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that the lines didn’t do more to protect their ordinary passengers. The veteran gamblers were familiar figures to most of the pursers and smoking room stewards: were they being bribed to keep quiet? Undoubtedly there were occasional payoffs, but the real source of trouble seems to have been the steamship companies themselves. They didn’t want to take any step that implied they might be responsible for their patrons’ losses. Nor were all high-stake games dishonest; there was always the legal danger of a false charge. It was safer not to get involved.
    On the Titanic there was only one low-keyed warning. This was a mild little insert, planted opposite the first page of the Passenger List:
SPECIAL NOTICE
The attention of the Managers has been called to the fact that certain persons, believed to be Professional Gamblers, are in the habit of traveling to and fro in Atlantic Steamships.
    In bringing this to the knowledge of Travelers the Managers, while not wishing in the slightest degree to interfere with the freedom of action of Patrons of the White Star Line, desire to invite their assistance in discouraging Games of Chance, as being likely to afford these individuals special opportunities for taking unfair advantage of others.
    Along with the deceptions, the Titanic’s Passenger List had its share of printer’s errors—unintended, but no less misleading to browsers then and now. “H. Bjornstrom,” for instance, was really H. Bjornstrom Steffanson, a wealthy young Swedish businessman, whose father seemed to own all the wood pulp in Sweden. Steffanson was a lieutenant in the Swedish Army Reserve, but his eyes were set on Wall Street. This was his third trip to New York in two years, and already he was well on his way to making a small fortune of his own.
    Also on the list as Mrs. Churchill “Cardell”—whose last name should have been spelled “Candee.” In an era when genteel ladies were regarded as helpless creatures to be protected by solicitous males, Helen Churchill Candee had already jumped the traces with a book called How Women May Earn a Living. Published in 1900, it was full of crisp, breezy advice. Mrs. Candee had something to say about almost any subject, and other books soon followed: a western called An Oklahoma Romance ; a cultural guide called Decorative Styles and Periods ; and a history of tapestry, just finished and due to be published in the fall.
    But it was not her literary career that put Helen Candee on the Titanic ; it was a personal emergency. Her son had been hurt in an aeroplane accident—a novelty in 1912 that vicariously added to her own glamour— and she was hurrying to his bedside.
    Meanwhile she must make the best of things. It was the off-season, and some 87 unattached men were in First Class. It did not take long for several of them to notice the handsome woman traveling alone, who could usually be found reading in her deck chair on thePromenade Deck, forward. For her part, Mrs. Candee always took two chairs—“one for myself and the other for callers, or for self-protection.” No less than six shipboard swains were soon vying for that extra chair.
    Of them all, she knew only Colonel Archibald Gracie, slightly. An amateur military historian, he had just finished a detailed Civil War battle history, The Truth about Chickamauga. Now he was crossing the ocean and back, to get it out of his system. Two others of the group had been recommended to her by mutual friends: Hugh Woolner, son of a noted English sculptor; and Edward A. Kent, a well-connected Buffalo architect. The rest were complete strangers, to be fixed in her mind the way one does with shipboard acquaintances. Clinch Smith was the Long Island socialite who kept polo ponies and lived mostly in Paris; Bjornstrom Steffanson was the dashing Swedish reserve officer; E. P. Colley was the roly-poly Irishman who laughed a lot but said little.
    They were all dazzled by Mrs. Candee, and she in turn “felt divinely flattered to