Page 2 of Under the Stars

An Account of the Wreck of the Steamship Atlantic, by Providence Dare (excerpt)

Norwich, Connecticut

( twenty-nine hours before the Atlantic runs aground )

Every good servant knows how to disappear, and I was a better servant than most.

I arrived at the pier in Norwich, Connecticut, that doomed night like a ghost, intending to vanish—though not by the means fate wreaked upon me.

You will not find my name on any list of passengers aboard the final voyage of the steamship Atlantic, either among the survivors or those who perished.

No trace of a woman called Providence Dare exists beyond Thanksgiving of 1846.

Nor shall it, except for these pages you now hold in your hands.

—

I remember how the great ship yanked at her ropes in the gale. Her size staggered me. From bow to stern she measured more than three hundred feet—nearly twice as long as the tallest steeple in New England. Who could imagine that man had built such a machine by his own hand?

I took comfort in her length and heft, in the prodigious height of her wheel. A hundred gas lamps illuminated her snowy paintwork and the word Atlantic on her wheel cover, pummeled by sleet.

Behind me, the locomotive sighed its last breath.

The air reeked of steam and coal smoke. The conductor barked at us to hurry along, hurry along now.

The weather had stalled the train’s progress between Worcester and Norwich, snow and sleet taking turns, wind rattling the windows.

We should have arrived hours ago. Now it was almost midnight and every bone ached.

I braced my shoulders against the pellets of ice and shuffled up the gangplank.

Three gentlemen walked before me, brisk and straight of spine—even the frail one who stepped a half beat behind the other two. I had first noticed them on the train. Military officers, I thought.

From beneath the brim of my hat, I watched them.

The taller man turned his head to the others. “Two bits says he don’t go.”

“He’ll go,” said the one in the middle. “Wind’s from the northeast. Follows us all the way into New York Harbor. She’ll do all right, a fine, well-built ship like this.”

I hadn’t thought of that—the ship might not sail. Might wait out the storm instead, tucked in harbor, when every moment counted. The idea filled me with terror.

The wind tore away the frail one’s reply. The middle one laughed.

“Oh, Dustan’s not shy of a little weather. You must have heard what he did on the poor old Lexington ?”

“The rudder, wasn’t it, Maynard?” said the taller one.

“That’s right,” said Maynard. “Rudder came unshipped one night, off Bridgeport. The ropes gave way. Furious late-October gale, they say. None of the crew dared to go down and fix it. So Dustan—he was first mate at the time, I believe—Dustan tied a rope around his waist and jumped in. Icy, heaving sea. Swam to the rudder, attached the ropes again in short order, God only knows how. They pulled him back up a hero. Saved the ship and all the lives on her. Man of action, Dustan.”

—

I had come to grief aboard a steamship once before.

In the small town in western Massachusetts where I was born, I regularly boarded the steam ferry to cross the Connecticut River for one purpose or another.

I hated it. I used to hold Mother’s hand and shut my eyes to the water around me and the unkempt man at the helm.

I remember he smelled of vinegar, but I suppose it was probably whiskey.

Even then, I dreaded the churn of the paddle and the hurtling current.

I imagined the river closing over my head, my lungs raking, my arms and legs thrashing fruitlessly against the might of this spirit that lived in the water—that was the water—and wanted me inside with the greed of a succubus.

Each time the ferry maneuvered in and out of the landings, battling the current, I was certain the current would win.

Don’t be silly, Providence, my mother used to say, as she tugged off the grip of my hand and hoisted the basket of eggs or butter or whatever she carried to the market in Greenfield that day.

Mother was a well-built woman of magnificent brow who stood between us children and our father’s drunken rage.

She churned cream with the kind of vigor you ordinarily witnessed in stags at rut.

Nobody’s hens laid better than hers. People said the hens wouldn’t dare disappoint her.

Came the May morning my mother and I boarded the ferry at the height of the spring melt, and the boat—entering the current—lurched hard to one side.

Port or starboard, I can’t say. My mother released my hand and pitched into the river, basket and all.

The water swallowed her whole. I remember watching the basket hurtle and bob downstream, smaller and smaller, to disappear in a flash of white foam.

I tried to scream but there was no breath in my chest, nothing left to scream with.

By the time I was able to raise the alarm, the boat was halfway across the river.

Mother’s body was never found, although the basket turned up downstream a few miles, in Deerfield.

That summer, when my aunt brought me to Boston to begin service with the Irvings, I refused to board the ferry. Instead, we traveled by stage downriver to Northampton, where we crossed the Connecticut over the toll bridge.

—

But the Atlantic was no ramshackle river ferry, and this captain was nothing like that stained, aging pilot of my youth.

Captain Dustan wore a shipshape overcoat with shining brass buttons and a stiff peaked cap.

He braced his legs on the deck of his ship and seemed not to notice the battering wind and the sleet that pelted his tall, powerful frame while he greeted the three officers who boarded before me.

