Page 6 of Under the Stars

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

New London, Connecticut

( twenty-seven hours before the Atlantic runs aground )

Later that day—and the next—I would come to wish I had remained asleep as the Atlantic bucked her way free of the Thames River and began her mighty turn into Long Island Sound.

But who could have imagined how little sleep was due the Atlantic ’s passengers over the coming hours? How could I possibly have suspected that these were my last peaceful moments before the ordeal to come?

I stared at the shadows and listened to the storm’s fury.

The ship pitched to and fro, and my innards followed—stomach and guts and brain, sloshing in sympathy.

My heart hammered in the same rhythm as the paddles struck the sea.

Had I so much as a crumb in my belly, I would surely have brought it up, but I had not eaten since I swallowed down a knob of stale bread early this morning from a shelf in Josephine’s larder.

A little cheese. My hunger only made the queasiness worse.

A thump jolted the ship, causing the gas lamp to dim for a second or two.

On the train, somewhere between Worcester and Norwich, I had overheard somebody explaining to his companion how the Atlantic generated its own gas—how a contraption in a room on the main deck heated coal until the gas separated from the carbon by means of some chemical reaction.

The other man had wondered if this wasn’t rather a dangerous thing to do aboard a ship.

Whether the gas or the chemical reaction or the contraption itself might blow us all to kingdom come.

I couldn’t remember how the first man replied to that.

I reached into the pocket of my coat and pulled out a gold watch.

Early that morning, I had wound its tiny knob until the spring wouldn’t turn any further.

I’d set the hands precisely to the clock at the railroad station.

The watch was made in Switzerland and had been left to my master many years ago by a naval captain, an old friend who died childless, so I could trust its accuracy to the second.

There was no room for even the slightest error in nautical timekeeping, Mr. Irving once explained to me, because of measuring one’s longitude.

The watch read two minutes past two o’clock.

I snapped the lid back in place and slid the watch deep inside my coat pocket. The mechanism snicked through the wool and into my skin, into my blood, ticking off the seconds until the ship made its way down the rambunctious sea, all the way to New York Harbor.

In New York, I could slip away and disappear into the crowds that daily teemed that thriving city.

In New York, I would board the ferry that would convey me to the train that would take me west. The advertisement I had carefully cut from the newspaper advised me of the opportunities to be found in a certain new town on a prairie, built from the bare earth, somewhere beyond Independence, Missouri.

It had been founded by the son of an English earl and plots of land could be bought for next to nothing.

On the prairie, nobody would recognize my face.

No one would ask me any questions; no one would inquire after my past and judge what I had done.

I might find a husband, perhaps—a man who could shoot a gun and steer a plow, who was willing to trade his curiosity for a bride, well-trained in the domestic arts.

This was the sum of my dreams on that November day. Sometimes I wonder who lives on that plot of land I might have occupied. Who became the wife of that man I might have married.

My last thought, before the first wave struck, was of refuge, finally —this titanic ship, this capable captain who commanded her.

—

The impact pitched me over the railing and out of the bunk.

I landed on my side. The bedcurtains tore free and tangled around my arms and legs as I slid down the rug and slammed against the wall. Through the walls came the shrieks of young girls.

As I lurched to my hands and knees, the sea walloped the ship from the other side. This time I had no room to fly. My head smacked the side of the bunk in a line just behind my temple, so I cannot claim to have heard the noise of the explosion down below.

But I felt it.

The ship’s timbers shuddered into my bones. The percussion hollowed out my ears. Shouts, footsteps. The hot reek of steam.

Fire! someone screamed. An inhuman octave of fear.

Fire!

I braced my arm on the side of the bunk and hoisted myself upright.

The ship bucked around me. Already I sensed her deadness, her loss of momentum, like the loss of a beating heart.

I staggered to the door of the compartment.

When I flung it open, steam poured around me.

I staggered out into a cloud of steam and confusion.

Somebody ran past me to pound on the door next to mine.

He shouted a name, over and over. I believe it was Mary.

A common name, Mary—that was why I had chosen it.

