No one caught inside Titanic, hiding in cubby holes and even sealed compartments could have long survived what most assuredly felt like an elevator ride straight to damnation at impact against the ocean floor, two and a half miles below the surface.
Mercifully, Declan and Alastair had come to form a still life not unlike the paintings of the Madonna and child, as Declan’s body had been thrown across Alastair’s lap. Neither man suffered the agony of a slow death here.
They would also never know if Thomas had survived, and if Thomas had saved the journal.
Two and a half miles above the final resting place of Titanic, lifeboats remained in the water as did survivors screaming for the boats to return for them, but the screams quickly diminished, soon dying altogether. The forty-nine degree water temperature claimed anyone remaining in the sea. Those dead with life jackets attached in dull gray and beige floated on the calm sea like so many mannequins disturbed only by huge air bubbles still rising from Titanic’s descent, the surface waves sending the dead in all directions from the exact spot where Titanic had lifted her aft section to tower above the sea, to then pivot like a giant top, and to finally slip below the surface like Neptune’s play toy.
Men, women, and children in the life boats who hadn’t fallen asleep had seen Titanic’s bow dip below the water and her aft section with the enormous propellers rise to what seemed a mile in the star-filled sky. Some aboard the lifeboats had called for Lightoller and other officers to do their duty, to do all in their power to save as many of those in the water as possible. “The damn boats are only half filled!” shouted an American woman named Molly Brown. “Do something!”
“Do what?” began a chorus of crewmen in reply.
“There’s naught to be done!”
“The cries’ve ended; they’re all dead!”
Lightoller finished for the other crewmen in all the bobbing lifeboats. “Do you wish to share your lifeboat with the dead? Shall we have a vote?”
This rhetorical question silenced the passengers, but Lightoller, losing his calm for a moment, added, “Then please do shut up! We-We had to ferry away from the ship! Else… else it would have sucked us down with it.” He then exchanged a look with Thomas, both of them knowing that Captain’s Smith orders went against all that was human nature. Self-sacrifice was all well and good, but no one knew if he had it within them until faced with such an awful circumstance as this.
Murdoch had escaped it; gotten around the problem with a bullet to his head. Smith had wandered about in a daze there at the end. Lightoller had last seen him returning to his berth. He imagined that the old man had simply laid down in his bed until fate—which seemed to have stalked them all tonight—came for him.
Nothing noble in it, Lightoller told himself. No winners here. Thomas Coogan could no longer meet his gaze.
Thomas said nothing. He knew of Captain Smith’s orders for the lifeboat operators to maintain a position in close to the ship—that the plan was they all go down with the ship, leaving not one possibility that any of the disease organisms be transported to a port of any kind other than on the River Styx.
A shivering, drenched Charles Lightoller, who’d jumped ship at the last moment and had a life and death struggle with the sea when caught up in debris pressing him under, had somehow gotten a hold on collapsible B, which was over-loaded with survivors, but then life boat #14 came and crewmen lashed collapsible B to #14. Once aboard B, Lightoller made his way onto the less crowded #14, and being the most senior officer, he took charge even as his teeth chattered and his body shivered.
He now moved among the passengers on board the boat, sadly only half full. He made his way to sit alongside Thomas Coogan and the dog beside him. “Appears our plan did not completely succeed, Thomas, and I am sorry for the loss of your friends left aboard.”
“You saw Ransom. He was going after Declan; they may well have gotten onto another lifeboat the other side of the ship where Mr. Murdoch was in charge.”
“I’d’ve insisted he get aboard, but we still had women and children to board. Damn people. Why couldn’t they’ve all cooperated? No one wanted to get on the bloody boats!”
“Everyone calls them suicide boats, you know.”
“But it was suicide to remain on board, and yet… they waited too late.”
“Every crewman knew they had to get their boats away from the ship as fast as possible. You all did your best. What you had to do.”
“Our best? We all disobeyed Smith’s orders. All but Murdoch.”
“What do you mean?”
