The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
He looked up at me very intently. He knew what was happening, that we were saying goodbye. Lizziebeth led me to the door of the cabin. She clung to me for so long that I thought she’d never let go. The ship’s siren was sounding. I broke away from her and ran up on to the deck, brushing away my tears.
I’ve thought a lot about this since, about why I gave Kaspar away like that, on the spur of the moment, and about what I did next too. I remember standing there on deck with everyone waving, with the siren blasting and the band playing, and I knew then I couldn’t go back to my old life, to my little attic room at the Savoy, that I should stay with Kaspar and Lizziebeth, and that I just didn’t want to leave the ship, this wonderful ship, this magical floating palace. When the final call went out for any last visitors and porters to leave the ship, I stayed on board. It was that simple. I ran to the rail and began waving with all the other passengers. I was one of them. I was going. I was going to America, to Lizziebeth’s land of the free, where I could be anything I wanted to be. It really wasn’t until I saw the Titanic moving away from the dockside and saw the widening gap of sea in between, that I realised quite what I had done, what a momentous decision I had made, that there was no going back. I was a stowaway on the Titanic.
“We’ve Only Gone and Hit A Flaming Iceberg”
My life as a stowaway didn’t last long. It took me a while to understand that I was in the First Class part of the ship; and when I did, I discovered it wasn’t at all easy to blend in with the First Class passengers all around me. Everyone was in their travelling finery, and dressed as I was in my uniform of a Savoy bell-boy, I stuck out like a sore thumb. They even moved differently, as if they belonged there, as if they had all the time in the world. Maybe you need a lifetime to learn how to look nonchalantly wealthy.
For a while the uniform actually helped. I could pass myself off as a steward, and of course that was easy enough for me. I knew well enough how to touch my forelock, how to help old ladies down the stairs, how to point out to people where to go – even if I hadn’t a clue where anything was.
For the first hour or so, as the other passengers promenaded the deck, exploring the ship, that was what I did too, until I began getting some strange looks from some of the crew and the other stewards who clearly thought my uniform a bit strange. I knew that sooner or later I’d be rumbled, that my luck couldn’t hold out for long if I went on pretending to be one of them. I also realised that if I stayed in First Class I was bound to bump into one of the Stanton family, and I wasn’t at all sure how they would respond if they discovered that I had stowed away. I could see the steerage passengers all crowded on the lower deck at the stern end of the ship. They were more my own kind I thought, I’d be safer there. So that’s where I headed. I took off my tunic and cap, and when no one was looking dropped them over the side. Then I vaulted over the rail, and tried to mingle in among the steerage passengers as best I could.
We were well out to sea by now, the last of England fast disappearing over the horizon. The sea was flat calm, like a silver blue lake. No one was paying me any attention. They were all enjoying themselves far too much to know I was even there. You only had to use your eyes and ears to know that these steerage passengers came from all over the world. There were Irish, Chinese, French, Germans, Americans and quite a few London cockneys too. I was feeling much more at home already. I went below deck, and after a long search, at last, found myself an empty berth in a dormitory at the bottom of the ship. There were a few men in there, but they paid me little attention.
I was lying down, my hands behind my head, my eyes closed, the ship’s engines throbbing through me, believing absolutely I had got away with it, when everything went badly wrong.
I heard voices, loud voices, voices of authority. I opened my eyes and saw two sailors coming through the dormitory. “We’re looking for a stowaway. Have you seen him? He’s kind of a Japanese-looking fellow.” One of them stopped by a table where some men were sat about playing cards. “Has he come through here? Little fellow he is. We know he’s down here somewhere.”
I think I would have been fine if I hadn’t panicked. I could have just pretended to be asleep. I didn’t look Japanese. They wouldn’t have bothered me. But I didn’t think. I got up and ran, and they came after me hollering at me to stop. I took the stairs to the deck three at a time. Once up there I hid in the first place I found – of course it was the most obvious, and therefore the most stupid place I could ever have chosen – a lifeboat. Inside I saw the Japanese man sitting at the far end, knees drawn up under his chin, rocking back and forth and gnawing at his knuckles. And that was where, only minutes later the two of us were discovered, caught like rats in a trap. We were not treated at all kindly as we were hustled along the decks, but at least I felt we had the sympathy of the steerage passengers. All the booing and jeering seemed directed more at our sailor escorts than at us. Both of us were taken before the Captain – Captain Smith he was called – and there were three other men there already. So there were five of us in all, all stowaways, an Italian I remember who spoke very little English, the Japanese man and three Englishmen, myself among them. From behind his desk the Captain looked at us wearily out of deep-set, sad eyes. With his great beard and calm bearing, he looked every inch a sea captain. He didn’t curse us or berate us as the sailors had.
“Well, Mr Lightoller.” he said to the officer standing beside him. “So, we’ve got five of them, have we? Not as many as I’d feared. What shall we do with them then? Where do we need them most, would you say?”
“Down below in the engine room, Captain,” the officer replied. “Stokers. We’re short of a dozen stokers at least. And if you want to make full speed as you say, if you want to make the crossing in record time, as you say, then we could do with them down below. Looking at them, I’d say they were a bit on the thin and spindly side, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”
The Captain looked right at me. “Why did you do it?” he asked me.
I told him the truth, part of it anyway. I had nothing to lose. “Because I didn’t want to leave the ship, sir. She’s so beautiful, and everyone says she’s very fast too. And I’ve never been on a ship before.”
“Well, I have, son,” laughed the Captain. “Dozens of them. And you’re right, this one is fast, the fastest ship that ever sailed, and what’s more she’s unsinkable too. Very well, Mr Lightoller, you will set these men to work their passage to New York as stokers. It will be hot work and hard, gentlemen, and for this you will be fed and looked after well enough. Take them away.”
So began the hardest three days I have ever worked in all my life. My body never ached so much, every bone, every muscle, every joint. My hands never bled so much either, open blisters on every finger. I was never so hot and dirty, never so completely and utterly exhausted. The stokers about me were strong men, big men, muscle-bound and sinewy. Stripped to the waist as we were I felt like a sparrow among eagles. The pounding thunder of the engines in my ears was deafening, the blast of the furnaces scorched my skin. But for all this discomfort I somehow found it the most exciting and invigorating place I had ever been. Every time I looked up and saw those great boilers, those great pistons driving, I marvelled at them, at the power and the beauty of it all. And believe it or not, as I shovelled coal for hour after hour in that stifling heat, there was only one thought that kept me shovelling: it was me driving