FINDING LOVE ON THE TITANIC
Chapter One
April 15, 1912
It was four o’clock AM. The
intense cold which precedes dawn had settled upon the North Atlantic. Rachel
Green sat huddled together with fifty-one other survivors in Boat 11. The
survivors sat quietly, pondering the tragedy that had occurred a few hours earlier.
The Royal Mail Steamship Titanic, declared unsinkable, had struck an iceberg,
and within two hours and forty minutes, had disappeared beneath the sea. For
Rachel, survival was not her immediate priority. Her main priority was to see
if Ross had survived. Even though she had just met him, she knew she could not
live without him. Had he made it safely into a lifeboat on the starboard side,
or had he perished with the ship?
Earlier, Second Officer
Lightoller, on the port side, was only allowing women and children to be
loaded. First Officer Murdoch, located on the starboard side, not being as
strict, was allowing more men to enter the lifeboats. Ross, noticing all the
panic, insisted Rachel occupy the open spot on Boat 11. He informed her that he
would try his luck on the starboard side. That was the last time she had seen
him. Hopefully, it would not be the last ever.
A light appeared on the horizon.
The Carpathia would soon be arriving to rescue seven hundred fifty passengers.
August 2001
Genya, the MIR-2 pilot, nervously
guided the sub over the deck of the sunken ship, Titanic. Since this was a
gravesite for many passengers, it was approached with great reverence. As the
sub progressed, it passed over the fallen mast. He could almost still hear
Frederick Fleet yelling, "Iceberg straight ahead!" The ship’s railing
still stood upright and intact. He could not help but remember that passengers
at one time had touched those railings. Genya gently landed the submarine on
the deck near the opening of the once opulent Grand Staircase. The sub appeared
small in comparison to this historical giant.
The Titanic had remained
undisturbed until 1986, when Dr. Robert Ballard’s crew had discovered the
broken wreck on the North Atlantic seafloor. To the public, the fascination
with the tragedy had never quite fully disappeared.
The tragedy of this once great
creation encompassed anyone investigating the wreck. Items such as china,
shoes, silverware, luggage, metal headboards and a doll’s head lay strewn on
the seabed between the bow and the stern. Those personal items really tied him
to the passengers. The icebergs, the warnings, being stuck in the middle of the
North Atlantic--what would it have been like to be there that fateful night?
Jim Carter, who was on the sister
sub MIR-1, had commissioned this expedition. The purpose was to explore deep
inside the ship’s interior for any recognizable items. Two-breadbox sized
robots, guided by fiber optic cable, would become the unconscious eyes that
would search through the ship’s interior. At present, this task had not been
attempted. Since the ship was slowly being eaten away by bronze
rusticles--microscopic organisms--in five years the ship might be totally
collapsed, making this mission impossible.
Genya gently guided the robot out
of its garage. A spool of fiber optic cable spun out of the robot as it began
its descent down the Grand Staircase. When the ship broke in two and sank, the
Grand Staircase broke away from the ship and floated away. This wide-open area
allowed the robot easy access to the main decks. As the robot moved deeper,
some parts of the interior appeared to be a cavern of rusticles. Dangling light
fixtures and carved posts from the oak pillars were the only recognizable items
around the Grand Staircase.
The robot slowly made its
progress onto D-Deck. This deck contained the gangway doors. The robot moved on
past the remains of the bronze grilled doors that graced the starboard first
class entrance vestibule. Inside the outer gangway door, the lights from the robot
shone on floor-to-ceiling wrought-iron gates with brass handles. Near the
gates, a mahogany sideboard lay face down. Even though the sideboard had rotted
away, White Star Line china remained stacked and unbroken. With the tether on
the robot long enough to go the full length of the ship, the robot made its way
to the passenger staterooms. Unlike the carved mahogany wood in the reception
room, the pinewood that separated the staterooms had all but disappeared.
The robot entered Stateroom A11.
Portions of the entrance door remained, like the metal knob and push plate.
Metal items, such as bed frames, doorknobs, and hinges, emitted the tiniest of
electrical discharges, which irritated undersea creatures that ate wood and
materials around them. As the robot moved around the stateroom, its lights
reflected off a metal bed frame. A man’s bowler hat lay on the bed’s covering.
A piece of clothing still remained on the bed frame. The clothing moved gently
with the current. Someone had hung the clothing there and never returned to put
it on. Beside the bed were the remains of a mahogany dressing table. Even
though the table had collapsed, an intact open metal drawer still remained.
Don Lynn, a historian who was on
the expedition, knew every stateroom and its occupant. He commented that the
room had been occupied by a thirty-two-year-old female passenger who had
recently become a consultant for Women’s Wear. She had also been able to afford
another stateroom behind the third funnel to store all the clothes she had purchased
in Paris. The occupant’s name was Rachel Green.