“I skipped over to talk to him, to tell him it was useless, but before I got to him, he’d gotten the last collapsible boat away, and then he shot a fellow coming at him as if… as if he believed the man infected. The bastard had bitten him. Then when he heard me shout his name, he turned, looked at me, raised his gun and shot himself in the head. That’s when I was knocked overboard.”
“I helped pull you from the water,” Thomas said.
“And for that I’m grateful. I was completely under, held there by some passing debris, almost knocked unconscious. Lucky to be alive.”
“Sad… sad business. We’ve all lost so much.”
Lightoller stood and made his way back through the crying and moaning of the discomfited passengers, going for his position at the helm. “Keep her steady, Mr. Coogan,” he called back to Thomas. “We sent out a number of distress signals at the last with the flares going up. A ship called Carpathia is steaming for our position, and if we keep rowing in the direction I indicated, we should be seeing them sometime around dawn, perhaps.”
It was 3:10am.
Thomas looked down at his forearm where Varmint had bitten him. He kept telling himself that the dog was in distress, terrified. That it had nothing to do with the parasitic creature that had brought down Titanic and had killed his best friend along with Andrews, Smith, and Alastair Ransom. Fine men all. “Better men than I,” he muttered.
A young woman beside him, the one Ransom had helped aboard, asked, “What is it you’re saying?”
“Nothing… nothing really.”
“Do you think us safe now?”
“Hardly, ma’am. Not till we step aboard the deck of this ship coming to our aid will we be safe.”
“Oh dear… oh dear.”
Afterward for 1912 Inspector Alastair Ransom storyline:
Altogether the White Star-commissioned ships sent out to the North Atlantic in search of bodies find a total of 328 corpses still in their life jackets.
May 2 to July 3: British Board of Trade Inquiry is conducted. 25,622 questions are asked of 96 witnesses, including such expert witnesses as the inventor of radio, Marconi, and the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton regarding ice and icebergs. The only passenger witnesses are Sir Cosmo, Lady Duff Gordon, and J. Bruce Ismay. Other witnesses include Captain Lord of the Californian, Lightoller who endures 1,600 questions alone, members of the crew, the ship's owners, and even select experts who happen to be members of the British Board of Trade itself. The final judgment recommends "more watertight compartments in ocean-going ships, the provision of lifeboats for all on board, as well as a better lookout."
1913 April: International Ice Patrol created to guard sea lanes of North Atlantic under direction of U.S. Coast Guard.
1914 February: Titanic's second sister ship, Britannic, is launched.
1916 November: Britannic, converted to a hospital ship, is sunk by underwater German mines.
1929 November 18: The Grand Banks Earthquake is thought to have triggered a huge underwater mudslide which some feel may have buried wreck of Titanic in same vicinity.
1935 After 24 years of safe and reliable service, including war service carrying troops, and four major re-fittings, Titanic’s other sister ship, Olympic is retired. She had crossed the Atlantic 500 times, steamed a million and a half miles, and earned the nickname Old Reliable.
Afterword for 2012 David Ingles storyline:
1980 July: U.
S. entrepreneur and explorer Jack Grimm funds scientific expedition which sets out to locate wreck of Titanic. Dogged by bad weather and equipment malfunction, expedition fails to find Titanic.
1981 June: Jack Grimm's second expedition sets out to locate Titanic, but again fails to find the wreck.
1983 July: Third and final expedition funded by Jack Grimm fails to find Titanic.
1985 September 1: Franco-American scientific expedition led by Dr. Robert Ballard finally discovers and photographs remains of the wreck of Titanic at a depth of 12,460 feet on the ocean floor.
1986 July: Dr. Ballard returns to Titanic with a second expedition. Landing the submersible Alvin on her decks, he explores and photographs the entire wreck and debris field in detail.
1987: The U.S. Congress moves to make Titanic an international memorial. A French expedition recovers approximately 900 artifacts from the Titanic wreck.
1995: Director James Cameron begins production on a movie based on the disaster starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet.
