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Everyone had cultivated so far the delusion: the ship was unsinkable. And yet, a small iceberg was being enough to bring down the steely giant and, many people had this unmentionable (and yet, soon to be proven tragically correct) thought, the whole delusion of peace and prosperity of the Belle Époque with it.
The last collapsible lifeboats, the very most desperate last line of defense, were hastily released when Captain Smith shouted the final order to abandon the ship; he himself was being devoured by the remorse: what if he hadn’t ordered trying steering to port on full steam, risking everything in the attempt to totally dodge the iceberg, and instead he would have settled for the less risky solution of taking it full-frontal, crumpling the bow, but being able to safely rely on the structure of the ship to keep it afloat? After all, that way just two or three of the four allowed watertight compartments would have crumpled and flooded, and the damaged would have most likely concentrated mostly on the lower, service decks, sparing most if not all the affluent first-class passengers – But still damaging or outright losing the precious cargo haul accommodated in said decks was too much of a financial danger for the White Star Line, and after having had other incidents in his past, Smith didn’t want to face further problems right on his last voyage before retirement. He at least was to make sure he would have been the last person to abandon the ship: thus retired in the wheelhouse, a sort of act of taking the helm for the very last time, and waited for everyone else to have tried their fortune by either finding a place on the lifeboats, or taking the plunge in the icy Arctic waters. As soon as he reached the wheel, suddenly the ship jolted forward, and the water level as seen from the windows rose: the “unsinkable” Royal Mail Service “Titanic” had taken her final plunge – Just halfway through her maiden voyage, and she was going to sink to the bottom of the ocean, about two nautical miles, almost four kilometers beneath the waves, in the endless night of the abyss. And yet, just below the surface, the pressure of the water already was too much for the fragile glasses of the wheelhouse, not designed to take so much punishment: a first crack, and then they immediately shattered, water rushing in to completely fill the room, taking Captain Smith with it. He was to actually go down with his last ship.
Meanwhile, on the upper decks, it was the panic: no one now was believing the delusion they have been sold, the “unsinkable” ship was actually sinking, and they now were between a rock and a hard place – Taking the plunge into the icy Arctic waters, risking a quick death for hypothermia, or clinging to the boat, hoping she could hold long enough for rescue to arrive? While most of the 2,200 people on board were contending with this desperate choice, down in the power rooms workers and engineers were still desperately trying to keep engines and boilers running, to at least provide the necessary energy for the lights and radio transmitter to keep working. The marconistas, facing the dire situation, already had abandoned their working room, but one of them, Jack Philips, found the time to go below deck ì, in the desperate attempt to save their colleagues.
“Capt. Smith has ordered to abandon the ship!”, he shouted – “Do it for your lives and your beloved ones!”. He wasn’t to make it, his heroic last attempt to save other lives being too late for them as well: the ship was already plunging to the dark abyss below, her bow filled with water dragging her while leaning at a 20° angle, when the strain put by the heavy engines just at her barycenter proved too much even for her first-choice steel, compounded by the brittling caused by the cold waters she had so far sailed.
The floor started buckling, and the workers registered it immediately:
“What the…”
“Oh, this ‘unsinkable’ tub is not only sinking, but seems to be about tearing apart… Hurry up, mates! I don’t want to be part of this!”
Outside, in the waters, those lucky enough to have found a place on a lifeboat were to be greeted by a horrifying spectacle: first, it was the chimneys, unable to resist the pressure of the water, detaching and going down to bottom by themselves; then, the power, no longer provided by the crewmembers now desperately trying escaping the sinking vessel, went out, leaving her as an almost invisible shape faintly highlighted by the stars in that fateful night’s moonless sky.
And eventually, the hull gave up, starting from the bottom, cracks going up to the very top decks: the ship, no longer structurally sound, broke around her middle; for a brief moment, the bow stayed attached by the last remnants of the bottom; but soon, it eventually totally separated, and started going to the bottom. It was a night of “new moon”, and as such no one could precisely see what was happening; would anyway the moon had illuminated the scene, the still-sinking stern would have been a ghostly spectacle: its mangled front and the exposed engines gave it almost the semblance of a “zombie ship”, while the rest of it, still intact, might have looked like a safe place to stay.
And it would have been, would it have broken in such a way some of its watertight compartment would have remained closed and intact: but it didn’t, and soon it started flooding, beginning with the engine room, and then started going down the same way the bow had done before. Everyone still on the deck started rushing as back as they could, to maximize their time on the sinking stern and avoid as long as possible throwing themselves into the freezing water. But soon, even the rearmost part of the stern was almost completely submerged, and when the propellers were back in the water it was clear there was nothing to do but completely abandoning what remained of the ship, and hope for the best. But many of them, in the panic of the moment, eased their grip too soon, and the fall was their demise.
“HOLD TIGHT!”, Jack shouted to Rose, while the two of them were holding to the same piece of handrail where he saved her just a few days before. And now, her life was once again in the hands of the poor Irish artist, which was anyway determined to save it even at the cost of his own one.
“RELEASE!”, he said, just one moment before the stern was completely submerged. For the moment by, they were saved; but the “Titanic”, the ship deemed to be “unsinkable”, had already been broken into pieces and sank by a simple piece of floating ice, and 1,500 of her 2,200 passengers weren’t go to be able telling the story: it was the greed and arrogance of the very same carrier responsible for their lives and death which had caused this tragedy, and it was on their back the weight of what had just happened was to be a burden forever.