BEHIND THE CAPTAIN
Chapter Two
April 14, 1912
"What is all that damned
ruckus?" shouted Captain Smith, pushing past people to get to the edge of
the ship, where a crowd had formed.
The crowd included mostly women
whimpering at the bow of the ship. One young lady was apparently crying into an
older woman’s shoulder. They were possibly mother and daughter.
"Captain! Captain!"
they yelled, pointing off in the distance in front of the ship. Captain Smith
pushed his way to the very edge of the ship and squinted to see a tall iceberg
approaching.
"It can’t be…" he
muttered, thoughts of his interview with that newspaper girl rushing through
his mind. Had she known?
The captain wasted no time. He
rushed back to the bridge, shouting orders at people on his crew. He seized the
wheel and tried to steer around the iceberg. When First Officer Murdoch hustled
in, the captain gave him orders to avoid the iceberg at all costs. Captain
Smith burst out the door and back into the increasing crowd of screaming
passengers.
As the iceberg had gotten closer,
many of the passengers had moved to the back of the ship, away from the
iceberg. This was probably because there was a theory that the ship wouldn’t
sink if they went straight into the iceberg. There would be a huge boom, and
anyone within one hundred feet of the collision would die, but the ship
wouldn’t sink. They could shove everyone to the back of the Titanic and it
would be fine.
Some folks had positioned
themselves so they were ready for the big boom, but that wasn’t the plan. The
plan was to steer around it. Quartermaster Hitchens now took the wheel. He
turned the wheel hard to starboard. Then, upon command, he went full speed
ahead. That was the end.
They were too close to the
iceberg. A big chunk of it landed on deck, causing mass chaos. Ear-splitting
screams came from every direction, people fainting. Captain Smith decided that
they needed to get off the Titanic, for it would surely sink.
"Man the lifeboats!" he
shouted, then stopped dead in his tracks. There weren’t enough lifeboats. The
newspaper girl had been right all along. But if the Titanic had been supplied
with enough lifeboats, then there wouldn’t have been room for dining tables, games,
and things like that. Lifeboats took up a lot of space! None of that mattered
now, though. One thousand people would perish because of someone else’s pure
ignorance. He couldn’t have known! It wasn’t his fault…or was it?
"Only women and children
board the lifeboats!" crewmembers were screaming to people rushing around
panicking. The crew had hopped into the lifeboats first. They claimed to the
captain that this was necessary, for the passengers needed help boarding.
Perhaps the truth was that the crew was selfish and thought they should get the
first dibs on the lifeboats.
Most people would tell you that
the worst part of the whole tragedy was the end. Sailing away, watching your
family and friends thrash in the water behind you, the freezing depths
capturing their souls. Having to sit there, watching your relatives die like
that, and not being able to do anything about it drove many of the surviving
Titanic passengers to a state of pure insanity.
And many miles away, on the
mainland, sipping coffee and clacking on a typewriter next to the fire, sat the
coziest girl in the world at that moment. Little did she know, the story she
was working on right now would mean nothing compared to tomorrow’s story about
her being right all along. She had hoped she’d be wrong. But sadly, the truth
was, sitting there wrapped up in that blanket, was the girl who had been right
all along.
The End.