I sent a runner to give the damage report to the captain. When the runner returned we received a message from the captain saying that passengers are being loaded onto the lifeboats and that we had to what we could to delay the inevitable sinking of the Titanic. On hearing the news our main engineers, a tall young man with a wispy moustache and a middle aged man with greying hair and a stern serious face set to find a way of keeping the vast vessel afloat for as long as possible.
Again I set up the steel staircase and again passed the dank cabins of the crew and up the wooden stairs to the main ship. The titanic was stunning the walls were scattered in beautiful, detailed paintings of women and children and there were crystal chandeliers lighting up every were. As I set foot in the cabin areas of the second class, beautiful rooms with four poster beds and even more exquisite paintings lining the walls I could hear the worry of the passengers as they heard the shocking news of what happened to the Titanic. There were men, women and children hurrying around trying to be some of the first to get to the lifeboats and to safety.
I was heading for the captains quarters when the first distress flair was set from the deck lighting up the sky making the worry of the passengers and crew even more visible. When I reached the captain’s quarters I knocked on a door with a shiny brass plate saying, “captain” on it. After a few moments of waiting in the almost mansion like corridor the door opened. A man in his late forty’s was standing in the door way with a look of concern on his face. The captain was short with dark black hair greying on the sides and back, he had a presence of power surrounding him and you could clearly tell he was in charge. His room was vast and spectacular; you could imagine a room like this in Buckingham palace. The room had a huge four-poster bed with silken curtains surrounding it. The walls had golden flowers and vines all over with occasional paintings of other ships; below one of these was a large settee.
After a short talk with the captain about the current state of the hull I hurriedly ran across the deck passing hundreds of people trying to get on life boats and back down the engine room. Once I entered the engine room I told all the crew there that they could try to get on a lifeboat and get away from the Titanic. We all ran up the steel stairs and up onto the deck.
There were hundreds of people possibly thousands crammed onto the wooden deck all hoping they would get onto a lifeboat. It was obvious that there was no chance of us getting off the sinking ship. I used my crew status to weave past mostly men and up to the remaining few lifeboats my fellow crewmates following. Once I reached the lifeboats I rammed past two young men and onto a quickly filling lifeboat. Two of the other engineers had also managed to get on.
The boat was painted white on the outside but was bare wood on the inside. There was barely enough room on the boat for ten men yet at least fifteen were onboard crammed into every spare crevasse. The boat shook and we slowly descended down to the awaiting water below. The boat wobbled as it hit the freezing water and two men began to row us away from the more quickly now descending Titanic.
The air was freezing and whipped around me slapping me in the face leaving a horrible stinging sensation on my face. Everyone around me was huddled in his or her coats including me. I felt sick knowing that because of me people were going to die on the Titanic, going down with the soon to be wrecked marvel of engineering. Some of those people were my friends my colleagues.
The Titanic faded into the distance its lights still on but just flickering with a lack of power then disappearing as the ship itself would soon. Then a huge rippled wave hit the boat and I knew that it had finally gone under vanishing forever and becoming a simple memory.
