Shipbuilder (9 page)

Casey heard a voice in her ear. “Chalk up another one for the legend.” She turned to find Mike Sloan standing behind her, looking thoughtfully at Tom as the men continued a step-by-step breakdown of the rescue.

 Sloan had backed off on invitations to his meetings, but lately he’d started a more insidious campaign. Casey knew that in many ways, an atheist was even worse than a Catholic. Sloan would have to address the issue eventually, but even she was taken by surprise when he began to mention scriptures in her presence relating to God’s hatred of men who engage in “unnatural acts.” Evidently, he had decided that Casey the boy, who was small and “pretty,” was homosexual. Ironic, but dangerous. She usually tried to avoid him, but now annoyance caused her to jump to Tom’s defense.

“Is that what you think he was doing? I didn’t notice you climbing up there to help Artie.” Her whisper was furious, but he answered mildly.

“Why, Mr. Andrews’ reputation is well-deserved, lad. Wouldn’t think to disparage him, not at all.” He started to turn away, but stopped, eyes narrowing as his gaze pierced her. “Don’t hurt the legend none, though. Makes you notice him, I guess.”

Casey flushed, closing her mouth against a retort that would only make things worse. Damn! Sloan had noticed her attraction to Tom, and put exactly the wrong spin on it. There’d be no good to come of that, she was sure.

~~~

"The thing is," she told Sam as she furiously chopped a cabbage for dinner that night, "despite the riots and other problems in Belfast, the workers at the shipyard get along pretty well."

Sam checked the cooking chicken. "I remember in history class–seventh grade or so–we did a section on
Titanic
and the shipyard. One of the things they told us was that Harland & Wolff had one of the fairest work policies in all Ireland. They didn't hire many Catholics, but the ones they had could work in safety, for the most part."

"It's true," Casey said. "Some of the Catholics and Protestants are friends with each other, at least at work. There aren't many who are like Mike Sloan, but it doesn't take very many to cause a lot of trouble. Sloan's a foreman. If he wants to make trouble for a Catholic worker, he can. And they let him hold these meetings at lunch time, where he'll get the workers riled up about something and blame the Catholics for it." She leaned against the counter and stared at the floor. "You can always tell when he's been doing that. It's real tense in the yard for a while. Usually after a few hours, everyone's back to normal–they start working together and forget about the issues. But it can be scary."

"And Sloan thinks you're gay?" Sam handed her the plates for the table, an eyebrow raised at her. "I could've told you something like that would happen."

She sniffed. "Gay, and interested in Tom Andrews. Can't I just tell him to mind his own business?"

Sam laughed. "Get real, Casey. Everybody these days
knows
" he put two fingers up in quotation marks, "that homosexuality is wrong. It's sinful. That's something the Catholics and the Protestants agree on." He tossed her the napkins. "No one would be on your side."

She caught the napkins, glaring at him. "What can he do about it? He can't prove it." But she looked worried. "If he starts spreading rumors, it could look bad for Mr. Andrews, though."

"Oh, I doubt he'd try that, Casey." Sam stared off into space, thinking. "I wonder if this guy is related to Thomas Sloan, who's a member of parliament. A very sectarian, bigoted MP. Hates Catholics; totally committed to the Protestant cause. If so, your Mike Sloan has a formidable position as a political influence in the yard. But he still depends on Lord Pirrie more or less approving of what he does. And Pirrie is an enigma when it comes to Home Rule. He's generally for it, if I remember my history right. But he waffles because he wants to advance in British society, and the British are obviously against it." Casey looked confused and Sam offered a brief smile. "Basically, Lord Pirrie will want to avoid action for or against a man like Sloan. So Sloan can get away with a lot. But I don't think he'd get away with slandering Lord Pirrie's nephew."

They sat at the table as Sam dished up the food. "You may be somewhat protected from Sloan by your working relationship with Andrews. Just try not to piss the guy off, okay? They do bad things to homosexuals in this era."

Casey nodded. "Okay."

