‘You’re welcome Miss,’ the young volunteer replied. ‘It’s all so terribly sad, we’re just glad to be able to help in some way, no matter how small. There’s thousands and thousands gathered in Battery Park y’know. Just waiting to see those poor folks safely home.’
Catherine walked on as the storm clouds gathered ominously overhead and the first cracks of lightning lit up the sky.
The atmosphere among the waiting crowds was one of numbed sobriety and tension; anxiety and grief lining the faces of those she passed, dark shadows and red-rimmed eyes bearing witness to the suffering these people had already endured as, like her, they had scoured and scoured the lists of survivors only to discover that the names they were looking for were not present.
Observing the steadily growing mass of people and waiting volunteers now gathering along the wharf did nothing to calm Catherine’s fears or reassure her troubled mind. Would Katie be on the Carpathia or would her worst fears be realised when all the survivors had disembarked?
She’d telephoned the White Star Offices every day since news of the disaster broke.
‘What have you heard?’ she asked when her call was answered.
‘Nothing new Miss,’ came the sombre reply from the anonymous voice at the other end of the line.
Catherine very quickly realised that ‘Nothing new’ meant that the first reports of survivors hadn’t changed and that the names of many of the travellers from Ballysheen, which had been reported as lost, were accurate and had not changed. So far, only the seventeen-year-old girl Maggie Murphy was known to have survived the ordeal. But although Catherine had not found the name Katie Kenny on any of the issued survivor lists, her heart would not allow her to give up hope. She had seen a Kate Kennedy listed and a Katherine Denny and had prayed every day that one of those was her sister, the name having been misprinted or mistakenly taken down in all the confusion.
Despite issuing lists of survivor names, there’d been an otherwise frustrating silence from the Carpathia over the last few days; the anticipated details of the events which had unfolded on Titanic had not been forthcoming and rumours among the press were rife that the surviving Marconi radio operator, Harold Bride, had been told to keep quiet until the Carpathia docked, at which point his story would be sold for a large sum of money. Looking around at the harrowing scenes of grief and despair, Catherine found it impossible to imagine that anyone could hope to prosper from this unimaginable tragedy.
As the hours passed, Catherine and the thousands of other anxious and distressed relatives and friends of the survivors who were known to be aboard the Carpathia or who, like Catherine, prayed that there had been a mistake and that their loved ones would emerge from the liner, huddled against the strong breeze and lashing rain and watched the gathering darkness of nightfall.
‘It is as if the entire city is stricken with grief’ Catherine read in the newspaper she had picked up at the stand, keen to follow the latest reports. ‘Rich and poor are united under one great wave of sorrow and sympathy. God has indeed spoken.’
Turning her rosary beads over and over in her hands, Catherine sat under the large letter ‘K’ she had been assigned to wait under, corresponding to the surname of the survivor she was so hoping to greet and said a silent prayer, closing her eyes against the rain and the harsh reality of the situation being played out in front of her.
Time passed slowly.
*
It was just before nine o’clock when a unified shiver seemed to cross among the waiting crowd as the first sightings of the Carpathia steaming down the Hudson River were relayed from the tug boats which had gone out to meet her. Everyone stood up then, desperate to see the ship itself, as if until that moment, this could all be imagined. Men, women and children stood on tiptoes, craning their necks, peering into the gloom as if watching a theatre show; waiting for that moment when the magician delivers the prestige.
The unmistakeable single funnel of a steam liner then emerged from the murky mist. Just a few lights were visible from the upper cabins and the lights on the masthead. Other than this small degree of light, all was darkness around the great mass of the ship.
Catherine watched the ship move, as if in slow motion, taking an endless amount of time to move towards the White Star Line Pier Fifty Nine where she rested to unload the lifeboats belonging to Titanic. It was a sombre moment, the S.S. Titanic ensign on the white lifeboats the first sighting for all gathered there of the much lauded ship; a simple, humble calling card of the greatest ocean liner ever to sail the seas.
For many, the suspense and grief from the last few days was too great, and they collapsed into great convulsions of crying at the sight of the rescue liner. For Catherine, it was a moment she wished she could in some ways suspend in time; not sure whether she finally wanted to learn the fate of her sister, to learn whether the face she was waiting so desperately to see would come walking ashore or whether she had lain at the bottom of the ocean for the last four days and would never, ever be seen again.