In My Own Voice Vol. 4 edited -

Dr. Lant passed away April 16, 2023

In My Own Voice
Reading from My Collected Works Vol. 4
Yarns of Great Ships and Small

DEDICATION

Dedicated to my father, Donald Marshall Lant, who always knew the allure of Gitche Gumee.

Contents
Introduction 3
https://youtu.be/m8o7oUi81II 3
Chapter 1 8
“The first, the last, the epic journey of RMS Titanic, and you are there. Some centennial observations.” 8
https://youtu.be/tut4YMrfIzA 8
Chapter 3 17
“Harry Elkins Widener. A story of tragedy, loss, fortitude, courage, of a great ship, early death and a monument of eternal worth now challenged.” 17
https://youtu.be/PxSuhcxre90 17
Chapter 4 23
“’Look away Dixie Land!’ The day that determined the outcome of the U.S. Civil War. The Battle of Hampton Roads, March 9, 1862. And you are there….” 23
https://youtu.be/wP1NAdZxa0o 23
Chapter 5 27
“’And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’. (Genesis 1:2) Thoughts on Foxy Lady II and the most chilling words in the language, ‘presumed lost.’” 27
https://youtu.be/Codf4Th2faU 27
About the Author 32
SPECIAL WRITERS SECRETS CATALOG 33

Introduction
https://youtu.be/m8o7oUi81II

Reading by Dr. Jeffrey Lant at: https://youtu.be/m8o7oUi81II

When you are a boy in the Midwest of America, oceans are not your usual occupation. Rather, you follow the penetrating vicissitudes of hogs, of corn, of wheat, of soybeans, of dairy cattle, and stinking silage… in short, nothing whatever to do with the great waters of our Earth, beyond the Mississippi.

So of course, these seas and oceans become a primary part of what you imagine. The first notable lake I recall is where the Lady of the Lake resides. She was the one, you may remember, who took Excalibur from the dying King Arthur, and then disappeared holding the sword upright, and them submerged… just the image for a daydreaming boy, who wanted to see that lake, see that lady, and have his chance to grab that sword and be the undoubted King of the realm. Right from the beginning, therefore, I was hooked on the water borne adventures which could come if only you believed enough, and never stopped looking through all the seas of all the lands.

U-505

The first boat of any substance I remember seeing was the U-505, a German submarine captured in WWII. It was given to the Field Museum in Chicago, and as we were only school children, we could move nimbly throughout what looked like a great cigar.

I had claustrophobia that day, and it has inconsistently troubled me throughout the duration of my life. Being a submariner, therefore, was not in my future. But one thing was for certain… I could see that small craft, just 252 feet, and wonder where it had been, what they had done, and to whom had they done it.

In short, I recognized that this was not just a piece of ancient metal, but the repository of one sea story after another. And if the submarine did not thrill me, or excite me to unexampled heights, why, then, at least it was the place where sea stories began, and that was good enough.

From that day, without precisely knowing it, I began to collect stories of the great seas, courageous crews or otherwise (think HMS Bounty), and the trade they carried, which took nations like England and Spain and made them rich, and richer still, for to the richest truly went the spoils.

Oats

One summer, my well meaning father sent me to St. Charles, Illinois, to my uncle Ray’s farm. The idea (imperfectly thought out) was to get me close to the Earth, close to the grains which flowed from the good Earth of the prairies, and turn me in the process into a sun burnt lad with cheek of tan. It was a foolish notion, and I quickly showed where my true interests were.

I would come back from the fields, which were being harvested, covered in oat dust. Now for those of you who have never experienced the joys of oat dust, the fine dust derived from the combine process, it covers your body with the thinnest of dusts, dusts which get into every crevasse and aperture of that sun burnt body… ears, eyes, lips, mouth, chest, you get the picture. To eradicate this dust, and as much of the tenacious farm smells which could be erased, I was thrust under the pump in beseeching position, while the coldest water on Earth turned the dust into a fine paste.

From that substantial paste, still remaining, and all the residue of the harvest gone before, you itched, scratched, took fingernails to ears, chafed… there was no escape from this torture. And so, of an evening in the height of summer, where the heat was oppressive, the humidity sky high, the mosquitoes vying for the Distinguished Flying Cross; buzzing around and around some more, nibbling at you whenever they had the chance.

My goal was to escape as quickly as possible. Since my father and uncle had worked out a scheme for my agrarian upbringing, I had to exercise my substantial imagination. And so I began my first novel, age 15, written on shelf paper, the amount needed rolled out. On this scroll of paper, each evening I would write the latest installment in the adventures of Hernan Cortez, conquistador.

To this day, I retain an acute interest in Cortez, and all the waters he sailed on, from Spain to Cuba, from Cuba to Vera Cruz. I made excellent progress.

My cousins muttered darkly, my aunt Doris Jean disdained me, but I had the full support of my uncle Ray, who had been, not so long before, in the United States Army in Europe during WWII. He understood the thrill of water, and the need to take one’s human experiences, and use them to avoid the unpleasant present. In short, I was a phenomenon.

From that day to this, my acquisition of sea stories, of all water stories, has grown apace. To me, these are not sea stories, they are human stories, and in my mind, I can tell you the large ships and little boats which have come through my life.