"And try not to moon over Tom Andrews so much when you're at work. You have to remember, he thinks you're a boy."

She just stuck her tongue out at him.

Chapter
10

September–October 1906

Casey dashed past the Number Seven slip, with a stack of logbooks for the office. She met up with Tom at an intersection. His grin grew wider as he shifted the machine parts in his hands, tucked some rolled plans under an arm, and handed her a few sheets of paper. "You're on the way to the office, aren't you?" he asked hopefully. "Just drop these on my desk. I'll get to 'em later."

"Sure," she replied, following his example and placing them in a pocket. That kept them from getting mixed in with her other stuff. She paced alongside him as he made his way past the slip. "I've got a quick question," she told him and he nodded as she jumped into some recent confusion about the figures from the plating shed. He was in the middle of clearing up her confusion when he went silent, lifting his head and looking around quizzically.

Suddenly, he tossed the rolls and parts at her, ran down a path and disappeared around a corner of boxes. Puzzled, she followed, and stopped in astonishment at the intersection. He was tearing through a gang of men, all of them scrambling in haphazard panic to get out of the way, as he did a credible imitation of a jig, running this way and that, knocking over tea kettles, cups, and tins of tea and sugar. Cries of consternation could be heard as several men tried to claim their crockery before it broke, some slipping in the spilled water. Tom stopped then, arms akimbo, as he regarded the dismayed gang with unforgiving sternness.

“Heating your tea water already! It’s five minutes before horn-blow! I’d like to know where the honor is in stealing time from your employer!” His glare took in each man individually, but none of them seemed willing to attempt an answer, as they looked down and mumbled a bit, most offering shamefaced apologies. One of them glared at a pale-faced youth peaking from behind a plating machine. “Ye was supposed to keep a look-out and warn us if ‘e came through!”

The boy nodded enthusiastically, eyeing Tom with awe. “Aye, I was looking. But ‘e didn’t come that way, like usual. He slipped in the back, sneaky as you please!”

“Aye,” said another, “and came tearin’ through here like a racehorse, hittin’ every bit of our mess!”

They all agreed with admiring head shakes. Tom grinned, confident they’d gotten the point. “Becker!” he roared, spying the men’s supervisor coming up the path. “Five minutes off the break for these men. They’ll have to drink their water cold, this morning! And make sure they wait for that horn from now on!”

Becker lifted an arm in acknowledgment, waving the men back to work, as Tom turned to Casey, his face split in a happy grin. He started grabbing back his papers. “Thanks for catching all that, lad. Good reflexes!”

She handed him back the rolls, shaking her head at him in mock consternation. “You had entirely too much fun with that. Sir.”

The grin turned into a laugh as they continued on their way. “Aye, well, I’ll tell you. Becker and I have been suspecting something of the sort was goin’ on, but we could never catch them. That’s why I went around back this time. Worked like a charm!”

His laugh was always infectious, and Casey joined in for a moment, then she shook her head. “But you just docked them five minutes instead of something harsher. That was kind of you.”

His smile remained in place, but he looked at her earnestly. “They’ll have to clean up that mess on their break, too, you know. But I don’t think it’s necessary to treat people harshly. I started here as an apprentice and I worked in all these departments. I know the work is hard, and it’s tempting to take it easy or skip a step. But for their own safety, we have to maintain discipline. A supervisor should build his men up, while making sure they learn self-discipline. Those men are all good workers, and their crime was mild. It’s important to me what a person’s intention is, too. I’m always willing to give someone another chance so long as they meant no real harm.” He shrugged a bit. “Provided they didn’t
cause
any real harm, of course.”

The smile came back in full force. “So there’s your Andrews lecture for the day, lad. Ye bore it well.” He tipped his hat at her and took off down another path. After a moment, Casey resumed her hurried pace to the drawing office, feeling some real hope that Thomas Andrews might–
might
–understand about, and maybe forgive her for, her own crime.

