Titanic by National Geographic Read Free Book Online Page B

fell away. Lord Pirrie gave a signal to release the final restraints, and
Titanic
moved for the first time. Overhead, signal flags on the gantry spelled “Good Luck.”
    Titanic
floated, but only as skeleton and skin. The process of “fitting out” required nearly a year. It included framing and furnishing rooms, raising four funnels, and doing everything necessary to prepare for sailing.
    Not a shilling was spared.
Titanic
boasted a heated swimming pool, Turkish bath, cafés with palm trees, a First Class dining saloon that could seat 554, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Marconi radio room intended not only to send safety messages at sea but also to please rich passengers who wanted to communicate with the shore.
    Workers rushed to finish applying final bits of paint and polish by March 31, 1912, the day 62-year-old Edward John Smith, captain on all White Star maiden voyages, came aboard to oversee
Titanic’
s sea trials. Smith announced this would be his last Atlantic crossing; upon his return to England, he would happily retire.
    Titanic
passed its sea tests and received certification from the British Board of Trade. It sailed to Southampton to take on coal and passengers.
    Passengers converged on Southampton’s docks on the morning of April 10. Crowds gawked at the giant, seemingly invulnerable ship. Passenger Sylvia Caldwell asked a deckhand, “Is this ship really nonsinkable?” He replied, “Yes, lady. God himself could not sink this ship.”
    Titanic
set sail at noon just as seven stokers, who had been drinking in a pub and lost track of time, ran for the ship but failed to get aboard. No doubt they felt disappointment.
    As the ship moved along Southampton’s River Test, it passed the berthed liner
New York
. Suction from
Titanic
yanked
New York
from the dock and snapped its mooring lines. Just before the smaller ship could be pulled into
Titanic
, Smith ordered a blast from his ship’s port propeller, opening a space between the two.
Titanic
narrowly avoided a collision.
    Titanic
then zipped to Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland. More passengers got on. Some got off.
    As the ship bid goodbye to Queenstown on April 11, debarking passenger Francis Browne snapped the last picture of
Titanic
afloat. With its stern to the camera, the lines of its decks and funnels converged toward the vanishing point of America. A crowd jammed the poop deck for a last look at the Old World.
    The ship then headed west and out of sight as a Third Class passenger played the sad Irish song “Erin’s Lament” on bagpipes.
    On April 14, the third day of the voyage, Captain Smith kept his normal Sunday routine by inspecting the ship but declined to conduct the boat drill that normally followed. He led a worship service and then met with his officers to fix the ship’s position. According to their calculations,
Titanic
averaged a sprightly 25 miles an hour.
    The setting sun lowered the temperature to freezing, and the sea’s surface shone like glass. A flat sea seemed safe, but it hid danger. Icebergs, common to the North Atlantic in spring, would be hard to spot without waves to break against their sides. Nevertheless,Smith kept the ship at full speed. He believed the crew could react in time to any bergs.
    Icebergs indeed lay ahead. By 7:30 p.m.,
Titanic
received five radio messages from nearby ships that warned of ice. Marconi wireless operator Jack Phillips took down a detailed ship’s message pinpointing the location of “heavy pack ice and a great number of bergs,” but Phillips, busy sending passengers’ personal messages, apparently did not show it to any officer. At 10:55 p.m., another ship,
Californian
, radioed to say it had come to a full stop amid dense field ice. Neither message began with the crucial code that would have required Phillips to show it to the captain, and Phillips was not in the mood for interruptions.
Californian’
s