2012: Captain Juris Forbes’ expedition to Titanic has, for the first time, divers entering these depths and independently entering Titanic’s hull to investigate her interior with cameras mounted on their persons. Expedition ends in disaster when all members of an eight-person away team die along with the loss of a submersible. This failed expedition promptly put an end to any further visits to plunder Titanic.
The end…
Let Author Robert W. Walker know what you think of his retelling of the Titanic epic as your remarks could become “blurbs” and reviews for the book on Rob’s Facebook Wall. You can contact the author directly at: [email protected]
Author website located at: www.robertwalkerbooks.com and for a blog devoted to the creation of Titanic 2012 along with instruction in creative writing, visit Rob at Dirty Deeds, at Write Aide, at Acme Authors, and Make Mine Mystery. Articles on the art and science of fiction found at: www.speakwithoutinterruption.com and www.1stTurningPoint.com or purchase Rob’s how-to on writing—Dead On Writing—at Amzon.com/Kindle or Wordclay.com for print copy. Finally, if you liked Titanic 2012, seek out Children of Salem by this author.
Enjoy now the opening chapters of a companion piece novel:
Robert W. Walker’s
BISMARCK 2013
by the Author of Titanic 2012—Curse of RMS Titanic, Children of Salem, Cuba Blue & 47 others
This book is dedicated to the 1,397 British sailors of the battleship Hood lost at sea, and the 2091 German sailors of the battleship Bismarck lost at sea. I would also add my father, who survived the war as a grunt on land but whose life was scared beyond repair at the horrors he saw at Auschwitz and in getting to Auschwitz.
Robert W. Walker, 12.4.2011
Prologue
Occupied Poland, Gotenhafen Bay aboard The Bismarck, May 5, 1941…
Adolf Hitler smiled and rocked on his heels, feeling safe, even smug here where Bismarck was hidden from prying British air patrols. The mightiest German battleship ever built was now anchored amid the Balkans, far to the west of Hamburg where the ship had been assembled. Here amid multiple land masses, and fjords in the straits between Germany and Sweden in the only port in occupied Poland.
Hitler felt comfortable here standing 5′10″ inside his British-made Wellington boots. He smiled and turned his head in all directions from his vantage point on the bridge of the deadliest ship ever to set sail on the high seas. Her 16-inch guns were the largest ever mounted on a seagoing vessel. She represented superior fire power and future control of the entire North Atlantic.
Hitler had come aboard Bismarck under heavy security, as there had recently been another attempt on his life in Berlin. He had a small army of SS men on all sides of him and another four were carrying a crate, a curious wooden box the size of a child’s coffin. Something many of the seamen aboard, all lined in rows for the inspection by the Fuhrer, found interesting. In particular Lt. Commander Erwin Hulsing had noticed the crate and had immediately wondered if it had anything to do with the new encryption machine that Hitler’s top engineers and language experts had developed to keep all communications between ships and U-boats in an unbreakable code. Each device on each ship had its own code key. As a highly interested party regarding such matters, he felt an overwhelming urge to ask if this could be it. From experience, he knew it best to keep to attention and to keep his eyes trained on the horizon, and of course, to remain deaf and dumb.
It would make sense that Hitler would oversee the transportation and installation of such a device, considering this new machine would allow the admiral and captain of the ship it was installed on to intercept and decipher all messages sent across the airways between Britain and her allies. Hitler might also ascertain irrefutable evidence of a truth everyone now took for granted—that both Canada and American were supplying the British with more than just food and medical supplies in their so-called humanitarian efforts for the people of the United Kingdom.
The Bismarck was built to lay waste to such foolishness, to destroy anything that dared to move across the North Atlantic—including so-called Hospital ships marked with the insignia of the Red Cross. She had two sets of magnificent turret batteries at bow and stern, four guns that could level a mountain and strike a row boat twenty-two miles off her stern or bow.
Hitler’s entourage had come aboard intent on going directly to the admiral’s quarters with the crate. Erwin Hulsing began to hear the whispers wafting among the rows of sailors lining the deck, all now curious about the box—a wooden crate marked as oranges, ostensibly a gift for Admiral Lutjens whose love of fresh fruit aboard ship was legendary. Although anyone seeing the strain on the faces of the four men carrying the elongated, coffin-sized crate, quickly realized it carried much more than oranges.
