Bloodline in Chiaroscuro

CHAPTER ONE April 15, 1912, North Atlantic Ocean, 41°46' N, 50°24' W 05:00 AM Elspeth Moira McMorgan was perspiring like a pig. Her layered wool clothing––the voluminous wool skirt that swirled around her ankles, the thick cotton long-sleeved shirt under the knee-length wool coat, the knitted wool scarf that wrapped around her neck several times and draped to her waist––was drenched in a mixture of sweat, sea water, and general grime. Her discomfort had become a mainstay of her shipboard world since the Carpathia had arrived at its destination a scant hour earlier. Her waist-length, burnished copper hair had come undone from its tight top bun and tumbled down her back and she was constantly pushing it away from her face; she had lost her wool cap to the sea when she was trying to pull up a young widow from one of the lifeboats. Her mouth was stretched in a tight grimace over the delicate chin and its vague cleft; her vivid green eyes set under thick copper lashes had a cast of disbelief mixed with sorrow and horror. She didn’t let herself think too much of the overall situation and instead concentrated on helping to rescue the hundreds of survivors of the disaster that was the maiden voyage of the ship Titanic. The “unsinkable” Titanic: truly not, and perhaps the lesson that God was teaching to men with hubris who had declared the ship to be so. Her devout Catholic upbringing allowed her to acknowledge and approve of forgiveness, but also to believe in the concepts of vengeance and punishment. Unfortunately, those latter concepts certainly did not apply to the hundreds of people that died in the sinking of the ship, or those who were fortunate to survive but who would never be the same. They were innocents, yet paid for the misdeeds of others. She found that to be a truism in many aspects of life. Her father had pounded that fact into her stubborn head all her life, and never more so determinedly than when she told him that she planned on emigrating to the United States when she finished nursing school in Edinburgh. He warned, gave dire predictions, threatened, and finally pleaded with her to remain in Dundee with him and her four sisters, but she was determined to make her mark in the world, and the world of Dundee was simply too small to hold her ambitions. Her sisters, Lorna, Skye, Fiona, and Greer, begged her to reconsider; they tried to guilt her that as the oldest she should be responsible for taking care of them and their widowed father. She resisted, and in May, 1911, the day after she graduated a fully-fledged nurse from the demanding rigors of school and interning in the capital of her birth country, she packed a single leather bag, kissed her teary-eyed siblings goodbye, and hugged her angry but grieving father. Wiping away a swath of sad and frightened tears of her own, she boarded a crowded coach that would take her to Liverpool, England, where she would board a ship that would take her on a hard, long ocean voyage to “the new world.” Her seven-pound fare would be mitigated by performing nursing tasks for the shipboard doctor; she was able to pocket two pounds to help sustain her once she made it to her destination. Elspeth waited two weeks for the Samaritan of the Seas to arrive at the dock. She rented a tiny attic room above a saloon and paid for her rent working as a waitress, dishwasher, and floor-scrubber. She was utterly relieved when the ship arrived and her place on it was confirmed. She hadn’t realized, however, that she couldn’t simply waltz merrily up the gangplank: the shipping lines in Europe were required to verify the desirability of the potential immigrant; otherwise, if said immigrant failed the Ellis Island inspection, the ship would not be reimbursed for returning the person to his or her country of origin. Elspeth found herself disinfected (enduring lingering hands on her breasts and buttocks), vaccinated, and interrogated: Have you ever been in prison? (Are ye daft, man? Of course not!) What is your profession? (Nurse. And a fine one, too.) Are you married? (No.) Do you have any children? (Didna I just say I wasna married? No!) How old are you? (Twenty, birth date April 30, 1891, the very day that the An Comunn Gàidhealach was founded in Oban. A grand day that was, and …) Have you ever had any diseases of the body or mind? (Certainly not! I’ll gie ye a skelpit lug, ye suggest other! Doan tell me ta keep the heid!) Where did you last live? (Dundee, Scotland, the finest seaport town on the North Sea.) What are your plans for your new life? (Acquire a position in a hospital. Administer to the poor and infirm.) The dozens of questions and answers were logged in a manifest, which would be scrutinized by the American authorities to determine whether or not a person should be granted admittance to the country. To say that the ocean voyage was long and hard would be minimizing the experience: the ship was on its last legs. It carried one thousand, one hundred and thirteen souls, four hundred more than it was built for. The cramped, six-by-five-foot steerage room with only two narrow bunk beds that Elspeth shared with three other young women was stark, cold, noisy (from its proximity to the engine room), and damp. The food was barely edible on good days; on bad, it was beyond unpalatable. The toilets didn’t always flush properly, leaving a permanent aroma of feces and urine wafting through the stagnant air and mixing with the rank smell of vomit, rotting food, and unwashed bodies. Only on calm sea days were the steerage passengers allowed up to their own outside deck for a rare breath of fresh, salty air, and a taste of the freedom they hoped to enjoy once they reached their destination. She worked fifteen-hour days helping to minister to the steady stream of seasick and otherwise ill passengers, and fending off the unwelcome advances of the old doctor who had apparently thought that her duties including seeing to his carnal needs. He backed off halfway through the voyage when she thrust a sharp knife that her father had given her as a parting gift under his chin and made it clear in her heavy burr that if he persisted, he would disembark from the ship minus two very critical body parts previously located south of his belly button. The trip took twelve hellish days instead of five, much longer than originally anticipated due to mechanical problems with the engine and the propulsion units. By the time that the ship had passed the halfway mark on its voyage eight people in steerage had died; they were “buried at sea;” i.e., unceremoniously tossed overboard. Dozens of the lower-class guests were ill by the time that they reached the United States to begin the much-anticipated yet often frustrating “voyage” through Ellis Island, the front door to a new life. Still, as the ship entered New York Harbor and began chugging its way up the Hudson to the Chelsea Piers, the railings were lined five-deep with people staring out at the beautiful Statue of Liberty, a symbol of new life, and new hope. The lady with the torch was what kept most of them going, including Elspeth. Still, she couldn’t suppress a shiver of apprehension as she stared and evaluated the island and buildings and the men within that would determine her future. As the ship approached the island, she suppressed a shiver at the smoke curling up from the chimneys of what she would later learn was the crematory, where many unfortunate pilgrims met their final fate as soot and ash. Originally only three and half acres in size, Ellis Island was named Oyster Island by the seventeenth-century Dutch settlers in deference to the vast oyster beds surrounding the sandy stretch. The name didn’t last long; when the British overtook New York (previously New Amsterdam), they renamed it Gull Island. In the mid-eighteenth century the island was a spot where pirates were hanged.