Page 66 - Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew

52 Jack Fritscher

cried for us. They pointed their fingers, and held their hands
to their mouths, and lamented the boats, carrying only 5 or
25, designed for 40.
“You see,” Maggie said, strip ping her ballgown from me
in the privacy of a stateroom. “You took no one’s place.”
Second Officer Charles H. Lightoller was the last survi-
vor hoisted from the sea by creaking pulley to the deck of
Carpathia. In all, only 706 souls of Titanic’s 2,228 passengers
and crew survived the sinking.
1,522 died.
Including Edward Wedding.
My love. My lover.
Asleep in the deep, hopefully held in the strong arms of
the Stoker.
The world was stunned. The only land station, immedi-
ately after the sinking of Titanic, powerful enough to receive
the Carpathia’s messages sat atop Wanamaker’s Department
Store in Manhattan, where its 21-year-old operator, David
Sarnoff, who was soon to found CBS, scribbled the garbled
names of the survivors for release to the press.
On Carpathia’s return to New York, more than 10,000
people gathered on the Battery, at Manhattan’s southern tip,
as we passed, docking at 8:30 PM, at pier 54, at the foot of
West 14th Street, where photographers’ mag nesium flares
exploded like rock ets in the dark of the spring night, and the
silent movie cameras rolled.
Two days later, John Jacob Astor, millionaire, body
number 124, was found in the sea, wearing men’s clothes: a
blue serge suit, a handkerchief monogrammed JJA, a brown
flannel shirt, and brown boots with red rubber soles.