I sat down the other day to write about all the ships I’d studied, which supplied me with good material, and hours of pleasant reading and studying. As I brainstormed, I saw an unending flotilla, indeed a fleet, of the ships and boats I love so much. They ran from Queen Cleopatra’s extravagant royal barge, burnished with startling gold and the purple sails beloved of Shakespeare, to the African Queen, one of the most magnificent ships there ever was, because the Queen was a noble vessel indeed, and acted accordingly, right through to her noble end.

I studied the greatest battleships on Earth, like the Bismarck, which might have changed the war, but for that one in a million shot that disabled the rudder and damned her to revolve in uncontrollable circles on the sea, and therefore, a sitting duck. There was the story of the Sultana, a riverboat designated to bring home Union war prisoners, the most needy and frail of all, after the fall of the Confederacy. What a horror it was to learn that of 2,427 passengers, far above her capacity, 1,800 were incinerated, their shrieks like the entry way to hell.

There was the Mayflower, which transformed religious immigrants into snobs, and the Victory, Lord Nelson’s flagship, in the Battle of Trafalgar, with its baffling kiss, requested by Nelson for Captain Hardy. And so the list goes on. Consider the Lusitania, which may or may not have been carrying weapons to the Allied forces. Either way, the rampant German submariners polished her off and brought the U.S.A. into the Great War.

There is now, and there always will be no shortage of stories of small ships and great. And to those who are drawn to such stories, we are happy in our work indeed.

Five yarns

The chapters of this book contain some of my favorite yarns. Many have aspects which have been an enigma since the craft went down.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I introduce these tales to you now. The first three deal with various aspects of RMS Titanic.

My interest in Titanic was stimulated by a trip I made to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax is, to a Bostonian, a surprising city… beautiful, severe, hospitable, jammed with plenty stories.

For example, when perusing the cemetery, to my amazement I discovered the grave of Mrs. Anna Leonowens (1831-1915). She wrote “The English Governess at the Siamese Court” (1870). She had traveled long distances over challenging and worrying seas only at the end to watch in horror as bodies from Titanic washed ashore.

Such sorrows were commonplace in Halifax. After all, this is where the American loyalists gathered when exiled from their country by the revolutionaries of 1776. No one who has been exiled from their homeland can possibly know this persistent, gnawing pain, and the seas which may carry it anywhere.

Three of the five chapters in this book deal with Titanic, which has always had an outsized presence. One may set out to write one chapter on Titanic, even a single word, but Titanic knows better than you, her astonishing degree of interest, an interest that does not subside year after year. So, three articles for Titanic… the fourth article on the single naval battle which might have determined the entire course of the Civil War in just a few hours. It is an arresting tale, and is one of the great what-if’s of human history.

Finally there is the story of the rusty scalloper Foxy Lady II. This is a sad story indeed, but a typical one where sea yarns are concerned. Make sure to read carefully, for it is the kind of story that will haunt you for life.

Musical note

It is always a thrill to see any kind of representation of the golden barge with purple sails as it floated down the Nile to Cleopatra VII’s epochal meeting with Lord Anthony. Alex North composed the theme music for the 1963 film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhxCqJzk0Wg

Chapter 1
“The first, the last, the epic journey of RMS Titanic, and you are there. Some centennial observations.”
https://youtu.be/tut4YMrfIzA

Reading by Dr. Jeffrey Lant at: https://youtu.be/tut4YMrfIzA

Author’s program note. You know Titanic. She is the most famous ship that ever sailed… and the most famous ship that foundered, listed, and sank. It is this ship I ask you to board with me now, having cleared your mind of everything you know, every thought and impression you have ever had about this great ship, and so recapture the state of mind you would have had when you boarded her at Southampton, England 10 April, 1912. For you are weighing anchor towards destiny… but do not know it, no one does.

The Ritz afloat.

The White Star Line was an enterprise that dreamed dreams of magnitude, dreams of floating palaces, of luxury that made you catch your breath and hurry back to record what you saw in your diary, which your grandchildren would savor, a treasured heirloom forever. They brought the very idea of awe to their work… and it was nothing but the very truth, a source of pride to an empire that existed solely because of its command of the seas.

Born in Belfast.

The idea for Titanic and her sister ships RMS Olympic and RMS Britannic commenced in mid-1907 when White Star Line’s chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, met with American financier J. Pierpont Morgan, the man who controlled White Star Line’s parent corporation, the International Mercantile Marine Co. These men had everything… and so, of course, they wanted more. And they had the means to get it.

They insisted, they were adamant, Titanic must be the ultimate in every single element, every feature, every component, the dernier cri, the ship for which even the word acme was not good enough.

Thus they hired the renowned firm of Harland and Wolff, giving them carte blanche, with but a single command: the result must be the best, unrivalled, unexampled; colossus in the age of colossi, the incontrovertible symbol of this greatest age of man and his wondrous works.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was stinted for Titanic, and if six men were killed constructing her, with 246 injuries overall, 28 of them “severe” (meaning loss of limb), why, what did that signify… great enterprises have great costs.

Launched 31 May, 1911.

Of the many proud days in Belfast, this was amongst the proudest for this was a day when the intricate skills of the men of this turbulent city were on best display. Project supervisor Lord Pirrie, J. Pierpont Morgan and J. Bruce Ismay were joined by over 100,000 jubilant, God-fearing people who cheered to the very echo the ship, its sublime grace, the officials who dreamed, the designers who imagined, and the small army of workers who constructed this masterpiece.

So you who read of these happenings longed to be part of Titanic and her gilded future… rather impulsively buying two tickets, a present (rather expensive to be sure) for your wife, for an event you would never forget, of that you were sure.

