An eerie hush fell over the waiting crowds then as the huge steamer approached the Cunard Pier, just the quiet, muffled tears of the women audible above the wind and splashes of rain on umbrellas and the corrugated iron containers on the wharf side.
The dozens of doctors and nurses, the volunteers from the Women's Relief Committee and all the officials from the city, government and White Star Line walked purposefully now among the crowds, the tension and stress evident on their faces as they prepared themselves to carry out their duties.
Later in her life, Catherine would find herself saying that the scenes she witnessed as the survivors were gradually brought ashore were too terrible to define. What her eyes and ears tried to comprehend during those moments was indescribable. Not in the furthest, darkest reaches of her imagination could she ever have believed such outpourings of grief and emotions were possible in a public place. For every poignant reunion , it would seem that there was also a heart-breaking moment of finality at the realisation that relatives or friends had not walked off the liner.
Husbands clutched wives who had returned without their children, children clung to grandparents; their parents lost at sea, sisters greeted sisters and wept for their lost brothers, brothers greeted sisters and cried for their lost mothers and fathers. There wasn’t a person who didn’t shed a tear for themselves, or for someone else.
As Catherine waited, she watched these scenes play out; involved and yet strangely detached. It was through tear-filled eyes that she observed a finely dressed young lady emerge from the gangplank, a small dog under her arm and barely a hair out of place on her head. She would not have recognised her as Vivienne Walker-Brown had she not heard the shriek across the crowd.
‘Vivienne, darling, my darling Vivienne,’ Emily Walker-Brown cried hysterically as she pushed her way towards the gangway which had been erected for the disembarking passengers.
Catherine watched, unnoticed, as the mother and daughter shared an emotional embrace, Emily weeping for the loss of her future son-in-law. But Vivienne Walker-Brown did not cry. Catherine overheard her reassuring her mother that Robert did the honourable thing and made space for the women and children as instructed, ‘unlike that dreadful Ismay fellow,’ she added at the top of her voice. ‘Shameful behaviour saving himself without a care for the poor souls left to perish in the icy sea. Robert’s seat was taken by a young woman with two children, mother. We must not be sad that his life is lost when those young lives were saved.’
It was a chilling reality, relayed in a strangely detached manner. Catherine watched then as the family walked towards a waiting taxicab. Vivienne and her dog would be back within the comfort of their Park Avenue home within thirty minutes. The steerage passengers hadn’t even started to emerge from the Carpathia.
For hours, Catherine watched and waited as the remainder of the first and second class survivors disembarked the ship and made their way unsteadily along the gangplank and into the waiting crowds; the gathered press pack, corralled behind the fencing on West Street, shouting questions to the bewildered passengers, trying desperately to get a scoop for the first editions of the morning papers.
It was nearly midnight when the steerage passengers began to emerge. It struck Catherine how like the pictures they looked which she had seen depicting the waifs and strays emerging from the famine ships a generation ago; most wearing only their nightclothes, some with just a blanket around their shoulders for warmth and many without shoes. Numbly she watched the faces, staring as some survivors were taken straight to the waiting ambulances.
Still, she stood quietly, patiently, hopefully, barely noticing the crowds dispersing around her.
‘Please come, Katie my love,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Please be there.’
It was only when the crew of the Carpathia started to emerge that her hopes began to fade.
‘Excuse me miss.’
She turned. A White Star Line official stood by her side.
‘They are all off. It’s just Carpathia crew now miss.’
She looked desperately into the man’s eyes. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No. They can’t all be off. I’m waiting for my sister. Katie Kenny is her name.’
‘I’m very sorry miss. All the survivors are ashore now.’ He tipped his hat then and disappeared into the rain.
Catherine stood alone, drenched to the skin, staring at the looming, empty bulk of the Carpathia. The remaining people around her on the wharf dissolved into the darkness which engulfed her.
‘No. No. Not Katie,’ she gasped. ‘Not my darling Katie. Please, no.’
She sank to her knees and wept with every part of her soul. Not even the relentless rain could compete with the flood of tears which fell in New York that night.