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⠀⠀⠀⠀IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO END LIKE THIS.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀The foredeck lights were underwater now, and the forward mast looked more like a bowsprit. She must be flooding rapidly belowdecks. Captain Smith’s stomach churned at the thought, and he averted his eyes, only to be met with another horrific sight.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀Wilde and Murdoch were on the roof of the officers’ quarters, working together with Clinch Smith, Archibald Gracie, and several others to free one of the lifeboats imprisoned within. Lightoller, Moody, and several sailors were forming a ring around the other. Ted was rendered painfully aware of the crowd waiting behind him; their tension and anxiety was palpable even amongst the frigid air of that fateful April night. Two chubby children — not much more than babies, Ted surmised — were screaming as a man passed them across the ring to a stewardess. Another woman picked up the younger one, and the little lad let out one long wail of distress that pierced Ted’s heart like a thousand knives.
⠀⠀⠀⠀It wasn’t supposed to end like this．
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⠀⠀⠀⠀The two children and that woman, his officers, and every single one of his passengers — they deserved to make it to New York with their families 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒄𝒕. Instead, this family and countless others were to be ripped apart, just as his ship had been by that godforsaken collision.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀A lump formed in Ted’s throat, unshed tears pooling in his eyes.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀He would be made to answer for this tragedy, and he deserved no less than capital punishment. His status as captain of the noble vessel now foundering beneath his feet determined his fate; per the tradition of the sea, the burden of guilt was his alone to bear. From the very moment that Edward J. Smith was named master of the RMS Titanic, his soul became tied to the ship’s own. Invisible chains kept his soul tethered to Titanic; it was only at the discretion of the White Star Line that this imprisonment would end and he would be set free.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀What he adored most of all must be that which will take his life. This was his punishment, the penance dictated by the Lord. Such was the way of the sea, and with this, he had made his peace long ago.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀In spite of the peace he has made with his ultimate fate, this treacherous thought still slips through the fortress of his mind. Ted’s hands curl into fists, and for the briefest of moments, he allowed himself to rage at his merciless God — 𝒏𝒐. He mustn’t. If his God were truly merciless, then no souls would have been able to be rescued on this horrific night. It was he himself who ought to be blamed, not the Lord. His soul was the only one who ought to be condemned to a watery grave, not any of these innocent passengers!
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⠀⠀⠀⠀Ted spared one last glance at Wilde and Murdoch, a pang of emotion hammering within his chest. His breath caught in his throat; it was only then that his brilliant mind realized the sad reality that not all his officers would survive this tragedy. Realistically, only half of them would make it off this damned ship alive, but who precisely would that half be? Would it consist of Chief Officer Wilde, who had a family of four children awaiting his return? If Chief Officer Wilde were to perish, those children would be rendered orphans; Ted knew that they had lost their mother a few years prior. Would it consist of First Officer Murdoch, the brave soul who did all he could to avert imminent disaster? Would it consist of Sixth Officer Moody — just a child, the youngest of them all?
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⠀⠀⠀⠀Never has he loathed a question so deeply and profoundly to the point that he could not bear to ponder it any longer. Ted’s eyes fluttered shut, and he took a deep breath to steady his violently trembling body. He could not demonstrate hesitation as he walked to meet his fate; he must remain steadfast and true, like the heroes of legends old. Death must be greeted as an old friend, not a bitter foe. To greet the being otherwise would be to tarnish his reputation, the one mechanism through which his wife and daughter could remember him. Therefore, being anything but heroic while facing his demise was intolerable.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Captain Smith only opened his eyes once more when the unfamiliar voice of a lone seaman reached his ears, and even then, it took him an eternity to process this occurrence. Was he dying already? His entire world seemed to blur, ending in tandem with the collapse of society among those still present on the ship. Was that his mother’s voice calling his name? No, it was merely a seaman, offering him his lifebelt. Ted paid him no mind; after all, he was already a dead man walking. His fate was sealed, his death warrant signed. 𝘏𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘯𝘰 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘵.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Without a word, the elderly Commodore of the White Star Line — oh, what a grand title, bestowed upon an individual about to embark on an even greater fall from grace! — stepped onto Titanic’s bridge. Admittedly, he was glad to be robbed of the power of speech; ghosts of memories from the happier days spent here danced around his peripheral vision, taunting him with their proximity. Nothing could beat the exhilaration that came from standing at the railing on a sunny day, watching the Ship of Dreams race across the sea at what was surely the speed of light!