Thus you found yourself in Southampton… head high, walking up the gangway… where you heard the unmistakable sound of a fashionable waltz, “Songe d’Automne”… it was exquisite… if a trifle sad for such a glad occasion. Yes, haunting, beautiful… mentally noting you would ask the band to play it en route when you wanted just the right sound for a perfect evening…

Thus did the great ship sail on… with no one imagining that she would soon become renowned not for every aspect of nautical expertise, but for hubris, arrogance, ineptitude and for an end that would rival the very essence of Hell itself.

11:40 pm 14 April, 1912. The end begins.

At 11:39 pm of its final night afloat, the magnificent Titanic was a glorious vision, lighting heaven itself, steaming to a ceremonial entrance in New York City, the happy berth of 2,223 people, including the creme de la creme of European and American Society, names you knew, admired, envied.

Just one minute later, suffering a glancing blow from an iceberg whilst maneuvering to avoid it, Titanic began its transformation into a metaphor, not for man’s greatness and technical abilities but for his littleness in the face of unkind and unrelenting Nature, becoming a matter of myth, not merely history.

“No, ‘t is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ‘t is enough, ‘t will serve.” (“Romeo and Juliet”).

And so it did… a mere gash in the pristine hull an invitation for the gelid waters of the ice-flecked Atlantic to rush in, mocking the high works of man, drowning them without any effort at all, their merest motion enough for the gravest consequences.

In such times, the very best and the very worst of man’s behaviors are evidenced… how one demands that half-filled life boats be lowered into the calm sea, the only chance to live, while another, unbidden, gives up a place of safety in that very boat, to ensure the life of a total stranger. The remaining moments on doomed Titanic evince all, telling evidence of who we are and what we may do at anytime, to anyone, for good or ill.

Then came the moment you had to decide…a single moment that shows who you are… and determines what you must do. The moment is charged with importance; it is a life or death decision… and you must make it now, decisively, without regret or recrimination, and absolutely no opportunity to alter it, even if you could.

“Darling, get in the life boat.”

And so you, like every other passenger traveling with a loved one, must act. Must do the right thing, although that thing may cost you your life. And this action must be prompt, for the great thing that was once astonishing Titanic is sinking faster now, its frightful end apparent, and with it your fate.

Thus, you look into your beloved’s eyes and realize that your lives are now separating forever… and the pain is more than you can bear. Then, as her life boat is lowered, you remember a token, sacred now, in your pocket. A locket… with pictures of you both and the single line, “Remember, 14 April, 1912”, the happy day you meant, a lifetime ago, to memorialize… Giving this is the last time you touch her hand… a fact she will never forget and will cherish forever.

Now trapped on the sloping deck, you search your soul for whatever comfort you can derive… and resolve not to die here, passive, but to jump to your fate. As you do, you hear the band still playing; the song you first heard upon boarding, the “Songe d’Automne”, now not merely a waltz… but a hymn for a ship, an era… and now… for you.

Author’s note: Of all the people who sailed on Titanic’s only voyage, just 710 survived. The remainder heard the valiant band play on, until it reached its final arrangement. There is good reason to suppose that was the “Songe d’Automne”. It was composed by Archibald Joyce, the “English Waltz King”. We shall never know for sure, because the entire band went down with the ship. Click here to listen and think on its pathetic history and its final performance on the fateful ship Titanic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g73kOrhAai4

Chapter 2
“The centennial of the great ship Titanic which sank 100 years ago today… April 15, 1912… and why she sails still in our minds.”
https://youtu.be/ooYPP–eeuU

Reading by Dr. Jeffrey Lant at: https://youtu.be/ooYPP–eeuU

Authors program note. You cannot pick up a newspaper this week, or turn on the television… or even snatch a glance at your Smart phone without seeing the single word “Titanic” for this is the centennial not merely of a ship, albeit the grandest on Earth, but of an entire cottage industry and of people worldwide who cannot get enough of the ship once called — without irony — “Ship of Dreams”, “Last Word in Luxury,” and “Millionaire’s Special.”

… But that was before she struck an iceberg and became a thing not only of history but of imagination, fascination, persistence… the most famous ship of all the ships which have ever sailed the world’s broad seas.

The facts.

11:40 pm April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg.

2:20 am April 15, 1912 RMS Titanic sank, taking with her 1500 passengers and crew.

Ships of every kind had sunk before in human history; even ships on their maiden voyage, like Titanic. Passengers and crew had gone down with these ships before. Why then has Titanic seized us so, so that even the smallest detail of this ship and her catastrophic end is grasped with enthusiasm, avidity, and reverence?

To answer this question, we must start with the undeniable facts about this great engine of human ingenuity, human craft… and, as it happened, human hubris and human ineptitude.

Born to be a symbol… but not the symbol she became, the symbol which will always be a part of her riveting tale.

First of all, this is the story of men, rich men, business men, visionaries all. Not until the “unsinkable” Molly Brown (1867-1932) enters the picture in the early morning hours of April 15, at the helm of one of the too-few lifeboats, does a woman emerge… and it is significant, I think, that when woman emerges into the sharp, unremitting glare of history, she is doing the humanitarian work which has always been hers, saving souls and mending lives from the consequences of the ideas run amuck of their bruised and imperfect menfolk.

Titanic is the story of men who dreamed, who set the highest goal, who raised the considerable funds required, who insisted upon perfection… upon unexampled luxury and never-before seen efficiency, speed, and nautical mastery… of men who got everything they wanted to gain their soaring goal… but who, in the event, made error after error, thereby dooming their inspiring project, like Icarus who insisted upon flying close to the sun… and paid for his insistence with a watery death.

