His death went virtually unnoticed. It had been a long time, after all, and much had happened in the intervening years to take the attention of the fickle public away from that which had once obsessed them.
The verdict was suicide, and he was buried in a pauper's grave in Southampton, a city of seamen still affected by what had happened more than sixty years ago. There were few mourners at his funeral, but few too who were glad of his passing. Only he had known his guilt.
Fleet stepped off the ship with a light heart, relieved to be back in Southampton at the end of the transatlantic run, his pockets jangling with the last day's pay he would ever draw as a seaman. His last twenty-four years at sea had been thankfully uneventful, particularly so by the standards of the time, and he sometimes wondered if he had used up a lifetime of bad luck in one terrible moment. More often, though, he avoided thinking about it at all.
As he walked along the docks he stepped out into unaccustomed sunlight, and looked up in surprise to the empty berth on the Cunard pier.
"Hey, where's Old Reliable?" he asked of one of the firemen hurrying towards the other ships on the pier.
The man, his face and clothes filthy with coal dust, ignored him, but one of the others turned his head briefly. "Scrapped," he said tersely, and was gone.
"Scrapped," Fleet repeated softly to himself. He felt a pang of sorrow at the thought. Even had he not served on her himself, he would have had to be made of ice not to see the poignancy of the end of the last of the Olympic Class. Her sister had once been the most luxurious ship afloat.
He closed his eyes, remembering his first sight of her as she waited in Belfast, looming over the lesser ships. Looming like the iceberg amongst the lifeboats as her stern lifted and broke and finally fell, to a grave two miles below.
He turned and left the pier. His pleasant mood was gone.
| Lord Mersey: | Is your name Frederick Fleet? |
| Fleet: | Yes, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | And you were acting as lookout on this voyage? |
| Fleet: | Yes, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | Are you given glasses of any kind? |
| Fleet: | We had none this time. We had nothing at all, only our own eyes, to look out. |
| Lord Mersey: | Were there lights of any other vessels in sight when you came down from the crow's nest? |
| Fleet: | On the port bow. The other lookout reported it. |
| Lord Mersey: | About how far distant, in your judgement? |
| Fleet: | Four or 5 miles away. I would say 3 to 4 miles, roughly. She got close enough, as I thought, to read our electric Morse signal. |
| Lord Mersey: | Did you continue to see that steamer? |
| Fleet: | I saw that light, saw all the lights of course, before I got into my boat, and just before I got into the boat she seemed as if she had turned around. I saw just one single bright light then, which I took to be her stern light. |
| Lord Mersey: | She apparently turned around within 5 miles of you? |
| Fleet: | Yes, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | Had the rockets then gone off? Your distress rockets? |
| Fleet: | Yes, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | That is all. |
For a short time it looked as if the liner might actually avoid collision. But then metal shrieked as the ship shuddered from head to stern, grinding against underwater ice which tore through the skin of the ship. As the sea forced its way into her watertight compartments she began to list gently to port.
The collision had not been severe. Many of the passengers remained unaware that anything had happened, while most of the crew assumed that the shuddering was due to a lost propeller blade. As the lifeboats were cast off all were reluctant to leave the ship, confident that rescue would arrive before she sank, if indeed she was to sink.
The lookouts were relieved and ordered into the lifeboats to row the passengers to safety.
The liner went down two hours later. Fifteen hundred men, women and children were still aboard.
Fleet dealt out the cards with frozen fingers, careful to make sure they were not caught by the wind. He picked up his hand and deliberated. "Raise you two."
"I'll see you, and I'll raise you five," Lee said, drawing his coat tighter round him.
"I'll see your five, and raise you another five." Fleet glanced briefly ahead. It was unusually cold for an April night, and the freezing wind generated by the liner's speed stung tears from his eyes. He wiped them away, then stiffened, and reached over to ring the bell. "Iceberg, right ahead."
Fleet glanced briefly ahead. It was unusually cold for an April night, and the freezing wind generated by the liner's speed stung tears from his eyes. "It's no use. I can't see a thing." He wiped his streaming eyes on his sleeve.
"You should have asked Second Mate again for the binoculars," Lee suggested, raising an argument several days old. "Raise you another five."
"Fold." Annoyed at his luck, Fleet turned away, back to the approaching horizon. He stiffened, then reached over and rang the bell three times. "Iceberg, right ahead."
The liner had barely begun to turn when she hit, almost square on. Metal shrieked as the ship shuddered from head to stern, throwing passengers out of their beds. The forward deck ruptured and folded like the Himalayas in miniature as the bow crumpled back into the main part of the ship, halted only by the watertight collision bulkhead. Grinding noises of metal and ice filled the air as half of the visible iceberg slowly slipped away into the water, and the resulting wave slapped at the ship's side, rocking her to port. She groaned but held, her unsinkable reputation proving true.
And suddenly what they had taken for the screaming of tortured metal became clear as the screaming of men, of the firemen and crew who bunked in the bow, killed as the walls and ceilings twisted and crushed them.
Fleet and Lee huddled in the Crows' Nest, eyes wide with shock and guilt, as their cards fluttered like leaves to the deck below.
| Lord Mersey: | How far away was this black mass when you first saw it? |
| Fleet: | I have no idea, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | Can you not give us some idea? Did it impress you as serious? |
| Fleet: | I reported it as soon as ever I seen it. |
| Lord Mersey: | Mr Fleet, You say when you first saw that iceberg that it was some fifty feet above the surface, apparently? That is the way it looked to you? |
| Fleet: | Yes, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | Was it a mile away, or how far away was it? |
| Fleet: | I can not say. |
| Lord Mersey: | Was it as far away as the boat's length? |
| Fleet: | I can not say. |
| Lord Mersey: | Can you not say anything about it? |
| Fleet: | No, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | Immediately when you saw it, you sounded the three gongs, did you? |
| Fleet: | Yes, sir. |
| Lord Mersey: | How soon after you sounded the gongs did you strike the berg? |
| Fleet: | I do not know. |
| Lord Mersey: | Was it one minute or two? |
| Fleet: | I could not tell you. |
| Lord Mersey: | Could you tell whether or not the iceberg was moving; and if so, to what extent? |
| Fleet: | I could not say. |
| Lord Mersey: | You could not say? |
| Fleet: | No, sir. |
"Name?"
"Fleet, sir."
The officer looked up from the signing-on sheet. "Frederick Fleet?"
"Yes, sir." Fleet avoided the officer's gaze, certain of what would follow.
"Lookout?"
"I had hoped to sign on as one, yes."
The officer sighed, leaned back, and put down his pen. "No longer working for White Star Line?"
"No, sir."
There was an awkward silence. The officer picked up his pen again, and tapped it absently on the desk. Then he stopped, and looked directly at the seaman. "I'm sorry about this, Fleet. I know you've had a fine record on other ships. But the Enquiry..." he left the sentence hanging.
"Yes sir." Fleet sighed. "I understand completely."
"I'm afraid we've no space for you at the moment. No hard feelings?"
"No." Fleet then turned and left, slumping dejectedly past the queue of other seaman outside. They watched him incuriously, then shuffled forward as the next man went in.
His death was important enough to warrant footnotes in the national papers, but no more than that. Even that, perhaps, might have been avoided were it not for the enquiry that had made celebrities of the lookouts on the Titanic.
There was no mention of suicide. Such a thing was, if not unthinkable, at least not a thing which could be seen to be thought. But the widows of Southampton knew, nevertheless. His inattention had doomed almost a hundred people. How could he bear to live?