ABOARD TITANIC — Ethan Cole’s Voyage

By late afternoon, the French coast appeared.

At first it was only a dark line beneath the sky.

Then came buildings.

Hills.

Smoke.

And finally Cherbourg.

Titanic was too large to enter the harbor in the ordinary way, so smaller tender vessels carried passengers out to meet us.

I went onto the deck to watch.

The temperature had dropped, but no one seemed interested in going inside.

People crowded the rails as the tenders approached.

One of them, Nomadic, looked almost tiny beside Titanic.

That was unfair.

Most vessels looked tiny beside Titanic.

From above, I watched luggage transferred and passengers come aboard.

This fascinated me almost as much as the ship itself.

Every new passenger arrived with a story already in progress.

A wealthy couple stepped aboard accompanied by servants and enough luggage to suggest they were moving Buckingham Palace.

A nervous young man clutched his hat and looked upward at the ship as though reconsidering every life decision that had brought him there.

A mother tried to hold the hands of two children at once.

One child escaped.

A crewman caught him before he went far.

Travel, I decided, was mostly people trying not to lose children and luggage.

Eleanor joined me at the rail.

“Found your way up here without assistance?”

“I’m improving.”

“Samuel must be proud.”

“He has begun allowing me to walk short distances unsupervised.”

Lights appeared along the French shore as darkness deepened.

For a while Titanic remained still offshore, a brilliantly illuminated giant surrounded by black water.

That was one of the most beautiful sights of the voyage.

From the promenade, Cherbourg looked close enough to touch, yet the water between us made it feel like another world.

Small boats moved below.

Voices floated upward.

A whistle sounded.

More passengers came aboard.

Then the tenders pulled away.

France began to recede.

I thought of all the people joining us.

Some had paid extraordinary amounts for private suites.

Others carried tickets for bunks deep inside the vessel.

Yet for the next several days all of us would cross the same water.

The sea was one of the few things aboard Titanic that did not care what class your ticket said.

That evening I visited the Café Parisien.

I had heard younger First Class passengers praising it all day.

They were right.

The room felt less like part of a ship than a fashionable café someone had stolen from Paris. Wicker chairs and tables stood beneath decorative trellises. Greenery softened the walls. Large windows brought the sea close without allowing the weather inside.

I sat with coffee near a window.

A man about my age asked whether the chair opposite was taken.

His name was Henry Palmer.

He was a schoolteacher from Ohio, returning home after spending several months in England studying educational methods.

Technically he traveled Second Class, but we had met earlier during embarkation, and he had been invited into the café briefly by an acquaintance before returning to his own section.

“You’re the writer,” he said.

“That accusation is spreading.”

“What are you writing?”

“A travel article.”

He looked around.

“Your editor will need more pages.”

“That is becoming a concern.”

Henry was easy company.

He spoke plainly and laughed easily.

He had the kind of face that looked honest before he said a word.

We talked about America.

He missed ordinary coffee.