TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter Sixteen
Titanic stood silhouetted against a purple
post-sunset sky. She was lit up like a floating palace, and her thousand
portholes reflected in the calm harbor waters. The 150-foot tender Nomadic lay
alongside, looking like a rowboat. The lights of Cherbourg harbor completed the
postcard image.
Entering the first class reception room from
the tender were a number of prominent passengers. A broad-shouldered woman in
an enormous feathered hat came up the gangway, carrying a suitcase in each
hand, a spindly porter running to catch up with her to take the bags.
"Well, I wasn’t about to wait all day
for you, sonny. Take ‘em the rest of the way if you think you can manage."
The woman’s name was Margaret Brown, but
everyone called her Molly. History would call her the Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Her husband had struck gold someplace out west, and she was what Ruth called
"new money."
At 45, Molly Brown was a tough talking
straight shooter who dressed in the finery of her genteel peers but would never
be one of them.
By the next afternoon they had made their
final stop and they were steaming west from the coast of Ireland, with nothing
out ahead of them but ocean.