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ All that was gone now. The Ship of Dreams, the epitome of majesty and grandeur, became the Ship of Nightmares and thusly the epitome of horror and suffering. His Titanic, White Star’s crowning jewel, was almost unrecognizable as she plunged to her watery death.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Much as he had on the day that Titanic set sail, Captain Smith entered the wheelhouse, and closed the door.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ There wouldn’t be long to wait now.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Alone, save for the gleaming brass instruments, Ted inwardly collapsed. If all his energy hadn’t already been used in the attempt to load the lifeboats, he would have broken down. Instead, he stepped forward, resting one hand around the steering wheel of his magnificent ship. His movements were robotic, as though he were caught in a trance from which he could not escape.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ In the distance, Wallace Hartley’s violin began to sing a lonely lament. Ted’s gaze snapped upwards when the other musicians began to join in, his eyes widening momentarily as their sad chorus filled the air. The band was still on the ship?! When he ordered them to play light and cheery tunes for the passengers, he hadn’t wanted them to do so at the cost of their own lives!
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ There was something enormously peculiar about life as a seafaring man. On numerous occasions, Ted had crossed this patch of ocean – after forty years at sea he knew it like the back of his hand, but the waters were unpredictable and seemed to possess an innate understanding of how to keep him on his toes. More times than he can count, when his vessels were battered by storms and gales, he had been made to wonder whether he would return home alive. Ted realized early on in his career that if one wishes to sail the waters of the earth, it must be inherently understood that on the high seas, the impossible becomes possible and the fantastical becomes real.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Every seaman has their moments of terror, the near misses that makes one’s heart pound and their bowels turn to water. He never could have imagined the occurrence of a collision on a clear night when the sea was as still as glass, nor could he have imagined one off the Isle of Wight, either. Driven by time, keeping the schedules, threading his way carefully through ice, Ted had spent twenty-five years fearing the possibility of a collision. Somehow, he managed to escape these aforementioned years unscathed, and in his many victories, he became complacent. There it was – Ted Smith’s fatal mistake! His tried-and-true habits became his achilles heel, and it was this realization that hit him with the full force of a thousand tsunamis as he stared down the massive wall of water rising just outside the wheelhouse.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ If only I’d had that last ice warning…If only we’d altered our course earlier…or had more boats… and more time… and more ships nearby to pick up those forced to evacuate in the lifeboats… it could have worked. 14-15 April 1912 could have been a textbook rescue, serving as a splendid example of such an endeavor for scholars of the sea yet to be born. We could’ve gotten everyone away, and there wouldn’t have been a single life lost. Dear God, the sheer number of “what if’s” and “if only’s” that his mind began to concoct was staggering!
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Somewhere during the time he spent lost in thought, the band had ceased their playing. The end is nigh. Death speeds towards him now like a schooner racing towards the shore, its glaring inevitability more evident with each passing second.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ He didn’t fear death, and never did. Once, when one of his childhood friends seemed to die only to be revived a moment later, he had been told that dying was “quicker and easier than falling asleep”. Would this be the case, though, for every doomed soul left to perish on the RMS Titanic? Ted doubted it, but he still prayed harder than he’d ever prayed in his life before that the transitions of these souls from this life to the other side would be smooth and painless. Prayer was the least he could offer; after all, it was his hands that were stained with the blood of roughly sixteen hundred innocent human beings. If it was the Lord’s will that he suffer as a spirit forced to remain behind on this Earth so that the others who passed on this night could go free, then that was a fate he’d accept without question.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ “Ted!” There it was again, the disembodied voice that he was certain he recognized, calling his name in the distance. The achingly familiar yet unidentifiable sound – whether it was his mother, his brother Joseph Hancock, or his father, he could not tell – tore his eyes away from the window for the briefest of moments, but once his gaze settled on the glass once more, his thoughts shifted towards his living family.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Ellie, his darling wife, and Mel, his brave little girl. If there was one aspect of his life that would drive Ted to defy maritime tradition and abandon ship, it would be the thought of seeing his wife and daughter once more. What will they think, when they inevitably receive the news of the ship’s foundering and his own subsequent demise? Selfishly, a minute part of Ted was glad that Ellie and Mel were not passengers aboard the Ship of Dreams; he could not bear the thought of them witnessing himself in such a state. After all, Mel, who had recently celebrated her fourteenth birthday, idolized her father. Perhaps it was for the best that they remained ashore, preserving a mythological recollection of Captain Edward J. Smith for the many years to come.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴．
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⠀⠀⠀⠀He couldn’t ignore the fragment of his heart that ached to see them one last time, but in the face of the inevitable, such longing must be dismissed.
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⠀⠀⠀With each passing second, the obsidian black water climbs higher up the windows of the enclosed wheelhouse. His heart begins to pound rapidly, as though fighting to cling to life itself. The windows burst suddenly, and an endless, colossal wave of water burst forth, accompanied by flailing shards of glass.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀All things cease.
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⠀⠀⠀⠀The captain exhales.
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