Irish Aboard Titanic (51 page)

What follows is an extract from Lawrence Beesley's
T
he Loss of the SS Titanic,
1912. This piece is an unrivalled evocation of land and sea, what it is like to be on a ship, and the optimism of a journey begun. But it also counterpoints the splendour of the
Titanic
with nature's own prowess, and in reference to the evolving sport of aviation, points to a threat to the golden age of the luxurious liners profoundly more potent than any iceberg or individual disaster.

The coast of Ireland looked very beautiful as we approached Queenstown Harbour, the brilliant morning sun showing up the green hillsides and picking out groups of dwellings dotted here and there above the rugged grey cliffs that fringed the coast. We took on board our pilot, ran slowly towards the harbour with the sounding-line dropped all the time, and came to a stop well out to sea, with out screws churning up the bottom and turning the sea all brown with sand from below. It had seemed to me that the ship stopped rather suddenly, and in my ignorance of the depth of the harbour entrance, that perhaps the sounding-line had revealed a smaller depth than was thought safe for the great size of the
Titanic
; this seemed to be confirmed by the sight of sand churned up from the bottom – but this is mere supposition.

Passengers and mails were put on board from two tenders, and nothing could have given us a better idea of the enormous length and bulk of the
Titanic
than to stand as far astern as possible and look over the side from the top deck, forwards and downwards to where the tenders rolled at her bows, the merest cockle-shells beside the majestic vessel that rose deck after deck above them. Truly she was a magnificent boat! There was something so graceful in her movement as she rode up and down on the slight swell in the harbour, a slow, stately dip and recover, only noticeable by watching her bows in comparison with some landmark on the coast in the near distance; the two little tenders tossing up and down like corks beside her illustrated vividly the advance made in comfort of motion from the time of the small steamer.

Presently the work of transfer was ended, the tenders cast off, and at 1.30 p.m., with the screws churning up the sea bottom again, the
Titanic
turned slowly through a quarter-circle until her nose pointed down along the Irish coast, and then steamed rapidly away from Queenstown, the little house on the left of the town gleaming white on the hillside for many miles astern. In our wake soared and screamed hundreds of gulls, which had quarrelled and fought over the remnants of lunch pouring out of the waste pipes as we lay-to in the harbour entrance; and now they followed us in the expectation of further spoil. I watched them for a long time and was astonished at the ease with which they soared and kept up with the ship with hardly a motion of their wings; picking out a particular gull, I would keep him under observation for minutes at a time and see no motion of his wings downwards or upwards to aid his flight. He would tilt all of a piece to one side or another as the gusts of wind caught him: rigidly unbendable, as an airplane tilts sideways in a puff of wind. And yet with graceful ease he kept pace with the
Titanic
forging through the water at twenty knots: as the wind met him he would rise upwards and obliquely forwards, and come down slantingly again, his wings curved in a beautiful arch and his tail feathers outspread as a fan.

It was plain he was possessed of a secret we are only just beginning to learn – that of utilising air-currents as escalators up and down which he can glide at will with the expenditure of the minimum amount of energy, or of using them as a ship does when it sails within one or two points of a head wind. Aviators, of course, are imitating the gull, and soon perhaps we may see an airplane or a glider dipping gracefully up and down in the face of an opposing wind and all the time forging ahead across the Atlantic Ocean.

The gulls were still behind us when night fell, and still they screamed and dipped down into the broad wake of foam which we left behind; but in the morning they were gone: perhaps they had seen in the night a steamer bound for their Queenstown home and had escorted her back.

All afternoon we steamed along the coast of Ireland, with grey cliffs guarding the shores, and hills rising behind gaunt and barren; as dusk fell, the coast rounded away from us to the northwest, and the last we saw of Europe was the Irish mountains, dim and faint in the dropping darkness.

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Senan Molony

Senan Molony is the Political Editor of the 
Irish Daily Mail,
 and is the author of several books, including 
Titanic: Victims & Villains, Titanic and the Mystery Ship, Titanic Scandal: The Trial of the Mount Temple and Lusitania, an Irish Tragedy,
 the latter also published by Mercier, along with 
The Phoenix Park Murders.
 Honoured at the inaugural National Newspapers of Ireland journalism awards in October 2011, he is a lecturer on the centenary re-creation of 
Titanic'
s
 maiden voyage.

http://www.mercierpress.ie/senanmolony