Inger (and Colleen): Found it! Finally.
While scoping out my "Senator Cary" post elsewhere, I ran across that excerpt I'd referred to previously -- the one I couldn't relocate. It's on page 221 of the Revised (1986) edition -- second page of Chapter 14, "Dies Irae". I'm including some surrounding text solely for "ulterior" motives: ;^)
Taken in that context -- Lightoller's much later assertions in his autobiography, versus presumably contemporary accounts from O'Donnell and Carroll, as well as Lightoller himself -- that dismissal doesn't seem unreasonable. (I'm not saying there couldn't have been more involved than meets the eye, but ...)
Anyway, the crew should have had something to cheer about there. They had been well-treated in the U.S., as far as I know, and Smith even got them a 25% raise. (Four dollars a day -- short of a Pound -- ain't bad in 1912 terms.) But I can also understand that later memory would still not tend to construe that "captive" series of events -- including the pressures of testifying -- as anything generally resembling a jolly time. Understandably. (Not dismissing your own observations here -- just again considering the potential vagaries of memory.)
Cheers,
John
While scoping out my "Senator Cary" post elsewhere, I ran across that excerpt I'd referred to previously -- the one I couldn't relocate. It's on page 221 of the Revised (1986) edition -- second page of Chapter 14, "Dies Irae". I'm including some surrounding text solely for "ulterior" motives: ;^)
Quote:
The rumor (complaints about the detention of the crew) to which Mr. Scott alluded arose from a publicized visit the Titanic's crewmen had made to Ambassador Bryce Wednesday evening. Bryce was leaving for New Zealand Thursday morning, and according to Officer Lightoller, the men had merely called on the ambassador prior to his departure simply as British subjects calling on the official representative of their country. Concerning the rumor of complaints, Lightoller said to the press, "I am sorry such a report has gone abroad."
In his autobiography, published twenty-three years later, however, Lightoller said that near the end, the crewmen "refused to have anything more to do with the enquiry" and it "was only with the greatest difficulty I was able to bring peace into the camp." Not so, said the Michigan Minutemen, whose duties involved eavesdropping on the crewmen. O'Donnell and Carroll maintained that the officers were indeed expressing annoyance at being detained in Washington and at Smith's nautical ignorance -- but the crewmen were posing no problems at all. They were now on a first-name basis with Senator Smith, who had managed to get Congress to raise their witness fees from three to four dollars per day. (emphasis mine) Wednesday evening they were followed all over the capital by a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal who said "they seemed to be enjoying the time of their lives."
Taken in that context -- Lightoller's much later assertions in his autobiography, versus presumably contemporary accounts from O'Donnell and Carroll, as well as Lightoller himself -- that dismissal doesn't seem unreasonable. (I'm not saying there couldn't have been more involved than meets the eye, but ...)
Anyway, the crew should have had something to cheer about there. They had been well-treated in the U.S., as far as I know, and Smith even got them a 25% raise. (Four dollars a day -- short of a Pound -- ain't bad in 1912 terms.) But I can also understand that later memory would still not tend to construe that "captive" series of events -- including the pressures of testifying -- as anything generally resembling a jolly time. Understandably. (Not dismissing your own observations here -- just again considering the potential vagaries of memory.)
Cheers,
John