Life never turns out the way you've planned it to. I have learned that the hard way. When I first met Jack Phillips, I did not know that this rude, fast – living, smart, funny and handsome man should become my fate. When I stepped onto the deck of the Titanic, I did not think that it would change my whole life forever.
Even now, when I look back, it sometimes still feels like a dream and it is hard to believe that Titanic ever really existed. "The ship of dreams", she was called ... And now you could say, she is. Most of the people who knew are dead now and I have only my memories left to know that Titanic once was real. That he was real …
My name is Jane Frances Bride and this is my story … The story of people … the story of a time … the story of a ship … a story about love. This is for Jack …
Since I can remember the fate of my family has been bound to the ocean. Our name was Murdoch, the Gaelic word for sailor … It was tradition for the oldest son in the family to choose the sea for a career. My grandfather Samuel Murdoch had been a captain at sea, as had been his father and his uncles before him. It was a surprise, when of his six children only my uncle William decided to follow his footsteps.
I can still remember Will. I see him, standing in the doorway, waving his cap, as my aunt Ada and I came running to him. When I hugged him, I could smell aftershave and soap, mixed with the scent of seawater and the ocean winds. The scent of a sailor …
When I moved to Southampton after the death of my father to live with Will and his wife I did not have the slightest intention of ever entering a ship. I thought of the many members my family had lost to the sea and I hated ships. The thought of being stuck and completely dependent on a monster made up of steel and metal, with nothing underneath me but tons of water was terrifying to me. My grandfather always teased me that I was too much like my father when it came to that. I only liked the ship models, Will used to built for me when I was a child.
One of my first memories of Will is sitting with him in his living room, watching him built a small and perfect copy of the Saint Cuthbert, a ship he had been first mate on. My five year old self marvelling at the quick and precise work of his hands. His personal favourite as Will once told me, was a model of the Runic, the ship on which he had met his future wife, his Ada.
Poor Ada! If she would have known the tragic fate of her husband, she would have tied Will to the kitchen chair and never let him go …
Nevertheless, I still liked to accompany Will to the port of Southampton, everytime he was leaving for his work again. Or to greet him when he returned. I loved to sit on a bench and watch all the different people passing by. I had never seen such a huge variety of people than at the port of Southampton: sailors, stokers, ship officers, first class passengers in their expensive clothes and the third class passengers on their way to a new and better life. And wireless operators. I could always recognise them by the golden M they had on their caps. M for Marconi, Guglielmo Marconi, the founder of wireless telegraphy. But I had no idea at that time that it was a young Marconi wireless operator who should change my life forever …