Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“Don’t let the moon see you crying!” came a feminine voice from behind him.

It seemed the training of the divers—to remain unattached to one another and objective, had kept them all at the polite stage. Even with Bowman, there remained a distance, and it appeared Kelly had gone off to hide from David as well, until now. At least, he was thinking so, until she startled him here and now.

“Oh, sorry!” she was saying, leaning now on the railing beside him. “Didn’t mean to frighten you, Dave.”

“You snuck up on me!” David didn’t care to look the least fragile. “Where’d you come from?”

“Been exploring the ship; came out of that hatch right there.” She indicated a hatchway a mere five feet away. “Getting to know the ship as well’s I can.”

“You need to get Forbes or someone with pull to show you the map room; should see the set up—amazing technology, just eye-popping.”

“I’ll have to do that, yes.”

“I think Forbes is a bit touchy about who’s on his bridge though.”

“You boys with your toys…” she shook her head, smiling. “So what’re you doing out here? Contemplating the stars?”

“Sure, the stars, why not? Look at ’em!” he thrust his eyes skyward. “They’re dancing with the April moon.” As he said this, David was thinking how his shadow had danced with the churning wake—looking like a drowning victim.

“So you’re a romantic, eh?” She followed his eyes and stared up at the firmament. “A bit brisk but a beautiful night.”

“That it is on both accounts. Need my jacket?”

“No, but thanks. A night like this… not unlike—”

“It’s April 13 thsoon, a night before she sank; do you feel how that tugs at the heart?”

“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 attaché 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.”