I covered my head with my coat and ran outside to the foredeck, lashed with wind and sea and pellets of ice.

The ship wallowed into the trough of a wave, so deep that the mountainous black water rose all around us, hung with wads of phosphorescent foam.

The deck tilted to an almost vertical angle.

I lost my footing and tumbled down the boards to crash against the side, just as a tongue of water drenched my head and chest and washed my legs out over the edge of the guardrail.

I flung out a hand and found a miraculous iron cleat.

With all ten fingers I fought the pull of gravity.

Seawater filled my throat and lungs, the cavities of my nose.

Then the ship rolled upright and began its climb.

My legs swung back to dangle across the deck.

Sputtering, coughing, I scarcely heard the shout that broke over me.

A pair of hands hoisted me up by the shoulders while a hoarse voice yelled in my ear— What the devil do you think you’re doing? Get back inside!

He hauled me to the door of the saloon and thrust me into shelter.

I fell against the wall to catch my breath.

My hands were so numb, I couldn’t feel the wood against my palms. The waves crashed against the sides of the ship, so thunderous as to drown out any other sound, and yet from deep inside the Atlantic ’s battered decks, my ears perceived a different note altogether—a human note—an agonized screaming that swelled and broke and swelled again.

The scream of somebody burning to death.

A noise I knew well.

The gas lamps had gone out. Everything was shadow and water. A pair of men pushed past me; one carried a storm lantern—a single beacon of light that illuminated the jaw, the sliver of beard that belonged to Captain Dustan. The other man turned his head and yelled at me— Get out of the way, miss!

What’s happened? I screamed after him.

But the deck swallowed them both. The ship dove and my feet escaped me.

I staggered into the shelter of the deckhouse and landed against a wall.

Like some nightmare music, the screams went on piercing the air from the ship’s bowels.

From the foredeck came the clatter of chains, the shouted order above all the noise— Main anchor down!

A hand gripped my arm. “Excuse me, miss!”

I turned into the anxious gaze of a ship’s steward. “What’s happened?” I demanded.

“Captain Dustan asks the passengers to assemble in the main saloon,” he said. “You’ll be safe and dry while the deckhands put the ship in order.”

“But the fire—”

“Fire’s out, miss—never worry. You can take that staircase to the left. Hurry on, now.”

The steward moved past me to another pair of passengers—huddled against the wall, peering into the darkness at the frenzy on the pitching foredeck.

How did the crew keep their footing? I could hardly stand.

The breaking wave had washed off my shoes and my good thick socks, leaving only the stockings of spun wool.

My head swam from the motion of the ship.

My arms had lost all strength. I turned toward the staircase and wobbled down, clutching the handrail.

The walls tilted and swung. A steward pushed past, carrying a stack of blankets.

I missed the last step and tumbled to the rich carpet on the saloon floor.

For some reason, I couldn’t quite fix my legs underneath me.

Each time I planted my feet on the rug, the ship lurched the other way and I spilled back down on my side.

In the darkness, I perceived only shadows—flashes of movement I rather felt than glimpsed as I crawled across the floor.

Passengers rushed into the saloon from all directions, from the various berths and the grand saloon above.

Snatches of shocked, anxious conversation flew across the darkness.

At last I reached a nearby sofa and pulled myself upward.

The ship obliged me with a timely roll and I dropped onto the seat.

A steward paused in front of me. “Blanket, miss?”

I wrapped the blanket around my wet shoulders. “What’s happened? Are we going to sink?”

“Boiler’s burst, miss. Captain’s ordered down the anchors.”

“The anchors! In this storm? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Nothing to fear. The anchors will hold us until dawn, when our rescue will arrive.”

“Rescue? From where? How—”

But the steward had spent enough of his attention and hurried on. In his absence, I realized how cold it was. The air had turned frigid, starved of heat from the wrecked boiler. A wintry November sea soaked my clothes.

Move, I told myself. You must stand. You must keep moving, or you’ll freeze to death.

But I couldn’t stand. The joints of my knees had stuck tight. The rattling of my bones left me helpless in this room without light—this dark, icy room that bucked and heaved around me.