Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World Read Free Page A

giant purple bulb of a nose, the product of a skin condition called rhinophyma, being easily caricatured.
    For the launch ceremony, there was no beribboned champagne bottle to smash against the bow and no titled dowager to pronounce “I name this ship Titanic .” That was not how White Star did things. Instead, at five minutes past noon, a rocket was fired into the air, followed by two others, and then the nearly 26,000-ton hull began to slide into the River Lagan to cheers and the blowing of tug whistles. A white film from the tons of tallow, train oil, and soap used to grease its passage spread over the water as the ship was brought to a halt by anchor chains. Soon, the Titanic ’s hull gently rocked in the river while the newly completed Olympic waited nearby.
    The launch had gone off just as planned and a highly pleased Lord Pirrie hosted a luncheon for Morgan, Ismay, and a select list of guests in the shipyard’s offices, while several hundred more were entertained at Belfast’s Grand Central Hotel, where a third luncheon was held for the gentlemen of the press. During the speeches at the press luncheon, the construction of the “leviathans,” Olympic and Titanic , was hailed as a “pre-eminent example of the vitality and the progressive instincts of the Anglo-Saxon race.” That American money had paid for them was made a positive by the observation that “the mighty Republic in the West” and the United Kingdom were both Anglo-Saxon nations that had become more closely united as a result of their cooperation. While the Belfast men toasted their success and the primacy of their race, a shipyard worker named James Dobbins lay in hospital, his leg having been pinned beneath one of the wooden supports for the hull during the launch. Dobbins would die from his injuries the next day.
    Following the luncheon, J. P. Morgan and Bruce Ismay boarded the Olympic along with other guests and sailed for Liverpool. Exactly seven months later, on December 31, 1911, Morgan would walk up the Olympic ’s gangway once again, this time in New York bound for Southampton. From England he went on to Egypt, where he spent the winter at a desert oasis called Khargeh supervising the excavation of Roman ruins and an early Christian cemetery. By mid-March, Morgan was in Rome, and on the morning of April 3, 1912, he stood with Frank Millet atop the Janiculum Hill, reviewing the plans and site for the new American Academy building. Like the Morgan Library, this was to be another of Charles McKim’s Italian Renaissance palaces, built from a design drawn up by the architect before his death in 1909. Millet was keen to see McKim’s dream realized and Morgan told the New York Times , “I hope that here will eventually be an American institution of art, greater than those of the other countries, which are already famous.” The next day the financier went on to Florence, where Millet soon joined him, perhaps to lend an informed opinion on Morgan’s ceaseless acquiring of art and antiquities. “Pierpont will buy anything from a pyramid to a tooth of Mary Magdalene,” his wife had once noted. Morgan was no doubt pleased that Millet was sailing on the maiden voyage of the Titanic . He had planned to be on board himself before changing his plans in favor of a stay at a spa at Aix-les-Bains with his mistress.
    WHILE MORGAN TOOK the waters in Aix on April 10, Millet waited on the Normandy coast for Morgan’s newest ship to arrive. Eschewing the loud Americans crowding the waiting room, he may have chosen to stretch his legs after the long train ride from Paris. In front of the small, Mansard-roofed Gare Maritime stood the White Star tenders, Traffic and Nomadic , on which luggage and mail sacks were being loaded. The two tenders had been built at Harland and Wolff to service the new Olympic -class liners which were too large to dock in Cherbourg, the first stop after Southampton on White Star’s transatlantic route. The quay in front of the