Along the edge of his jaw, he wore a quaint fringe of beard, the way the old Dutch do, and his eyes were a light, livid blue.

I thought of Maynard’s story and imagined him plunging into the icy sea to fix a rudder and deliver his passengers from certain death.

I hung back until the officers had moved away and Captain Dustan turned his gaze to me.

“Welcome aboard the Atlantic, miss,” he said. “I hope your journey from Boston was not too uncomfortable?”

“No, sir. We will leave for New York tonight, won’t we?”

“I certainly hope so, Miss…?”

“West,” I said. “Mary West. I’m supposed to join my brother and his family for Thanksgiving dinner in Brooklyn. They’re expecting me.”

“We shall do our best for you, Miss West, I assure you. Make yourself comfortable in your berth. My crew and I will concern ourselves with the weather.”

“But you do expect to sail tonight, don’t you? It’s very important.”

A gust caught the brim of his cap—he secured it just in time. “No more important than your safety, Miss West, the consideration of which will remain uppermost in my mind as I determine our course.”

I transferred my carpetbag to my right hand. “Thank you, Captain Dustan.”

His eyes turned kind. “Shelter and warm yourself in the ladies’ saloon, Miss West, and you may rest assured the Atlantic will carry you safely to New York.”

Until my last day on earth, I will remember those words.

—

When my mind returns to the ladies’ saloon aboard the Atlantic —as it often will, whether or not I wish to remember—I try to recall the room as it appeared when I first crossed the threshold that bleak November night, unspoiled by any premonition of how it would cease to exist.

After the discomfort of the railroad car and the gale outside, I felt as if I had stepped into heaven.

The blur of flowery carpet and satin upholstery reminded me of my mistress’s sitting room in Cambridge.

A matron and her daughters had taken over the space like the vanguard of an occupying army, bustling in and out of the berths that lined the walls of the saloon.

Another young mother unbuttoned the coat of a fretful young boy, not two years old, who rubbed his red eyes and whined for his supper.

“There’s no supper, dearie,” the mother told him. “It’s too late for supper. We’ll have breakfast in New York.”

This being November, I had an entire berth to myself.

A pair of gas lamps shed light on the damask hangings, the gilded cornices, the washstand of polished rosewood.

You might be inside the bedroom of a mansion, except for the bunks.

Even those were elegantly made, framed by delicate railings to keep you in place during November gales, such as the one that blew outside.

I pulled the curtain around the tiers of beds and sat on the edge of the bottom one.

You’d best sleep, I told myself. You’re safe now. He can’t find you here.

In the storm, he couldn’t even try.

I unpinned my hat and placed it on the end of the bed, next to my carpetbag that dripped onto the pristine white counterpane.

How the storm howled! I leaned down to unbutton my shoes.

My fingers shook; I had no buttonhook. At last I gave up.

Bone by bone I settled myself on the berth, coat and all.

Propped my shoes on the carpetbag, eased back my head.

The pillow clasped the curve of my skull.

Beyond the curtain hummed the burr of conversation in the saloon, shrieked the furious wind outside, lurked the bloodhound who chased me, but all these machinations seemed somehow distant, receded, a world left behind—beaten back by the sturdiness of the Atlantic ’s timbers and her heroic captain.

A man of action, they said. There was nothing to fear.

Nothing more to terrify me, except what lay inside my own head.

—

In my dreams, the detective stood like a bloodhound at the edge of the rug in Mr. Irving’s library.

He had a nose like a wedge of cheese and a pair of shoulders that strained the seams of his broadcloth coat.

His eyes were a light, clear, predatory brown—almost amber.

The policemen milled about the room. A sheet covered the body on the floor.

He was asking me questions I didn’t understand; we seemed to be speaking different languages, though I couldn’t say which one was English and which one was foreign.

His voice grew lower and lower until it was almost a whisper. I leaned forward to catch his words.

I can’t hear you, I told him. I can’t understand you. I need to leave now.

His fingers dug into the tender flesh of my shoulders. Murderer, he whispered in my ear.

My eyes flew open.

The dark air swallowed me. The bedclothes held me safe. Why, I was back in my own bedroom—the tiny attic room at the top of the Irvings’ house on the quiet Cambridge street. I had only dreamed that scene in the library. Had dreamed everything, the entire affair. A nightmare, that was all.

Thank God, I whispered. Thank God.

But my bed wouldn’t sit still. The room heaved and surged.

And that noise! The wind roared at the window.

Ice crackled against the walls. My bones vibrated with the workings of some unseen engine.

I tried to move, but my feet were fixed in place inside a pair of wet, heavy shoes.

And my blanket wasn’t a blanket at all, but my old woolen coat—also wet.

Smelling of coal smoke, of weather, of brine.

Ship. I was aboard the steamship Atlantic in the middle of the night.

The nightmare was real, after all.

Mr. Irving was dead. I had fled Boston to start a new life, under a new name.

And the Atlantic, it seemed, had set sail at last.