Titanic’s end on April 15 is one of two dates you should remember if you are interested in why male-dominated society, which was the order of this Edwardian day, began to crack and crumble; the other, of course, is July 28, 1914 when the great nations of monarchical Europe turned their full attention and resolution to the exacting business of destroying each other and a cultured civilization millennia in the making.

After such glaring instances of bombast, arrogance, and miscalculation the world had enough of the very idea of male superiority. All that was missing from this sea-change was a painter of brilliance to immortalize Molly Brown, vital, vulgar, outspoken, practical, American, and very, very rich, in her moment of unimagined triumph as she brought her lifeboat of dazed and frail humanity to safety while great Titanic, her blazing brilliance still afloat, sank beneath the calm sea on that night of terror — and courage.

“God himself could not sink this ship.”

This is the most famous quotation about Titanic. It is also apocryphal, though (suitably) Captain Edward J. Smith said this several years before his plum (and last) assignment: “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder…. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.” This same Captain Edward J. Smith, always pictured as a man promoted above his abilities, went down with his ship, aware that no other course was possible for a pukka English gentleman… a decision which spared him a lifetime of the denigration, contempt and obloquy which thereby accrued to the account of J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, who made sure he lived by disregarding the immemorial protocol: “women and children first.”

(Some) vindication for Captain Smith and all the men who created Titanic.

Good stories need good story tellers, people of dedication, committed to discovering all facts, and presenting them in a way that not only captures the imagination of people… but does whatever is necessary to hold that imagination until the story is well and truly told. Here Titanic has been blessed indeed… most notably by Walter Lord, now by Tim Maltin.

Walter Lord, a man to remember.

Walter Lord (1917-2002) was the right man for the arduous job of telling Titanic’s story just so. As a boy he traveled on RMS Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship and he conceived a passion for how such a marvel could simply disappear. What might cause nightmares in other children made Lord want to know more. And so years later, in 1955, his mesmerizing book was published to reviews which indicated at once that here was a classic, a page-turner, the stark sobering truth told in language that held you captive and made you read, though the matter was often horrifying and always dismaying.

In due course, Lord’s great achievement, “A Night to Remember”, became a 1958 film to remember. No one interested in the whys and wherefors of Titanic can afford to miss either. Thus Lord deserves his ineradicable connection with the ship that obsessed him until the day he died.

The benefaction of Tim Maltin.

Tim Maltin is a zealot, a man obsessed with truth — and exoneration. He is well known in Titanic circles, where his book “101 Things You Thought You Knew About The Titanic – But Didn’t” is often cited. Maltin’s research, reported in his new e-book “Titanic: A Very Deceiving Night”, is significant. It poses the probability of a natural cause for what occurred, namely that icy waters created ideal conditions for an unusual kind of mirage that hid icebergs from lookouts and confused a nearby ship as to the liner’s identity, delaying rescue efforts for hours.

Thus his conclusion, soothing to family members and the unsettled spirts of the shroudless dead, that there was no blundering, just people doing the best they could under unexampled duress.

Earth’s nearness to the moon and the sun, a fatal factor.

Researchers from Texas State University-San Marcos and Sky & Telescope magazine reported in the magazine’s April issue that there was another significant natural factor. They report that the Earth’s closeness to moon and sun — a proximity not matched in more than 1000 years — created much more ice than usual, including the fatal iceberg some of which uncomprehending passengers playfully used to ice their cocktails. Surely, they had nothing to worry about on this “unsinkable” masterpiece…

Sadly, they did not know that the rare gravitational pulls producing record tides — and record ice — between December 1911 and February 1912 signalled the end of all… ship, most passengers and crew, and any vestige of cosmic certainty and the comfortable verities of the Victorians.

Thus Titanic’s gliding descent into communal memory was in fact the first ceremony of note for our own nightmares… That is why we are fascinated by Titanic… compelled by her story of hell… for we are all passengers on this tragic vessel where “Nearer My God To Thee” may have been the last arrangement the brave band played as their world ended around them.

We may have good need of it ourselves.

Listen, too, to this compelling sound:

This is the score by William Alwyn (1905-1985) for that best of Titanic’s many films, “A Night To Remember,”. It precisely captures the mixture of grandiloquence and menace required. There is panic in every note, and sad finality.

Chapter 3
“Harry Elkins Widener. A story of tragedy, loss, fortitude, courage, of a great ship, early death and a monument of eternal worth now challenged.”
https://youtu.be/PxSuhcxre90

Reading by Dr. Jeffrey Lant at: https://youtu.be/PxSuhcxre90

Author’s program note. I entered Harvard University in September, 1969. From that day forward until I graduated, there was hardly a day when I failed to visit Widener Library. It was the most magnificent presence of all the magnificent presences in Harvard Yard, one which in its grandeur captured every eye.

In my mind’s eye, many of my memories of Harvard take place running up Widener’s marble steps; then, after running up more marble steps I, like any labyrinthine animal scurried into the stacks, where my carrel was sure to be an explosion of books; here the clutter cheered me and unequivocally demonstrated the aura of An Important Person at work on a book that would startle the world with its unparalleled brilliance. I was a Harvard student destined for greatness like every Harvard student. Clutter was my right if I decreed, and bathing in books was what ambitious students did, no need for further discussion or consideration.

