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

steel mooring cables had “snapped like thread” with “cracks like pistol shots” in the words of Titanic passenger Francis Browne, and her stern had swung out toward the Titanic . Browne, a keen photographer, had leaned over the railing of the boat deck with his camera at arm’s length to capture the New York ’s stern coming within four feet of the Titanic . “A voice beside me said, ‘Now for a crash’ and I snapped my shutter,” he recalled. Browne then quickly dashed farther aft, “only to see the black hull of the New York slide gently past.” A sudden burst of water from the Titanic ’s port propeller following a “Full Astern!” order from the bridge had avoided the predicted crash—though only narrowly. Tugboats attached lines to the New York and pulled her away to moor elsewhere, but the near collision delayed the Titanic ’s departure by an hour or more.
    At luncheon afterward there had been much discussion of the recent excitement, with some passengers wondering aloud if passenger ships had just become too big, while others noted that this was an unfortunate omen for a maiden voyage. By late afternoon, however, the talk was all about the size and splendor of the new liner as passengers trooped up and down the grand staircase exploring her decks and public rooms. “You would never imagine you were on board a ship” was a much-overheard comment. That evening Frank Millet, too, became caught up in the general enthusiasm and wrote to Alfred Parsons the next morning that being on the Titanic was “not a bit like going to sea. You can have no idea of the spaciousness of this ship.… She has everything but taxicabs and theatres.”
    Bruce Ismay would not have delayed the Astors for long given Madeleine’s weakened condition, and as they were escorted to their large and elegant suite on C deck, Titanic stewardess Violet Jessop managed to catch her first glimpse of Madeleine Astor. “Instead of the radiant woman of my imagination, one who had succeeded in overcoming much opposition and marrying the man she wanted,” she later wrote, “I saw a quiet, pale, sad-faced, in fact, dull young woman arrive listlessly on the arm of her husband, apparently indifferent to everything about her.”
    Clearly, Madeleine Astor was feeling the effects of her pregnancy and a long day’s journey. Violet penned an even more unflattering depiction of a wealthy American matron coming on board but discreetly used the pseudonym “Mrs. Klapton.”
My heart sank as Mrs. Cyrus Klapton, clutching her pet Pekinese, bore down towards my section followed by a downcast maid. She had invariably reduced each successive maid to submission ere she boarded the ship. Although in many ways my job was not that prestigious, I could consider myself lucky when I looked at that maid and saw what her position had done to her.
     
    It is suspected that Violet Jessop’s moneyed dragon is based on Charlotte Drake Cardeza, a Philadelphia heiress who had booked an even grander suite than the Astors and arrived on board with even more luggage. Her fourteen steamer trunks, four suitcases, and three packing crates contained seventy dresses, ten fur coats, eighty-four pairs of gloves, and thirty-two pairs of shoes as well as feather boas, parasols, ermine muffs, and ivory hair combs. In her jewel case was a diamond and Burmese ruby ring worth $14,000 ($300,000 today) as well as a seven-carat pink diamond from Tiffany’s worth $20,000 ($450,000 today). Mrs. Cardeza had booked one of the two ultra-deluxe B-deck parlor suites, each of which had a sitting room with a marble fireplace and a private fifty-foot promenade deck decorated with greenery and Tudor-style woodwork. (The other deluxe parlor suite had been booked by J. P. Morgan but was now occupied by J. Bruce Ismay.) Charlotte Cardeza was on her way home to Montebello, her walled stone mansion in the fashionable Main Line town of Germantown, Pennsylvania. Yet she apparently did not mingle much