Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper

Author:Anderson Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2021-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

8

Down with the Ship

May 1915

Congenial people usually introduce themselves to one another in short order aboard ship, but it should be kept in mind that shipboard friendships, like shipboard romances, usually end when the boat docks, despite many protestations to the contrary.

—Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette, Part IX: “Travel Etiquette at Home and Abroad”

Up until that morning, the passage from New York had been utterly uneventful: clear air, smooth seas, the usual rushes to friendship and rehashed discussions at dinner. Passengers on the Cunard line to Liverpool had enjoyed sunny and mild weather since May 2, the day after their departure, and though the elegant ship had traveled at only eighteen knots for much of the journey, rather than its top speed of closer to twenty-three, no one thought the voyage had been anything other than completely ordinary.

The current head of the Vanderbilt family, a married man of thirty-seven traveling with his valet, was no different. If anything, the trip, a quick jaunt to London to see about contributing to the Red Cross’s wartime ambulance service, had been somewhat boring. He strolled the decks to stretch his legs, went to dinner, and spent time with a friend or two from New York, including Thomas Slidell, a desultory young man who lived at the Knickerbocker Hotel. He was also taken up by the Thomases, owners of a lucrative coal mine concern in Wales, and he passed pleasant evenings mildly flirting with their daughter, Lady Mackworth. All very routine. One could almost imagine the European continent wasn’t at war.

It was cool and foggy off the coast of Ireland on the morning of the seventh. The Cunard line flagship, one of the “Monarchs of the Sea,” dropped its speed slightly because of the poor visibility, from around eighteen knots to fifteen, and sounded its foghorn at regular intervals to advertise its location—the mournful blast booming through the mist, echoing strangely off the surface of the ocean. Fog can do funny things with sound and space and light. Ships can loom into being out of nowhere, almost as if they have risen up suddenly from the depths—even ships as massive and elegantly appointed as the R.M.S. Lusitania.

On board, a rill of anxiety rippled through the passengers when the foghorn first groaned over the water. Steerage for that journey, as was typical of ships bound for Europe from New York, was barely filled. Second class, however, was full to overflowing, so much so that some second-class ticket holders had been stashed in first, which was not quite a third full. First class on this voyage featured the usual cast of characters: a couple of actresses, the occasional novelist, scions of business, entrepreneurs, a suffragette viscountess, a baronet, a noted theatrical producer . . . and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, heir to the greater part of the Vanderbilt fortune. Though he preferred to be known as a sportsman active in horse circles, and though he sat magisterially on various railroad boards, it was the fortune that

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