All these happy memories, the ones I am always pleased to recall and share, came for me and for the thousands and thousands of students who have their own memories of this place, as the direct result of a young Harvard man dying early and tragically. This man’s name was Harry Elkins Widener… Widener Library is his monument and eternal beneficial legacy. This is his story and we cannot tell it often enough.

Facts about Harry Elkins Widener.

HEW, as he liked to sign his letters, was born an American aristocrat on January 3, 1885. From the moment of his impatiently awaited birth, the riches of the world were his to command. As such, people gawked for a view of him, vied to be his associate, his advisor, his friend. However, all the hoop-la made him quiet, conservative, wary, and guarded…

Here as in all the matters of his life, he was comme il faut. That single phrase summed him up and was enough for most people to know to approve. He could always be counted on to do the right thing, the correct thing, the thing the right kind of people deemed satisfactory and proper.

In other words, HEW was probably a bit ponderous, a trifle self-satisfied, and a smidgeon dull. Of course these traits were completely forgotten and forgiven if you were as wealthy as HEW. Then whatever he did was a virtue, commendable, just so. He was a “brick” indeed. And so he was.

But he was more than that, more than just another native plutocrat with money to burn; more than a man who had only to mutter a hope… for that hope to occur in timely, efficient, well run fashion.

At home with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Dunton Widener, at the top of the tree.

To understand this story, you must rethink your ideas of how much money makes you wealthy and instead focus on the lifestyle of people like the Wideners. They lived in a world of excess where anything less than perfect service was unthinkable, unimaginable.

These privileged few in what Mark Twain named “the gilded age” had money problems all right; they just happened to be the exact opposite to what the rest of mankind has — the problem of knowing what to do with the millions they didn’t need, couldn’t use to buy since they had already bought and then bought even more.

At no time in the history of mankind had such people existed. There had always been aristocrats and the well-to-do in all cultures but cascades of money, avalanches of money, the breath taking excess of mind-boggling wealth… these things and the people who had them were new… powerful, influential, buying and selling anyone and anything necessary to strengthen their control over… everything. They played the great game with brilliant insights into money, how to get it, use it, live it. Of course they had opulent estates, castles, villas, town houses in a string of fine cities. Each was a manifestation that they were the Elect of God, worthy of everything they had and the more they must surely get tomorrow.

Lynnewood Hall.

To understand HEW you must understand Lynnnewood Hall, home of the Widener family. It was built in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania by HEW’s grandfather P.A.B. Widener, the founder of the family’s escalating fortunes. P.A.B., in the best traditions of the Great Republic, started life as a butcher’s apprentice. He then created his own butcher shops, and made a small fortune selling mutton to Federal troops during the Civil War. He made money in everything he touched… but he made his immense fortune by buying up streetcar lines in Philadelphia. The well-served public not only thanked the man for the robust improvements he made to assist them go about their business… they also made him a titan of industry made of money and determined to get the greatest possible return for every cent he spent. And he did.

Having consolidated all the lines in Philadelphia, he diversified into railroads, helped organize U.S. Steel and the American Tobacco Company. He also invested heavily in Standard Oil, each acquisition easier than the one before; each presaging the next mighty leap.

By the time of his death in 1915, P.A.B. was worth nearly $100 million, the equivalent of over 2 billion dollars today. Lynnewood Hall was his statement to the world that he had arrived and they best take note. He insisted upon 110 rooms, 55 bedrooms, and the most grand salons and public areas which would be seen and scrutinized by every visitor. He had nothing to worry about…

… neither did HEW. However, freed from the worries of lesser men, he needed something substantial to do. Let us be plain with each other; finding this is amongst the most difficult of life’s tasks, for what you are creating is — you — your most important job. Luckily for him, HEW didn’t have to wait long for inspiration. He found it in the books which he read with eager joy and happy dedication. He didn’t know it quite yet but he had found not merely a hobby or avocation… but a career as a bibliophile and deep pocketed connoisseur.

It was a world he revered and which in turn made much of him. Of course that meant Harvard where he was class of ’07, soon to take his place amongst the most well known and respected 10,000 men of Harvard. What propelled him to this apogee was great tragedy, namely the end of majestic RMS Titanic. You see HEW like all his fellow passengers on this maiden voyage was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And here Harry Elkins Widener showed the world the right way to die… comme il faut.

A watery grave on the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic.

April 14, 1912 the First Class passengers on Titanic had finished a dinner worthy of people like the Wideners, HEW’s parents and himself. It was black tie, of course, ladies resplendent in the finest of diamonds, one riviere after another.

A few hours later, after Titanic struck an iceberg at 23.40 pm, every single passenger was worried about one thing and one thing only: survival. As we all know, there were too few lifeboats and those at hand improperly used, thereby consigning several hundred additional passengers to a premature death which need not have been theirs. Thanks to eye-witness accounts we know what young Harry did and how he and his father died, together, nobly, without complaint or retribution; their last benefaction in a life filled with so many.

In the best traditions of the Edwardian gentleman, Harry and his father saw his mother, his wife into a lifeboat along with her maid. There was no space in any lifeboat for them, nothing that could save their ultra privileged existences. And so when Titanic sank at 02.20 am, the stalwart Widener men went down, too; parting for eternity with perhaps nothing more than a handshake. Their mortal remains were never found. But their renown grew and forever as the walls of Harvard’s new marvel Widener Library rose.

Mrs. George D. Widener, grieving widow, grieving mother.

