Robert Butler - The Star of Istanbul

I knew the muttering was right. I had a pretty refined nose for the whiff of war, but it was attuned to land forces, clashing armed men, so I was willing, in all fairness, to temper my instinctive assessment of officers out here on the ocean, even civilian ones, in spite of the fact that Captain Turner, from my two encounters with him and from this present sailing strategy, seemed to me a classic example of military hierarchy: a guy who was mediocre and competent at some lower level but who had inevitably been promoted to a rank and responsibility where he was finally stupid and incompetent. But that conclusion was more from my mind than my gut, and I liked to rely on my gut in combat zones. So I took on the enlisted man’s attitude. I put my mind off the forces I could not control. Somebody else was guiding this ship.

I had my own present jitters, but they were professional and personal, and the sight of Ireland held no appeal for me, so I turned and hustled forward, passing beneath the portside Bridge Wing, casting, as I did, a quick glance up toward where Turner was bungling along. I followed the curve of open passageway beneath the Main Bridge and arrived at the starboard side, where there weren’t so many passengers, and I slowed down and I thought to step to the rail just forward of Lifeboat 1. The vast, indigo sea lay out there with the sunlight scattered brightly upon it, and it struck me that Turner might have once been a brilliant guy, a potential genius of an officer in any self-respecting, land-based army, but he had been driven to stupidity and incompetence by staring too long at vast indigo seas with sunlight scattered brightly upon them.

So I kept walking. I’d gather a few last quotes for my sea-voyage-through-a-war-zone feature story and yes, maybe take a peek at the Irish coast to work in a few pretty landscape details. I passed Lifeboat 3 and 5 and 9 and passed Lifeboat 11, beneath the high-towering number-three funnel, and then it seemed that a great iron door slammed shut behind me and the deck beneath my feet quaked and I stopped and I knew instantly what it was. I turned and from beneath the starboard Bridge Wing a plume of water was rising and dark scraps of the hull and smoke from 350 pounds of TNT and hexanite — a U-boat had just plugged us — and I reflexively sucked in the still-pristine air around me and my breath caught and I hardly let go of the breath, I hardly began to lift my face to the rise of torpedo-spew when a second sound began. A quick-gathering massive thunder-roll of sound slammed against me and the deck bucked — and I knew — I knew it was the half dozen forward boilers ripping us open — and I staggered back and the plume that had begun from the torpedo-strike bloated instantly, rising and thrusting and scrabbling upward suddenly full of steam and coal and cinder and wood and iron and it rose above the funnels, as high as a Chicago skyscraper, and it expanded and it seemed it would cover me, and I turned and sprinted aft two strides and a third, but I wanted to see, I wanted to be able to write this moment accurately and I had to see, so I stopped now.

I turned and shoulders were bumping me, people were scrambling past, and down the way at about Lifeboat 5 the steaming rain was beginning to fall, the black metal hail of boiler and hull, and as it came down I lowered my eyes and a man in morning clothes was vanishing there and the clang and clatter of it all filled the air and yet I could also hear the heavy exhalation of human breath rushing past me and Lifeboat 5 was splintering and tumbling beneath the crashing and thudding fragments of the Lusitania . And yes. Yes, I could see now the soundless fall of body parts from belowdecks, a torso, a leg, a head. And the falling and the tumbling and the raining went on for a time, and a time more, and it seemed a long time, but it was a short time, and then there was silence.

For a breath-snagged moment, there was silence.

A seagull cried out above me.

And then more silence.

Except now the great metal groaning of the ship. The deep, vast grinding of metal.

And a distant heavy rushing of water into the gash of our forward starboard hull.

Suddenly I was light in the feet and in the leg and in the shoulders as the bow of our ship plunged to the right and the whole starboard length of the ship began to fall over with it.

My chest seized as I expected to fly beyond the railing and into the sea. I threw my arms out, danced like a boxer, to try to balance.

And the ship’s plunge ceased as abruptly as it began.

I was still on deck, still on my feet.

We listed maybe fifteen degrees starboard and downward but we were stable at that angle for the moment and we were plowing forward.

Even as the wordless cries of fear began all around and the first of the lying sons of bitches who wore Cunard uniforms called out from somewhere behind me that we were just fine, that we couldn’t sink, this much was clear to me right away: because of the deep inner engine room source of the second blast and because of the pitch of the deck and the angle of our bow into the sea, the Lusitania was going to sink, and pretty goddamn quickly.

And a thing came into me, and it was not a thought; it came from nowhere near my mind but rather from my skin, from my blood, from my bones: I was filled with Selene. I was filled with her and I was apart from her and I had to lay my hands upon her now and carry her away from this sinking ship.

I loaded and locked a battlefield focus: there were others around me, many others, and we all shared our mortality and our peril, but as with an infantryman in a company across a field of fire from a bunker and a gun, the assault on which was the single and utter purpose of his life, all the other people around me blurred into the background, became immediate only when they were directly involved in my mission.

I strode forward and already people were rushing out of the Main Staircase doors to the Boat Deck and I was thinking to enter at the point closest to Selene’s suite. But as I veered to the rail and around the bodies flowing onto the promenade I could see up ahead. All the rubble from below and the remains of Lifeboat 5 lay blocking the doorway I wished to enter. Lay, as well, outside Brauer’s windows.

I wondered for a moment about him, about what skills he might have to save himself. I knew the further trouble we were all in. From our list to starboard, the lifeboats on this side of the ship had swung out on their davits to the farthest extent of their snubbing chains and would be brutally difficult to launch, especially as our momentum would carry us for miles yet, sucking in the sea, and on the portside the lifeboats would be pinned against the hull and be even harder to launch.

I had to go in through the doors to the Main Staircase. And I had to stop thinking. There were two sets of double doors, double but narrow, fine for elegant comings and goings but this was the Boat Deck and everyone from the Lounge and the Writing Room were already jammed here, and the Main Staircase was no doubt filling with the upsurge of people from the lower decks who were mobbing up behind, and everyone was pressing hard, trying to get to the lifeboats.

I didn’t want to cross the current of that mob inside to get to the forward-leading corridor, so I danced through the dispersing flow of bodies out here on the promenade and then planted myself on the far side of the jamb on the forward set of double doors, beside the desperate outrush of bodies. I took a breath — like preparing to leap from a trench on the front — and I turned my shoulder forward and I concentrated on the seam between jamb and emerging body and I inserted my shoulder there, braced my legs, pressed forward to lever myself inside, and a man’s shoulder met mine hard and he was coming from above me by the angle of our list and he drove me back around.