Titanic 2012

“Yes, in fact, I do. A night like this, the sea calm as glass,” she replied and their eyes met.

Neither had to speak it aloud: the thought of its being a night in the North Atlantic exactly like the one that silently watched the demise of thousands aboard Titanic.

“Yeah—but only if you believe the accounts.” Her remark must be designed to break the spell, he decided, staring at her still.

“Survivors… witnesses to the disaster said the ocean was like glass that night, and yeah—stars looking on like a million eyes.”

“Moon bright, too. Funny they couldn’t’ve seen a freaking mountain of ice ahead. Least that’s what I’ve read.” She wrapped her arms about her to stave off the chill air.

David wanted to wrap an arm about her but thought better of it. Instead he remained still, listening to her sparkling voice.

“The lookout—Frederick Fleet, right? Said it dawned on him last minute that a portion of the sky ahead was —how’d he put it—‘strangely empty of stars’ on account of he was staring at an iceberg straight ahead.”

“Yeah,” replied David, “like a black screen against the sky.”

“Funny,” she muttered, eyes now on the ship’s wake and the deep.

“What’s funny?”

“I mean if it was a night like this when Titanic struck the berg, why? Why couldn’t Murdoch or Lightoller, or any other officer or crewman aboard, see the damn ice before she ran over that spur?”

“No binoculars, remember? Facts bear it out—at the trials… well inquiries.” “I know all that! Lightoller said they’d left Southampton in a rush, and they simply left a box of freshly manufactured binoculars on the wharf. Said he’d go to his grave wondering if it weren’t all his and the Quartermaster’s fault—Hitchens.”

“Oversights happen. It’s popularly called—”

“Human error, so I’ve heard.” She dropped her gaze and shook out her hair in the ocean spray. Then she began to laugh a lilting, pleasant laugh.

He took this as an invitation to lighten the mood, so he laughed; she then echoed his laughter, and a crewman stared at the couple before going on by without a word as if wishing to respect their privacy. It looked to be the man named Ford from the galley.

“No such thing as privacy on board a ship,” David muttered on watching the crewman disappear into sharp shadows on his way toward the other side of the ship.

“Dave… there were a lot of inconsistencies at both the American inquest and the British inquest, and you know everybody fabricates and fills in or outright lies at such gatherings for any number of reasons.”

“You think Lightoller lied about the binoculars along with Fleet?”

“I suspect the veracity of all the remarks by the crew, especially the officers who survived.”

“Why in the world?”

“Would they lie?—those who manned the lifeboats, and not one of them could easily answer what was in Captain Edward Smith’s mind that night he went 21knots into an ice field he knew to be miles long and wide straight ahead?”

“I know the sixty-year-old Captain Smith had wireless warnings all evening, but still—”

“And-And some of the survivors who encountered Smith thought him in a daze… in a panic, some said… unable to make a move or give an order—completely out of character.”

“Come on—the man did the-the manly thing! What-what and all that!”

“Of course—he was British after all, through and through. The captain must go down with his ship. It’s the comforting facts we cling to. ‘Facts as it were, allow us all to sleep at night… to feel a bit better about the disaster.”

“Wow… whew… you’ve given this some serious thought, but Kelly, he was last seen on the bridge, firmly standing there and overseeing the—his men… and the launching of the lifeboats.”

“The whole of it was botched—the lifeboats! Perhaps intentionally so, and Smith was nowhere to be seen; he was shot by Murdoch just before Murdoch shot himself.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Witnesses said Murdoch fired and killed one other man before taking his own life when things became too desperate; why not his beloved Captain?”

David mulled this thought over. He’d never considered Smith had done anything other than what the last photograph of the man depicted—leaning over the bridge from the height of a god and sending a salute down to everyone aboard. “Then it’s pure conjecture on your part?”

“Conjecture based on a healthy sense of men; look, David, I have reasons for my beliefs about that night. I have it on good authority.”

“You mean, what if Von Daniken or Stephen King had written a book about that night, right? You been reading some hair-brained conspiracy theory? A special military attache and envoy carrying a world-changing message between the Pope and President Taft aboard, gun-smuggling, sabotage? Aliens from outer space?”

She gritted her teeth and glared at him; she tried to speak but only an angry ‘ugh’ erupted from her gut.

“Come on, Kelly. They made some stupid but all too human mistakes like sailing off with too few lifeboats, no binoculars aboard for the lookouts—pure arrogance, I know.”

“And no binoculars—not a single pair, not even for the lookout,” she sarcastically added.

“Thinking… thinking Titanic could not be brought down—hubris of the age; the Unsinkable Titanic. The most marvelous man-made object on the planet. There was bound to be confusion and fear and desperation when it became obvious—all their human errors cascading back at them—biting them in the ass.”

She remained silent, allowing him sway.

“No one can imagine the circumstances Smith and his men found themselves in; it’s a wonder so many got off alive—707.”

“Agreed there. How many lifeboats did they carry? Sixteen, for God’s sake, along with a couple of flimsy collapsibles?” she said, shaking her head. “And even then the fools in charge, they only managed to fill the boats they had to a mere third of capacity.”

“Another sad fact, but hardly—”

“They could have saved hundreds more but instead, these highly trained, cool-headed professionals failed miserably in filling those boats, and in fact, took it upon themselves to order the boats lowered and moorings released too soon. Lost one entirely—sent it over the side! Maybe right along with the binoculars.”

David only now realized what she was saying—that it was all intentional. “Whatever are you getting at, Kelly?”

“Yeah, whatever… and who cares about truth anyway?”

“What truth?”

“How and why Titanic went down; you’re right—it’s no longer relevant. Only the legend is relevant. Hell, whole industries have survive on it.”

“You mean like books, films?”

“That and more, yes. There’re whole cults devoted to this shipwreck, David.”

“Be that as it may, Kelly, there’re plenty enough wild-hair theories on what eventually sent that ship to the deep—from a bomb on board to a mummy’s curse!” David shook his head in disgust. “So why don’t you subscribe to one crackpot theory or the other, and leave it at that? Ballard’s theory, the French expedition’s theory, the rivet theory, sabotage theory… . I mean how is any of it relevant to our mission today?”

“History is always relevant, David. I was being facetious. Like death, when is history not with us?” She gazed into his eyes, and for a moment, he wondered what she might be thinking, while hoping she was thinking some romantic thoughts about him, and all this talk was maybe just nerves. But why all the dancing around?

David wanted to kiss her but wondered if he should get involved with her now—after the crazy talk she was spouting. She had to simply be tossing these wild notions out there just as an intellectual exercise, to impress him with all she knew of Titanic’s history, perhaps. But there was another concern that should keep David on a hands-off approach with her. Suppose someone saw them in an embrace?

“Swigart sees us together like this out here under the stars, he could get the wrong idea,” he said. “Best we both turn in; big day tomorrow.”