Mrs. Widener and her maid were rescued leaving them both a lifetime of unbearable memories…. and in Mrs. Widener’s case, the fierce desire to make the inexplicable meaningful and a means to peace of mind and better lives for thousands. She donated the enormous sum of $3.5 million and the imposing new edifice was dedicated June 24, 1915. It was then and has remained the largest university library system in the world. Here reside over 3,300 of the books and other literary artifacts her forever gallant son collected… the most venerated objects of all the many venerated objects in Widener.

Thus this story of death and misery should have ended on a note of generosity and kindness. But it cannot, will not end here. Now a new crisis is at hand for Widener and all the component parts of the Harvard University Library system. That threat is the Internet, something more powerful than all the icebergs on this planet and completely insidious. The World Wide Web challenges Widener and all the great library systems of our great educational institutions; already readjustments, down sizings, myriad changes, and sweeping rearrangements have taken place. More must and will come. What will this mean for Harry Elkins Widener’s monumental library? No one can say for sure. But we know this: Widener Library exists because of a son’s tragic demise and his grieving mother, her vision, and her generosity.

Who can and will play the generative role in the reshaping of the original Widener and the vastly different institution it must become to continue its essential work for Harvard, its students, and for the world? We all rely upon Widener and its spectacular and numerous books, both those on the shelves and the ones being written in the stacks right this minute. Let’s make sure we never forget this fact or the generosity of the Wideners or the solemn young man whose death by muddle and drowning made it happen. Lest we forget that which we must always remember.

Musical note

I have selected for this chapter the “Ode to the Library: Widener Turns 100”. It is narrated by John Lithgow, and the music is “Catching Up”, composed by Bobby Tahouri.

When one participates in this unique composition, particularly if you were immersed for long periods of time in this library or any other, you feel yourself to be part of the great chain of knowledge, of knowledge gathered, knowledge venerated, knowledge demoted, knowledge no longer knowledge, but merely a footstone for the next epic.

When I heard the music of this ode, the early years of my exploration rushed back… I was 25 all over again, immersed in the most exciting of adventures, myself constituting the link to knowledge past, and the pathway to knowledge future.

This, more than any great library of mere bricks and mortar, is what Harry Elkins Widener has left us. There is a magic in this place. I have felt it myself on numerous occasions. But, if you desolate the building itself, the magic will go with it. Let there be a curse on any such who tempers with the goodness and values of this revered place.

Chapter 4
“’Look away Dixie Land!’ The day that determined the outcome of the U.S. Civil War. The Battle of Hampton Roads, March 9, 1862. And you are there….”
https://youtu.be/wP1NAdZxa0o

Reading by Dr. Jeffrey Lant at: https://youtu.be/wP1NAdZxa0o

Author’s program note. The American Civil War began April 12, 1861 with the firing of the rebel forces on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. It officially ended on April 9, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House. In between, 212,938 people from both sides were killed in action, with total casualties exceeding 625,000 in what was the most bloody war ever fought on this planet… and the most embittered, as is always the case when brothers fight each other to the death, enraged, grieving, broken hearted but determined to have victory, whatever the cost…

This war was filled with incident, great deeds of valor, deeds, too, of squalor, treachery, unmitigated cruelty… and chivalry… but of all the deeds in this great struggle, the deeds of just a handful of men determined the outcome. These were the men who fought each other at the Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia March 8-9, 1862. And I am taking you there today… for you will want to know who won, who lost, and why it happened the way it did.

For the incidental music to this article, I have selected Daniel Decatur Emmett’s famous tune, “Dixie,” also known as “I Wish I Was in Dixie,” a song originating in the black face minstrelsy of the 1850s. It is a tune that makes even the least likely ready to jump up and whirl. I have selected it today because, as Abraham Lincoln himself said on April 10, 1865, it’s “one of the best tunes I ever heard” … but also because of its famous line, “Look away, Dixie Land.” After the Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia and all the other Confederate states had nothing to look forward to… and everything to look away from.

But it didn’t look that way on March 8, 1862… quite the contrary.

News of the most alarming portent arrives in Washington, D.C., Sunday, March 9, 1862.

Gideon Wells, a New England journalist, found himself urgently summoned to the White House. Come! Come at once! And this Connecticut Yankee, in his unlikely role as Secretary of the Navy, scurried to a meeting where he found Mr. Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, in the greatest possible dismay… and so alarmed himself that he was alarming, too, the President of the Dis-united States of America.

It was a scene to brighten every heart in Dixie… and cause shrewd financiers to sell U.S. Treasury bonds short before Wall Street opened Monday, to chaos and defeatism.

Mr. Stanton could not keep still, could not hide his profound anxiety and fear. He sat down, only to jump up again and rush to the windows… What was he looking for? A savior for the Union cause… What did he expect to see? The CSS Virginia in all her glory steaming up the Potomac, sinking the Federal cause with effortless grace. It was a scene of destiny, and every man on both sides of the struggle knew that history of the gravest magnitude was happening now! To them! At Hampton Roads! And so depending on their point of view and allegiance they either gave way to unbridled joy… or profound despair and lamentation. No one was neutral on this urgent matter.

USS Merrimac into CSS Virginia.

The largest naval installation of the Great Republic was at Norfolk in Virginia… and so after the Old Dominion seceded (April 24, 1861) it became a matter of the greatest urgency to both sides to arrange matters there to their greatest advantage. This to the Federal forces meant moving as much as could be moved, destroying the rest. And, to the rebels, to do just the reverse.

