The Ship of Dreams - Gareth Russell

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ship. I feel very disappointed I am not to make the first voyage.’[30] This reshuffling of command had an important, if subsequently exaggerated, impact in the Crow’s Nest, the vantage point on the forward mast. As theirs had not yet arrived, Blair had offered to lend the lookouts his binoculars, which he innocently took with him when he left. When this was brought to Wilde’s attention, he hunted around the ship but there did not seem to be any permanent spare pair to loan to the Crow’s Nest for the duration of the voyage. Some of the lookouts refused to let the matter drop and approached Second Officer Lightoller, around the time the ship reached Queenstown. Lightoller agreed that binoculars would be helpful and went searching for an extra set, though with the same lack of success as Wilde. Other crew members, however, thought the lookouts were creating a fuss over nothing, that one’s eyes ought to be sharp enough to do without them or that binoculars would be a hindrance rather than an aid, since they might seduce a lookout into a sense of complacency or encourage undue focus on a far away point at the expense of more immediate dangers.

      The notoriety of the Titanic’s failure to provide binoculars entered the popular mythology of the tragedy as another potent example of incompetence-laced hubris. The origins of that claim lay with one of the surviving lookouts, Frederick Fleet, who insisted at both subsequent inquiries into the disaster that if he had been provided with binoculars it would have given him more time to warn the Bridge, perhaps ‘enough to get out of the way’.[31] However, modern tests conducted in similar conditions seem to corroborate the views of contemporary seamen who countered Fleet’s testimony by stating that on dark and cold nights on open water binoculars are ineffective to the point of uselessness in spotting objects, particularly ones that are already dark, like a growler iceberg.[32]

      While the Titanic’s anchors remained dropped at Queenstown, journalists from local newspapers and enthusiastic members of the Royal Cork Yacht Club skimmed out in crafts to photograph and admire the liner before, at half-past one, her anchors were raised, the seabed sand was disturbed again as the triple-screw propellers spun back into motion and she turned slowly to point her prow to the Atlantic. By the time afternoon tea was served, three hours later, the coast of Ireland was fading from view.[33] There were four venues in which first-class passengers could take tea, one of which afforded spectacular views towards the stern.[34] The Verandah Café, split into two rooms, one that allowed smoking and the other, particularly popular with mothers and their children, that did not, was located on A-Deck as the furthest aft of the first-class public rooms. Inspired by the ‘winter gardens’ popular on the German greyhounds, the Verandah was lined with bronze-framed windows and green trellises covered in growing plants. White wicker chairs and tables cluttered the room, reminiscent of a conservatory on land. As Ireland melted into the horizon, a passenger who had boarded there went up on to the Poop Deck, the area at the stern used as the promenade for Third Class. There, on his uilleann pipes, an Irish instrument similar to the Highlands’ bagpipes, the young man played ‘Erin’s Lament’ and ‘A Nation Once More’, paeans to the Irish quest for independence and, in the case of the former, sharply critical of the landed classes.[35] It is unlikely that anyone at tea heard him; the doors into the Verandah were designed to stifle a chill breeze and any sounds from the outside.[36]

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