer examines their heads one by one, checking scalp and eyelashes for lice.

They pass a well-dressed young man cranking the handle of a wooden Biograph "cinematograph" camera mounted on a tripod. Daniel Marvin, whose father founded the Biograph Film Studio. He is filming his young bride in front of the Titanic. Mary Marviin stands stiffly and smiles, self conscious. "Look up at the ship, darling, that's it. You're amazed! You can't believe how big it is! Like a mountain. That's great." Mary Marvin, without an acting fiber in her body, does a bad Clara Bow pantomime of awe, hands raised.

Cal is jostled by two yelling steerage boys who shove past him. And he is bumped again a second later by the boys' father. "Steady!!"

"Sorry squire!" The father pushes on, after his kids, shouting. "Steerage swine. Apparently missed his annual bath." Cal muttered in disgust. Ruth scoffs, "Honestly, Cal, if you weren't forever booking everything at the last instant, we could have gone through the terminal instead of running along the dock like some squalid immigrant family."

Cal tsks, "All part of my charm, Ruth. At any rate, it was my darling fiancee's beauty rituals which made us late."

Rose turns to him, "You told me to change." "I couldn't let you wear black on sailing day, sweet pea. It's bad luck." "I felt like black." She muttered

Cal guides them out of the path of a horse-drawn wagon loaded down with two tons of Oxford Marmalade, in wooden cases, for Titanic's Victualing Department. "Here I've pulled every string I could to book us on the grandest ship in history, in her most luxurious suites... and you act as if you're going to your execution." Rose looks up as the hull of Titanic looms over them...a great iron wall, Bible black and severe. Cal motions her forward, and she enters the gangway to the D Deck doors with a sense of overwhelming dread.

Old Rose sighs, "It was the ship of dreams... to everyone else. To me it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains."

Cal reaches possessively over Rose's arm. He escorts her up the gangway and the black hull of Titanic swallows them.

"Outwardly I was everything a well brought up girl should be. Inside, I was screaming." Old Rose says.