Famous Nathan Read Online Free PDF Page A

restaurant, he used to eat the biggest piece of fish, the best. He spent money on gambling, on going out, on girls.”
    After six months in Antwerp, Nathan was ready. He headed off to join the oldest Handwerker brother, Israel, in New York City. A steerage ticket on a passenger ship to America cost him one hundred of his hard-earned kronen. He traded in another thirty kronen for American dollars, spending money for the New World. Nathan thus took his place amid the single greatest wave of emigration in human history.
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    On Saturday, March 16, 1912, nineteen-year-old Nathan Handwerker boarded the SS Neckar in Rotterdam, Netherlands, bound for New York City. (Once again, he had to manage a border crossing to get to his departure port, and once again, angels had covered him up from the hostile eyes of the authorities.)
    â€œI could buy a ticket, I found out, for a certain amount, around a hundred dollars American. I needed twenty-five more dollars for when I arrived at New York, or else immigration wouldn’t let me in. I know about this since I talked to people. I had to find out myself where I am and where I’m going.”
    His brother Joseph cooked Nathan a chicken for the journey, using a lot of garlic, and also bought him oranges and salami. Nathan felt safe enough that he could travel with a valise now, so he packed up all the foodstuffs into the suitcase with his only suit.
    SS Neckar, one of four Rhine-class steamships running on the Norddeutscher Lloyd line, had four decks and space for almost three thousand passengers: 140 first class, 150 second class, and 2,600 third class. Neckar was actually an old cattle ship repurposed for the booming trans-Atlantic passenger trade. At least in the crowded quarters of steerage, the livestock idea fit perfectly.
    When Nathan boarded the SS Neckar, he quickly realized he was out of his element.
    â€œI didn’t understand what they were talking,” he recalled, describing his inability to understand the instructions of the ship’s crew. “They were taking away my valise with the food and put it in the checking room. A lot of people are going in the same boat, so we had three people to a room, three beds, one on top of another.”
    He had heard of thieves and pickpockets victimizing passengers on these Atlantic crossings, the poor immigrants arriving in America robbed of what little they had. “So I grabbed the top bed. If the thief is going to rob me, he has to go to the top.” He hid his money in his sock and once again slept in his shoes.
    Joe’s garlic chicken was even then rotting somewhere in the baggage hold of the ship. Nathan never saw his valise again. He eyed the food offered to steerage passengers like him. Not liking the look of the meat, which he immediately judged to come from horse, not cow, he chose the herring instead. For the whole crossing, he survived on that, bread, and potatoes (“They gave us them with the peels”).
    â€œThe only thing I had to buy was a glass of beer for a nickel. I was afraid to take out a dollar because they shouldn’t see I had money. Every morning, I went out to the deck, and I take off my shoes. Because the money I had hidden there smelled, and I aired it out.”
    At the SS Neckar ’s steady pace of thirteen and a half knots, it took Nathan twenty-two days to cross the Atlantic. He spent his time perfecting his signature. He did not yet know the Latin alphabet and still had no ability to read or write at all. He had someone write his name for him. Then he carefully learned to imitate the letters, practicing over and over.
    Also on the same sea that spring, making the journey at a higher latitude, was the mighty RMS Titanic . Aboard were many of the richest and most celebrated people of the age, but also 1,706 steerage passengers who more resembled Nathan Handwerker than Jacob Astor or Benjamin Guggenheim.
    Nathan’s initial sighting of the