Thus was the USS Merrimac, unable to be removed in time and against the rebel sentiments of her crew, burnt and sunk… but not effectively. Her new owners quickly discovered both hull and engines were serviceable… and so began her transformation into the CSS Virginia, the vessel which made Secretary Stanton quail with acute fear and humiliating anxiety.

Why?

Because CSS Virginia, for all that she had just weeks ago been scuttled, was transformed into the mightiest ship of all the navies of all the seas… a ship sheathed in iron, designed to deal death to the picturesque, now ineffectual sailing ships of every navy, but without suffering a single nick at all. Thus did the dead Merrimac come to be the super weapon the Confederacy needed to pulverize the Union and secure their freedom from the meddling, inept Yankees they despised.

Confederate triumph March 8, 1862.

The world changed this day… as the Virginia, with the merest motion, rammed the hapless USS Cumberland, 121 seamen going down with her… then the USS Congress was put out of action, surrendering… and everyone, from the merest cabin boy, saw the future… and knew that every gallant wooden vessel, yesterday puissant, was now dross. And so, as cat to mouse, Virginia moved to her next sure triumph, USS Minnesota… while every telegrapher sent on the news, the news that so discomfited Secretary Stanton… and every other brave Union heart. Armageddon was here… and it flew a Confederate flag.

Until…

In August, 1861 Gideon Wells authorized work on a top-secret Union ironclad… and in due course the USS Monitor was born, the most radical naval design ever; the invention of Swedish engineer and inventor John Ericsson. And it was this curious, much mocked vessel that steamed into Hampton Roads March 9, just in time, to reverse what but yesterday had seemed certain, Southern command of the seas and therefore victory.

And as Monitor and Virginia battled each other to a draw, each unable to finish its deft opponent, the entire strategic scene changed. All wooden ships, every single one, was now obsolete; thus a new arms race started for command of the seas. USS Monitor had, simply by maneuvering to a draw, stopped the South’s “certain” advance and commenced a war of bloody attrition, a war the North could win, and the South had most reason to fear. For without access to the world, the South could only rely on itself… and that would never be enough to ensure independence as every Southern family would, in tragic due course, come to understand only too well.

As for both the historic ships of this engagement, neither sailed for long. Virginia was burnt again and sunk when Union forces took back the Norfolk port facilities in May. As for the plucky Monitor, she sank December 31, 1862 off North Carolina. The remains of one of her stricken crew, 24-year-old James Fenwick, were just recently brought to the surface for honorable burial. He had been married just a few weeks before Monitor embarked on her final voyage; her history short but
epochal.

“Old times they are not forgotten; Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.”

Chapter 5
“’And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’. (Genesis 1:2) Thoughts on Foxy Lady II and the most chilling words in the language, ‘presumed lost.’”
https://youtu.be/Codf4Th2faU

Reading by Dr. Jeffrey Lant at: https://youtu.be/Codf4Th2faU

Author’s program note. To consider the great seas and oceans of our habitat is to consider the very origin of our species and how, upon decease, the residue of each of us returns to the water from whence we came.

The truth is not ashes to ashes, not dust to dust, but drop to drop, oozing towards the watery place where life ends and life begins all over again; an unbreakable cycle of life, death, renewal, our place by no means secure and irrevocable.

Those who move upon these waters know this cycle, respect it, seek to understand and profit from it. But none of them seeks to control it, for that is the prerogative of God Himself alone whose countenance hovers over the waters, dictating fair passage or foul, for God moves in mysterious ways, as the fisher folk of Gloucester, Massachusetts know; theirs the home of the oldest fleet, port and harbor of the new land, coming long years before the Great Republic itself.

This story is their story and despite its deep sadness I am whilst grieving glad to write it… for this story is well worth the telling.

To begin….

As soon as I became aware of this story insistent words filled my brain. They were the sharp words of Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 classic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Once you hear it, the stark simplicity of its words and music arrest your full attention, as they will rise unbidden at every watery event of melancholy and loss.

Lightfoot understood that the stories of greatest impact, the most powerful words, the ones that change your life and reside in your brain forever, are simple, short, thrust from his brain to yours where they reside, waiting for you to trip on the booby trap that sets them off in your mind all over again; each time to be reminded of the awe and terrible power of the unyielding water, the water that creates us, sustains us, and controls us, never to be released.

Lightfoot, poet, has this ability… and that is why listening to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is so haunting, painful, music you should listen to only when there is a sympathetic hand nearby touching yours, reminding you there is light and life and even the comforts of love poised for you. Then listen as Lightfoot weaves his tale of a great ship of 29 men, weighed down with too much iron ore and cargo, “fully loaded”; the ship, the men that have no chance at all, none whatsoever, when pitted against the capricious mastery “Of the big lake they called ‘Gitche Gumee'”.

The ship, “the pride of the American side”, went down, all hands lost, never to be given up by dread Superior or seen again. They were now and forever entombed in the waters of eternity. And so the tune ends on a note that is at once bleak, somber, hopeless.

Here’s the link:

But here’s the rub… the terrible, affecting, afflicting, distressing, dismal, depressing tale that Lightfoot tells is, with all its solemnity and woe, happier, I think, than what happened to the Foxy Lady II and her two-man crew.

