Who was “Atlanticus,” the writer who foreshadowed the Titanic disaster?
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“Do you like to know whom a book’s by?” E. M. Forster asks in a 1925 essay on the question of anonymity in literature and journalism. The practice is fine in fiction, he argues, but not in news writing. Forster, however, wasn’t in charge: His essay, which appeared in the November 1925 issue of The Atlantic, was followed by an article bylined “Anonymous.”
Though our magazine withheld bylines only in its first few years (not unusual for publications at the time), unnamed or unidentified writers remained a frequent sighting in our archives well into the 20th century. Some people were seemingly allowed to mask their identity so they could poke fun: In 1963, two women used a single pen name to publish a spirited takedown of holiday cards. In 1968, one Adam Smith™ (trademark symbol included) wrote fictional vignettes from his position as a “pseudonymous chronicler of the mystification and mores of Wall Street” and most certainly not as the political economist Adam Smith (born 1723). Others were granted anonymity under higher stakes: In 1965, Mrs. X shared her experience obtaining a safe but then-illegal abortion as a married middle-class mother of three children. In 1930, a deserter gave an unvarnished account of the front lines of World War I.
One byline in particular has long nagged at me: In our August 1913 issue, in which all other contributors are named, “Atlanticus” offers a 6,000-word postmortem on the failings that led to the April 1912 sinking of the Titanic. I’d never seen the byline before. Longtime Atlantic editors Scott Stossel and Cullen Murphy, who moonlight as our magazine’s informal historians, told me they’d never encountered it either.
Atlanticus, who at the end of the essay briefly describes himself as “an officer on an Atlantic passenger steamer,” was furious over continued inaction on the part of transatlantic-ocean-liner companies, as well as government officials.
Since that fateful night of April, 1912, what have we done in the way of reform that will go toward averting another such disaster? Remember, the day of the unsinkable ship is not yet; but the majority of passenger vessels now in service on the Atlantic carry as many passengers as did the Titanic. … The criminal waste of money at present forced upon all the big transatlantic liner companies is proof positive that some foolish Jack-in-office has been given a loose rein.
Atlanticus also enthusiastically and repeatedly cited a May 1910 Atlantic essay titled “The Man on the Bridge,” written by Charles Terry Delaney. He deems Delaney a man who “evidently knew his ground,” and calls the essay “a startling article.” I know the 1910 essay well. It chillingly describes many of the conditions—overworked ship officers, improper safety protocols, cost-cutting, fog and icebergs—that ultimately doomed the Titanic, two years before the actual disaster. Allegations in “The Man on the Bridge” caused such a stir that the author wrote a follow-up in the August 1910 issue of The Atlantic, and The New York Times covered the ensuing controversy on August 3, 1910. Did Delaney and Atlanticus know each other? Both wrote with suspicious specificity and insider knowledge of the maritime industry. The Atlanticus byline appeared again in 1915, in an article about the brutal realities of the life of sailors.
Scott suggested as a final resort that I look through an old filing cabinet that was used to track payment information for Atlantic contributors before the internet era (now it is displayed mostly as an antique next to the desks of my colleagues who make podcasts). There I found, on a typewritten index card, the name of a writer and the titles of nine articles written from 1909 onward, for which The Atlantic paid variously $50 to $100. Two of those stories were “The Unlearned Lesson of the Titanic” and “The Man on the Bridge.” Delaney and Atlanticus appeared to be pen names for a British naval officer named Alexander G. McLellan.
McLellan wrote under his real name for us only twice: in a 1911 essay titled “A British View of American Naval Expenditure” and in a 1914 essay called “Wanted: An American Minister of Marine.” Other biographical details from his unsigned work clicked into place for me: The author was the chief officer of a British ship. He’d fought as a young man in the Boer War. The index card lists his final article for The Atlantic as “Radical’s Progress,” which mourns young soldiers buried at sea during World War I:
Day after day these burials went on. Later I refused to attend them. The finish came when one body stuck to the stretcher by reason of the blood having oozed through the wrappings and congealed. The body had to be pried adrift before it would slide of its own weight into the sea. I cannot tell you any more just yet. I sicken as I write. The stupidity of it all!
That essay was published anonymously in February of 1916.
“The Man on the Bridge” drew heat (“If true, the allegations made should result in immediate action … If not capable of substantiation the article should never have been printed,” one reviewer argued), though the Titanic disaster provided the author with a measure of vindication. We can’t know for sure why McLellan and his editor chose to publish important work under so many different names. Perhaps we can chalk up the decision to the looser practices of that era. Or perhaps the outrage following “The Man on the Bridge” drove the author to go anonymous for “The Unlearned Lessons of the Titanic.” But the identity of Atlanticus is now known, and his accounts have been tested by history.
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