~~~

In the office later that day, Casey turned from the tonnage projections she was working on. “Have I picked up the wrong formula for figuring the number of lifeboats?” she asked Tom. “It seems wrong.”

He looked over her shoulder, checking what she had written. “Looks correct to me. What don’t you understand about it?”

“Why it’s used,” she said, looking at him curiously. “I suppose the tonnage relates to how much room there is for lifeboats, and to the number of people the ship can carry. But why not just provide enough seats for each person the ship can carry? The other way seems so inefficient. Not to mention inaccurate.”

Tom smiled thoughtfully, as he turned and leaned against the table, arms crossed. “Now that’s something that needs to change,” he said. “Knowledge has been increasing so quickly over the last twenty years or so, that rule-making bodies are struggling to keep up. It’s also true that a governing board is typically conservative and slow-moving.” He gave her a rueful look. “We’ve been lobbying for more lifeboats for a long time. For the most part, the board doesn’t see the need to change the rule, and until the rule is changed, the people who control the purse strings aren’t going to spend the money.”

She shook her head. “It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

He looked despondent. “Aye, Casey. It always does. But we keep hounding them. Eventually, they’ll come around.”

“Not before a lot of people die,” she murmured, staring at her figures.

“Oh, not necessarily,” he protested. “There are other ways of effecting rescues, you know. All the ships have the wireless now, and can call for help, if it’s needed. And the ships themselves are better built and more stable, more able to withstand the storms and other dangers. ‘Tis true that no ship is unsinkable, but we do everything we can to keep them afloat for as long as possible, if damaged.” He held out a hand. “No one wants people to die.”

Casey stamped down on her nervousness. This was the first real opportunity she’d had to even begin to warn him and she didn’t want to blow it. “I was reading about the Great Eastern,” she began, and stopped when he raised both eyebrows in astonishment.

“You were?” he asked. “Why?”

She was puzzled. “Why not?”

“I just didn’t realize you were that interested in this, that you’d be reading about it in your spare time.”

She shrugged. “It’s your fault,” she told him, laughing at his expression. “You give me a job here and I find it’s fascinating stuff. So I start reading about ships.”

He seemed amazed. “So what about the Great Eastern?”

“Well, it seems that we don’t use even the technology we have available to build safer ships. The Eastern was built almost fifty years ago, with a complete double hull and watertight bulkheads that rose thirty feet above the water line. When she ran into a rock and had severe damage, she was still able to make it to harbor. Because of the double skin.”

He looked at her for a moment, then held a finger up to indicate she should wait. He went into the drawing room and came back in a couple of minutes with a few rolls of plans. He spread them out on the table. “These are the early drawings for
Cedric
and
Adriatic
. I don’t know if you can read these well enough yet, but can you see the double hull? And here,” he pointed to a dotted line that ran the length of the ship, “this is the waterline. The bulkheads extend thirty feet up.” He pointed them out, then looked at her, quite seriously.

“Every ship we design starts out with these. Our first design is always an engineer’s dream—the perfect ship, as near as we can make it. And every time, our first design is denied. It’s like a play. We all know our roles and we all play them.” He sounded surprisingly bitter. “You’ve seen the figures, Casey. Shipping is extremely competitive and the profit margins are almost nonexistent. The ship’s owners want a ship that will make them money. Shareholders want dividends. So we end up building a ship with features that sell: comfort, beauty, service. Safety is important, but it’s one place that owners feel we can cut corners and get away with it. Because we have gotten away with it, Casey.” He rubbed his hand gently over the plans. “There have been no major accidents in all this time. We’ve been lucky.”

She watched him, uncertain. The situation troubled him, and she was about to make it much worse. If he was already doing everything he could, what more could she ask of him? Well, she could ask him to live. That was the bottom line.

