Black Man on the Titanic - Serge Bile

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articles from France and Canada focused on the tragedy experienced by the family of Joseph Laroche.

      Father Roger Tabard allowed me to consult the archives of Congrégation du Saint-Esprit and gather the information needed to write about the functioning of the school attended by Joseph Laroche: the roles of the priests, of the administration, of the teachers. I didn’t find much about Joseph Laroche himself, besides the eulogy I mention in the book, but the wealth of information allowed for a more detailed account.

      While writing The Black Man on the Titanic, I have occasionally added my personal spin to the story, mostly to fill in gaps as best I could, but I have done my best to make it a truthful story.

      Serge Bilé

      Cherbourg1, April 19, 1996. An elderly woman is clutching a small black purse in her lap. The purse is black, as is the long coat she is wearing this afternoon. Black is appropriate, because she is still in mourning, eighty-four years after the sinking of the Titanic. Sitting on an iron chair, alone, under the gaze of a sympathetic crowd, she has just unveiled a plaque in memory of the 281 passengers who boarded the famous ocean liner during its stopover in Normandy. The plaque, covered with a blue cloth, is affixed to a headstone made of granite and shaped like a menhir, pointing toward the sky.

      Not a word, not a movement. The woman is silent. She seems frozen, both submerged and crushed by emotion. Her face is contorted, but no tears stream down her cheeks. Her lips shape into a scream, but no sound escapes.

      Eighty-four years ago, Louise Laroche2 was on this same dock, at Ancien-Arsenal.

      This is where passengers boarded the two ferries that took them to the Titanic, a colossal ship anchored off the coast, outside the harbor. Two strong arms had lifted her aboard. It should have been the beginning of an unforgettable voyage, the trip of a lifetime.

      Eighty-four years later, her muscles bent by age and hardship, Louise Laroche is looking everywhere, on the dock, on the ocean, among the people, searching for the slightest memory, but to no avail. She cannot remember anything.

      How could it be otherwise? She was not even two years old when it all happened. And nothing is the same. The dock itself has been renamed after Lawton-Collins3, an American general. Lawton-Collins, they told her, was in charge of the Seventh Army Corps that landed on June 6, 1944, not far away, on Utah Beach. He and his men freed Cherbourg.

      Cherbourg

      The second largest man-made harbor in the world at the time, Cherbourg-Octeville was the first stop on the Titanic’s maiden voyage. Titanic arrived in Cherbourg in the late afternoon. Two tenders, Nomadic and Traffic, transported 281 passengers from the dock to the fated liner which was moored in Cherbourg’s harbor. The dock was later renamed after an American General by the name of Lawton-Collins whose men freed Cherbourg during World War II. In Cherbourg, a plaque was unveiled by Louise Laroche in memory of the passengers who’d boarded the RSM Titanic.

      Yes, everything has changed since the Titanic catastrophe. There were other sinkings: the two World Wars sank the “civilized world” big-time, plunging millions of families into mourning. The Cherbourg port, a strategic target, was bombed and destroyed. Since then, of course, it has been rebuilt, but it’s nothing like it was before.

      The small ferry terminal that, in the old days, used to welcome the eager passengers of the arriving and departing liners has become a huge “passenger terminal” for new cruise travelers. What is left of it, anyway. The magic and glamour of those bygone years are no more. Gone are the beautiful times of the “transats,” those transatlantic steamers.

      To Louise, it is a strange moment. She has been digging in the most hidden corners of her mind, but her widely-praised “faithful memory” fails her. She does not remember anything, absolutely anything, other than this haunting date that brought her here today in Cherbourg.

      ▪ ▪ ▪

      Young Simonne Laroche had gotten up at dawn. She’d washed up and brushed her teeth in a rush and put on festive clothes. She was excited at the idea of traveling from Paris in a luxurious train and, once in Cherbourg, boarding the Titanic, the most beautiful liner in the world.

      After breakfast, her family hired not one but two taxicabs that morning, two Renault AG1s4 that started with crank handles. Sitting on a trunk with leather cushions, the driver maneuvered a wooden steering wheel and used two long levers at his lower right to change speeds. After the luggage had been evenly distributed in the trunks and on the fold-up seats of the passenger cabin, three-year-old Simone climbed into the first taxi with her father, Joseph. She settled herself in the back seat so she would not miss a thing; she watched the fabulous spectacle from the window, raving in each instant over the dance of the cars and the carriages, pulled by robust horses. In the second vehicle, her mother Juliette held on to Simone’s younger sister, twenty-one-month-old Louise.

      Renault AG1s

      To get from Paris to Cherbourg-Octeville, the Laroche family hired two Renault AG1s that started with crank handles. The AG1 (Taxi de la Marne) was the first car produced after Marcel Renault’s death in 1903. It used a taximeter, a relatively new invention that automatically calculated how much the passenger had to pay. According to the Renaud Classic website, “Taxi service provided valuable exposure for the Renault name and brought it recognition beyond France. In 1907, Renault sold 1,100 units in London.” The name Taxi de la Marne was not used until the outbreak of World War I, when 1,300 taxis were requisitioned by the French Army to transport 6,000 soldiers from Paris to the First Battle of the Marne in early September 1914.

      April 10, 1912, was a beautiful, sunny day. A day made for traveling. For Simone, who was in raptures over everything, it felt like Christmas in April. The trip from Paris had felt like an expedition. Since the Saint-Lazare train station was only a dozen kilometers from Villejuif5, where the family lived, it took them less than an hour to get there. Simone was disappointed: the spectacle had been too short.

      She was in such a hurry to climb aboard the Titanic that she rushed ahead of the group. Until a voice called to her: “Simone, rété la!” It was her father, urging her to stay with him. Whenever Joseph Laroche scolded Simone, he did so in Creole6. He raised his voice with authority, not anger. Simone did not always know what the Creole words meant, but she understood their urgency and obeyed immediately and without fear.

      Louise was not scared of Joseph Laroche either. On the contrary. She melted into her mustached father’s smiles and hugs. On that day, however, she was getting impatient in the stroller. She wanted to get out. She would have loved to walk on the dock like her sister. She stomped. She twisted and turned. “Daddy! Daddy, boat! Daddy, get down! Daddy, boat!” Louise exclaimed, a typical toddler begging to explore the ship. She loved being taken around like this. She showed it with a blissful smile that disappeared as soon as the stroller ride was over. The baby carriage was Louise’s “little car,” joked her mother, who later told her what little she could remember about that time.

      Three months earlier, when her father had announced his decision to return to the faraway country of his birth, his wife and children in tow, Simone had happily welcomed the news. Not that she wanted to flee France, but she was tired of the never-ending winter. She found the cold deceptive. On the first day of April, for instance, “mild weather” had been forecast. Yet, the thermometer had bottomed out; it had snowed in Paris in the wee hours of the morning and again between ten and eleven o’clock. Simone had hated it. She loved the idea of an escape: to leave Villejuif for Cherbourg, then New York, and finally the sunny Caribbean.

      By April 10, 1912, however, the milder weather was back. There were sure signs of spring, and the temperature had reached 77 degrees Fahrenheit on the banks of the Seine. Simone felt revived. It might have been worth staying, but it was too late. The two Renault AG1s had reached their destination

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