Titanic 2012

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