Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

This didn’t sound like the Lou Swigart of the boardroom, the Lou who had meticulously trained them on the interior lanes and passageways within the monster ship now before them. David guessed the murders of Alandale and Ford had affected Lou more than he had dared let on.

Each of them—armed with the Titanic ’s manifest—knew what was in Titanic ’s holds and stores. Each had also committed architectural diagrams of the ship’s interiors to memory. In point of fact, every diver knew his section of the wreck as well as anyone might. Now each diver must deal with the weight of this moment, the historic significance of it all. No one had ‘walked’ here before—not a living soul—not since Titanic went down a hundred years before.

“Look there, Kelly,” Mendenhall said, pointing out the large cross portal at the nose of the sub.

David swiveled to put up a hand to silently warn her to keep her distance from Mendenhall, but she got in close enough to see what he was pointing at. A sturgeon fish at these depths was a surprise. Max’s camera caught it as it swam past Titanic ’s still-in-place anchor.

“Good Ol’ Bob Ballard was right about one thing,” said Lou, distracting David.

“What’s that?”

“ Titanic ’s way too far slammed into the ooze to ever ‘raise’ her.”

David stared out at the knife’s edge of the bow that’d plowed into the mud and silt. “Looks to be about sixty feet under.”

Swigart expertly brought the submersible up and around the nose. “Port and starboard anchors on either side of the bow in place.”

“Will ya look at that?” asked David, “A single link in the anchor chain’s gotta be the size of a cathedral door.”

Kelly could see the second anchor out her own portal now. “That port anchor is maybe six feet above the seabed, while starboard anchor’s level with the sea floor.”

“It means we’ll be working at a helluva an angle,” added Lou, “but we knew that.”

“One thing on paper… another to see it,” said David, unable to take his eyes off what their running lights were picking up. David and the others watched a pair of mating crabs making their way along what was once the brass placard over top of the Officer’s quarters. He imagined Lightoller, Murdoch, and others off duty inside teasing a younger officer, or speaking of the latest news of the day, possibly writing a letter home, or preparing a wireless message to go out to a loved one.

David studied the sad remains of a boat davit, the mighty little warrior of a winch still on duty, still in place, looking for all the world like R2-D2 of Star Wars film fame. Then a shining, bronze-topped capstan used to tie off the enormous ropes when docked; the glowing capstan was enormous in its size and shape, the manufacturer’s marks covered by one of two plaques placed on Titanic by Ballard so many years before declaring the ship a cemetery, hallowed ground, a place not to be disturbed. The other one was at the base of the stern section where Bowman and the other aquanauts now roamed.

Again rivers of rust covered the railings and trailed along her sides… more rust-red pools of it moving out on the seabed, looking like blood. David tried to ignore these sights and Bob Ballard’s now eerie warnings—prophetic in a sense given their circumstances. Huge rusticles hanging everywhere made A Deck look even more ghostly than the other areas of the ship. The rusticles partially obscured intact windows and copper edgings, which Max’s lights reflected off of to send back what felt like so many spirits.

David had seen a photograph tucked into Declan Irvin’s journal, no doubt by Thomas Coogan who’d held on to it for a time—a photo of a gathering of 1500 men in London, an overhead shot for the Times to illustrate the enormity of the loss of life that Titanic represented. This place was teeming with 1500 plus souls lost to a sudden traumatic death. He imagined it the ultimate ‘Ghost Hunters’ wet dream—literally so.

Through the sub’s front portal, David could imagine people walking the promenade deck, peering out the windows where the deck was covered, windows he now realized either shattered or cranked down so people might watch the life boats being lowered. He could see through the open windows frozen in time like props from a Twilight Zone set. He stared hard at this section of the promenade; he imagined lovers on honeymoon or holiday, married couples, strollers, children playing with hoops and tops, imagined that long-ago dog named Varmint, Inspector Ransom—another scoundrel—and Dr. Declan Irvin among those spirits at rest here.

David chose to ignore the ghosts, the rust, and the plaque to remain focused when the wheel housing came into view—empty of its wheel, yet otherwise intact.

“There, just beyond,” Lou said, breaking David’s reverie. “Precisely where Ballard landed Alvin; we set down there, and we can enter through the Grand Staircase; we know from film taken by Alvin’s robotic camera called Jason that the stairwell is in surprisingly good shape.”

“What? You don’t want to take the elevator?” asked Mendenhall in a rare bit of humor.

“They called it a lift,” Kelly replied, now leaning in over David’s shoulder to get a better view. Due to conditions within the submersible, and their being suited up, he could not smell her, but his memory of how she smelled seemed heightened all the same, and he was excited by her still—hoping against hope that no matter what happened down here that they might have a future together.

David said, “But Jason only penetrated as far as B-Deck; we don’t know anything beyond that.”

“So we go where no man has gone before, David,” replied Kelly. “After all, it’s why we’re here.”

“One step beyond,” added Lou, his voice teeming with an excitement none of them had seen or heard before—at least not on the surface.

In passing, David saw a large opening which appeared safe enough for a diver to enter and exit in a gangway below a set of stairs at a bulwark railing—the door completely torn away. He made no noise about it, knowing that Lou knew every inch of the ship from his years of study; still, he wondered if Lou or the other two inside Max with him had taken note of this spot. However, as Lou was both in charge and the expert on Titanic ’s remains, he let it go by without calling attention to it.

Lou had made Titanic a decades-upon-decades study much as had Juris Forbes. And while it was a common fascination, few had turned their lives entirely over to her. All the same, given the excitement of actually being here, neither Lou nor Mendenhall had actually seen the opening, so far as David could tell. Just the same, David reserved the information in the event he and Kelly might require it as a quick exit if needed. They had passed by the area far too quickly. They should have slowed to take more photos, but Lou seemed hell-bent as he headed Max straight for a position over top of the officers’ saloon—their mess hall—to hover right beside the collapsed officers’ cabins. This was on the port side Boat Deck, and along the way, they’d gaped to look into the windows of the Grand Staircase until the sub was beside the huge center expansion joint just aft of the number one funnel opening and the officers’ quarters.

Here they could see that the superstructure of the ship had actually cracked wide open all along the expansion joint like a quake fault line, and David could see all the way through and out the starboard side! There was an array of tantalizing glimpses of various interiors as Max’s lights played over the huge rent. Inside one cabin, David and the others made out a broken sink, scattered brushes, a torn away space heater, and a broken apart but trapped bed.