Meanwhile, Captain Lindemann and Admiral Lutjens followed in the supreme leader’s wake like a pair of puppies, Lindemann tripping over himself at one point to get closer to the German Chancellor. Boot lickers, Hulsing thought.
Erwin realized for the first time that Hitler, an oddly shaped, short-statured man appeaed nearly lost in his leather coat—as if it’d been borrowed from a larger man. Hitler had surrounded himself with taller men selected for the best in Aryan features: blue-eyed, blond-haired six-foot high soldiers in spanking new military uniform and Nazi insignia-emblazoned caps. Alongside such men, the Fuhrer appeared a perfect contrast in his high-heeled boots. By comparison to his SS men, Hitler himself was a dark-eyed, dark-haired man of little stature and bearing; in fact, he seemed weak and lost in his uniform by comparison—a man playing at being a soldier. Still, he could scream, shout, and yell poisonous words that the uneducated masses loved to hear and desperately wanted to believe.
Hulsing saw that Hitler was focused on one objective at the moment, intent on getting that crate tucked away in the admiral’s possession, in the admiral’s cabin atop the captain’s quarters. He seemed bound and determined to first deposit the ‘gift’ before bothering to inspect ship or crew.
This took the darkly-clad entourage up several decks to the catwalk embracing the Admiral’s bridge just above the captain’s quarters and captain’s bridge. Hidden somewhat amid his entourage, Hitler’s gait was that of a determined ape chasing a female and daring anyone to get in his path.
Once done with the ‘gifting’, this man who was determined to rule the world, would return to inspect the battleship Bismarck and her crew. Every sailor on board, including Erwin Hulsing must remain at attention while awaiting Hitler’s return to inspect the sailors—all two thousand of them lined along every deck.
Twenty minutes later on board the battleship Bismarck
Hitler took his time inside the private quarters belonging to Lutjens, and when he and the admiral finally emerged, they both acknowledged the sailors with a raised hand and a “Sieg Heil.” To which all two thousand sailors, mechanics, engineers, cooks, and farmers automatically responded with a collective “Sieg Heil!”
Hitler then
finally got around to the inspection, ostensibly his purpose in being aboard, but then he’d done all this earlier at the launching months ago in Hamburg. So why now, why here—why come all the way to Poland, Hulsing silently asked himself. Hitler closely studied each man he passed, fixing a lapel here, a pin there, asking a question of this one and that—primarily about the sailor’s place of origin to which he might chuckle or simply nod in knowing fashion. To one or two, he said, “I have been to your village, a beautiful place in the Fatherland, and the people there! You make all Germany proud—men like you!”
Although a balmy day, standing at attention beneath the sun had some of the men sweating profusely in their dress uniforms, and Erwin Hulsing was among those hoping that their leader, or perhaps the Admiral, would shout the ‘at ease’ order. However, it did not come. Instead, they were expected to stand at attention until after the speech-making.
Hulsing, well aware of the fidgeting among the ranks, did his best to set an example, staring up at the fuehrer with a look of pride affixed to his face, even if he didn’t believe the rhetoric and the flag-waving. Soon Hulsing realized he’d allowed his eyes to wander to the other officers aboard—those who he could see with his limited view. There was the SS Officer, Herrmann Bonekemper, on the dais with the captain and admiral, an SS officer whose adoration for Hitler was unmatched, and the man’s vile, pinched face reflected the fact he was overjoyed at being so near Der Fuhrer.
Not far from Bonekemper stood Lt. Commander & Baron Buckard Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, one of two men who’d be stationed at the gunnery towers when they saw action. Rechberg’s purview was the rear gunnery tower, the rear gunnery control room, Dora, Caesar, and the anti-aircraft guns. Rechberg, a dedicated officer, appeared equally excited to greet the leader of the Third Reich.
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