For the grieving survivors of Edmund Fitzgerald’s dead could take what comfort they could from the fact their loved ones were immortalized by Lightfoot who thus gave them something of closure and peace. For those who knew the little Foxy Lady II and her crew it is very different. Their terrible sadness will abide, raw, chilling, tugging at hearts already broken and distressed. This is the greatest burden of all, for there is no comfort here.

The facts.

Here’s what we know about the Foxy Lady II, its 25 year-old captain Wally “Chubby” Gray Jr. and his 50-year old mate, Wayne Young.

Foxy Lady II was a 45-foot scalloper homeported in Gloucester although Gray and Young were from Deer Isle, Maine.

For all that he was a young man, Gray had a lifetime of fishing experience. His father was a fisherman; he had started his son in the family business at age 3, his mother reported. He knew boats, fish, and the movements of dark sky and darker waters. He respected them and so he was chary, careful, prepared, professional.

He had a young child, just 3, affectionately called “Mini me”. The backyard, eyes-squinting pictures of father and son are jolting, one now dead, the other bereft of a father. “Chubby” playing with his son, hair a riot of disorder, his young son, blond and happy to be with the father he will not recall at all in the long, lonely years to come. This is but one of the sad stories here….

The newspapers report that “Chubby” had a “girlfriend.” However, in all the coverage there is no mention of a wife or the baby’s mother. Such facts, such omissions, suggest turmoil and domestic confusion… and of the pain we humans cause so casually to each other. “Chubby” Gray was young, looked younger but life had already marked him. Maybe that’s why he looks so thoughtful in the few photos which now constitute a fragile heirloom to his son, his legacy. We long to hear his thoughts… but he is powerless to tell us, now or ever.

And what of the mate, 50-year-old Wayne Young? His photograph reveals much, far too much. It shows a man who knew too much of the provocations, hindrances and obstacles which constitute “life” for so many.

Young’s skin looks tough and weathered, his leathery face the face of too many mornings after the nights before. But then we learn he was married, a devoted family man. Now we suppose his leathered complexion to be the tax he paid with his aging body to keep his wife Shirley and 3 children comfortable.

And so we learn he is anything but the kind of man down-and-out, no place to go and no one to go with; not just a casual laborer, not a cent to his name, well-known to locals and ignored by the “summer people” and fast-in, fast-out visitors like me who smell Young’s sweat and stale perspiration and never ask (or want to know) his story, just get away from him as soon as possible.

Looks are deceiving, but the great waters take all, good and bad, sinner and saint, loving family men and artful philanderers. Still, it is telling that this man, gnarled by life’s unrelenting realities was taking orders from young “Chubby”, a man half his age. One can only hope they were friends and left this Earth together.

An ordinary boat, an ordinary crew, an ordinary day… then…

What does a day when men die look like? It looks like every other day. And so it was Saturday, December 14 when Foxy Lady II left port for a one-day trip to Stellwagen Banks, famous for its whales. An early evening return was expected… but there was no return at all. Because both men were experienced mariners, because the weather was “not too bad” but worsening. Because no one saw a single distress signal and because Chubby kept in touch with his girlfriend by cell phone until noon Saturday, no one was unduly worried… just yet. Just yet. But as the hours went by a sense developed that all was not well; that something was wrong…. Monday morning. Chubby’s always unnamed girlfriend at last notified the Coast Guard. Had she waited too long? She will spend the rest of her life wondering… but never knowing.

And so the Coast Guard, still not hearing anything, launched its search of more than 2,800 square miles of Massachusetts Bay, finding nothing.

But then there were finds, discoveries which only intensified speculation without solving anything. The boat’s survival capsule washed ashore in a marshy area of the Saugus River, north of Boston. No signs of life. Then fishing gear which may or may not have been theirs washed ashore near Nantasket Beach in Hull.

While the Coast Guard worked to turn clues into facts, the fisher communities of Gloucester and Deer Isle did what their stalwart, God-fearing ancestors did. They bowed their heads and confronted the stern realities of their chosen way of life. And so as hope waned the communities pulled together to help each other through the growing prospect of death… and not just death…but death without the finality of bodies. “Habeas corpus,” the great waters said. And the great waters, adamant, tenacious, were determined to keep them. Through it all the Spirit of God still moved upon the face of the waters, inscrutable, baffling, our past and our future.

Envoi.

Historians of the Gloucester area estimate than in the last 350 years since its foundation in 1623 over 10,000 fishermen and mariners have gone down to the sea in ships… and never returned. The names of just 5000 are either painted on a huge mural on the main staircase at City Hall or listed on a new memorial cenotaph on Stacy Boulevard. The list never stops growing…

“They might have split up or they might have capsized;
May have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.”

About the Author

Dr. Jeffrey Lant is known worldwide. He started in the media business when he was 5 years old, a Kindergartner in Downers Grove, Illinois, publishing his first newspaper article. Since then Dr. Lant has earned four university degrees, including the PhD from Harvard. He has taught at over 40 colleges and universities and is quite possibly the first to offer satellite courses. He has written over 50 books, thousands of articles and been a welcome guest on hundreds of radio and television programs. He has founded several successful corporations and businesses including his latest at …drjeffreylant.com

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As the Court’s at first limited ceremonies grew during the nineteenth century into great national pageants matters did not improve, exacerbating the situation after the Prince consort’s death was the Queen’s rooted position to display and royal pomp which gave her officials no chance to gain efficiency in organizing ceremonial. Matters came to a head in 1887, at the greatest royal pageant since the Coronation: the Queen’s Golden Jubilee had to be pulled together from scratch, in circumstances of the utmost dedication.
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