“Say there is a major disaster, with a large loss of life,” she said carefully. “Suddenly the public is outraged, and there are inquiries and trials and they begin demanding these features. I’m cynical enough to believe that the money would be there, in that situation. How can we convince them to spend the money before the disaster?”

He looked at her in amazement, shaking his head. “Where did this come from?” he asked. “Of all the issues in shipbuilding you could investigate, why this one?”

She smiled ruefully. “I have a vivid imagination. I watch that ship being built,” she gestured vaguely in the direction of
Adriatic
, “and I’m simply amazed at it. But I see these figures, and I see what’s not going into the ships. If I, as a customer, wanted to buy a ticket to America, I would know there’s more danger than is being admitted by White Star Line, or even by Harland & Wolff. And I would like to know there’s a seat on a lifeboat, if I need it.”

He nodded, thinking about it. “What would it take to get those features? You already said it: public demand. Across the board, though. If I sat down with Bruce Ismay today, and convinced him to allow those features on his ships, it could bankrupt White Star. If they raised prices to cover the cost, people would go with another line. If they swallow the costs, they’ll never make it up.”

“But they can use the extra safety in marketing, can’t they? If they talk about the features and what they mean, won’t people be willing to pay more?” Casey realized she was thinking of twenty-first century marketing techniques, but she thought it was worth a try.

“Only in a perfect world, lad.” Tom looked apologetic. “Aye, some people will pay more, but most won’t. Most people, if it comes down to it, would rather take the risk, if given the choice. I’m afraid that even the paying public may need your major disaster before they are willing to pay for safety.”

He touched her shoulder. “You can talk to people, write letters, maybe talk to a newspaper and see if they’ll write about it. The only way to begin changing public opinion is by first telling them about the problem.” He looked alarmed. “But I don’t think you, personally, should do anything. Do you have any idea what it would look like, if an employee of Harland & Wolff started a campaign like that? It would look like disgruntlement, like you were trying to harm the company. It could hurt you and us.”

He held up a finger. “I’m serious about that, Casey. Forget I even made the suggestion. Let me keep working on it through inside channels, all right?”

She nodded. “All right.”

He smiled at her. “I promise I’ll work on it more.” He picked up the blueprint and started rolling it up. “I have a meeting. But thanks for your concern. You have very good ideas.”

~~~

She couldn't shake the worry and remorse that she felt. She told Sam about the conversation, suggesting that perhaps he could approach a newspaper about the issue.

"I'm reluctant to do that, Casey," he told her. "For one thing, I'm only one step removed from the situation. It would still look like a campaign of some kind. Why don't you give him a chance to see what he can do? We still have several years before
Titanic
sails."

"Five," she said under her breath, then louder. "We have five years. He's been trying for years and hasn't made any progress. And based on our history, he doesn't make any progress in the next five years. I'm worried, Sam."

"But he didn't have this conversation with you in our history. Maybe it will give him an impetus."

Casey left the dinner table and went to stand at the window, staring at the street. "I want to tell him," she told the window.

At the table, Sam sighed. "How do we do that?" he asked her. "Casey, right now, he respects you. He knows you're intelligent and curious, and that you're interested in the ships. You go to him spouting about time travel and shipwrecks, and he'll be convinced you're crazy. You'll lose all the ground you've made with him."

"We have our gadgets," she said, not turning from the window. "They convinced Riley."

"Who promptly left town."

She rested her forehead against the window, as if weary with the turmoil that boiled within her. "I can't let him die, Sam." Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

He turned to look at her. She was still looking out the window, a small, thin girl, her short hair disheveled. As usual, she had changed into a skirt. Sam was glad that she still looked "normal" to him, although at times, it was beginning to look odd: her Edwardian clothes with the short curls, instead of the elegant up-dos all the women wore. Not for the first time, Sam wished he'd had a daughter, or just more experience with young women. What could he say that would help her?