Turner served as third officer on two other Cunard ships but resigned on June 28, 1880, after learning that the company never promoted a man to captain unless he’d been master of a ship before joining the company. Turner built his credentials, earned his master’s certificate, and became captain of a clipper ship, and along the way found yet another opportunity to demonstrate his courage. In February 1883, a boy of fourteen fell from a dock into Liverpool Harbor, into water so cold it could kill a man in minutes. Turner was a strong swimmer, at a time when most sailors still held the belief that there was no point in knowing how to swim, since it would only prolong your suffering. Turner leapt in and rescued the boy. The Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society gave him a silver medal for heroism. That same year he rejoined Cunard and married a cousin, Alice Hitching. They had two sons, the first, Percy, in 1885, and Norman eight years later.
Even now, as a certified ship’s master, Turner’s advance within Cunard took time. The delay, according to his best and longtime friend, George Ball, caused him great frustration, but, Ball added, “never, at any time, did he relax in devotion to duty nor waver in the loyalty he always bore to his ship and his Captain.” Over the next two decades, Turner worked his way upward from third officer to chief officer, through eighteen different postings, until on March 19, 1903, Cunard at last awarded him his own command. He became master of a small steamship, the Aleppo, which served Mediterranean ports.
His home life did not fare as well. His wife left him, took the boys, and moved to Australia. Turner’s sisters hired a young woman, Mabel Every, to care for him. Miss Every and Turner lived near each other, in a suburb of Liverpool called Great Crosby. At first she served as a housekeeper, but over time she became more of a companion. She saw a side of Turner that his officers and crew did not. He liked smoking his pipe and telling stories. He loved dogs and cats and had a fascination with bees. He liked to laugh. “On the ships he was a very strict disciplinarian,” Miss Every wrote, “but at Home he was a very kind jolly man and fond of children and animals.”
DESPITE THE SORROW that shaded his personal life, his career gained momentum. After two years as master of the Aleppo, he moved on to command the Carpathia, the ship that later, in April 1912, under a different captain, would become famous for rescuing survivors of the Titanic. Next came the Ivernia, the Caronia, and the Umbria. His advance was all the more remarkable given that he lacked the charm and polish that Cunard expected its commanders to display. A Cunard captain was supposed to be much more than a mere navigator. Resplendent in his uniform and cap, he was expected to exude assurance, competence, and gravitas. But a captain also served a role less easy to define. He was three parts mariner, one part club director. He was to be a willing guide for first-class passengers wishing to learn more about the mysteries of the ship; he was to preside over dinners with prominent passengers; he was to walk the ship and engage passengers in conversation about the weather, their reasons for crossing the Atlantic, the books they were reading.
Turner would sooner bathe in bilge. According to Mabel Every, he described passengers as “a load of bloody monkeys who are constantly chattering.” He preferred dining in his quarters to holding court at the captain’s table in the first-class dining room. He spoke little and did so with a parsimony that could be maddening; he also tended to be blunt. On one voyage, while in command of the Carpathia, he ran afoul of two priests, who felt moved to write to Cunard “complaining of certain remarks” that Turner had made when they asked permission to hold a Roman Catholic service for third-class passengers. Exactly what Turner said cannot be known, but his remarks were sufficient to cause Cunard to demand a formal report and to make the incident a subject of deliberation at a meeting of the company’s board of directors.
At the start of another voyage, while he was in charge of the Mauretania, a woman traveling in first class told Turner that she wanted to be on the bridge as the ship moved along the Mersey River out to sea. Turner explained that this would be impossible, for Cunard rules expressly prohibited anyone other than necessary officers and crew from being on the bridge in “narrow waters.”
She asked, what would he do if a lady happened to insist?
Turner replied, “Madam, do you think that would be a lady?”
Turner’s social burden was eased in 1913 when Cunard, acknowledging the complexity of running the Lusitania and the Mauretania, created a new officer’s position for both, that of “staff captain,” second in command of the ship. Not only did this allow Turner to concentrate on navigation; it largely eliminated his obligation to be charming. The Lusitania’s staff captain as of May 1915 was James “Jock” Anderson, whom Turner described as more “clubbable.”
The crew respected Turner and for the most part liked him. “I think I speak for all the crew if I say we all had the utmost confidence in Captain Turner,” said one of the ship’s waiters. “He was a good, and conscientious skipper.” But one officer, Albert Arthur Bestic, observed that Turner was popular only “up to a point.” Bestic noted that Turner still seemed to have one foot on the deck of a sailing ship, as became evident at odd moments.
One evening, while Bestic and other crewmen were off duty and playing bridge, the ship’s quartermaster appeared at the door carrying a knot called a Turk’s head. Complex to begin with, this was a four-stranded variant, the most complicated of all.