Текст книги "The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Craig Dirgo
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II
Is It Here or Is It There? 1987–2001

The question that has been asked for more than ninety years is what happened to Waratahand the 211 people she had on board. From the time she sailed into oblivion during a storm off the east coast of South Africa, her ultimate fate has never been far from the minds of dedicated marine historians. And yet, since the day she vanished in 1909, no one seemed interested in launching a search for her until Emlyn Brown and I met up during my book tour in South Africa in 1985.

I was speaking at a book conference in Cape Town when Emlyn came up to me and asked if I was familiar with Waratah.He seemed mildly surprised that I had researched the ship’s disappearance in the hope that someday I might go out and search for it. We later met at the Mount Nelson Hotel and discussed the possibility of joining forces for a search. The meeting led to a friendship that remains strong to this day. Emlyn is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. I couldn’t have been luckier in finding someone like him to run the show. Courteous, determined, and dedicated to finding the legendary ship, he formed a branch of NUMA as a closed South African corporation in 1990.

Emlyn believed the freak wave phenomenon – that a tremendous wave smashed over Waratahand took her to the bottom. He theorized that the rapidly sloping continental shelf and the power of the Agulhas Current, combined with a severe gale, caused a series of gigantic waves that engulfed Waratah and drove her to the bottom. That she wasn’t a stable ship must not have helped during her struggle with a sea gone berserk.

Over many years, Brown pieced together every scrap of data pertaining to Waratah,with an emphasis on the reports surrounding her loss. Although maritime historians believed she went down much farther north due to sightings by other ships that survived the tempest, Brown bet his cards on the observations of Joe Conquer and D. J. Roos. Both men met not long after Roos claimed to have seen a ship lying on the bottom off the mouth of the Xora River, and they compared notes. They agreed on a location, and Roos drew a map with an X marking the spot.

They put the final resting place of Waratahfour miles off the Xora River where its waters met the sea off Transkei Coast. This area is known as the Wild Coast, an inhospitable shoreline where severe ocean conditions prevail.

Roos followed up with several flights over the next few years but never again found the sea visibly clear enough to reveal a shipwreck on the bottom. Engine trouble and poor weather conditions also worked against him. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident, and his map was missing for several years before his family found it in the back of a desk drawer.

In 1977, a routine sidescan sonar survey by a South African university recorded an unknown wreck 360 feet deep several miles off the Xora River. The contact caused much speculation, but most historians ruled it out as Waratah.

After an unsuccessful sonar survey in the southern area preferred by historians, Brown became more certain than ever that the reports by Conquer and Roos of a wreck they swore they saw off the Transkei Coast pointed to the Waratah.

Believing wholeheartedly that the legendary ship could be found, I funded Emlyn’s searches, beginning in 1987, when he conducted an intense sidescan survey of the area surrounding the wreck six miles offshore. Making several passes, Emlyn’s crew estimated that the vessel’s dimensions were quite similar to those of the long-missing ship.

Emlyn came back early in 1989 and attempted to lower cameras over the wreck. But little was accomplished, because the powerful five-knot Agulhas Current swept the cameras past the wreck and left him with only blurred images of the seafloor.

Later that year, he returned aboard the survey vessel Deep Salvage I.Using a sophisticated diving bell, Captain Peter Wilmot, master of the vessel, descended to the wreck and captured vague video footage of the hull. But again, the current was too much for the bell, and Wilmot’s video images fell far short of making a positive identification.

This was proving one tough mystery to solve.

Not one to give up against the odds of a Las Vegas keno game, Emlyn plunged forward. In 1991, he was on site with Deep SalvageI again, only this time he was accompanied by the world-famous scientist Professor Hans Fricke and his sophisticated submersible Jago,which was capable of diving to depths of nine hundred feet. It was inside Jagothat Professor Fricke became the first person to observe and film living coelacanths in the ocean.

History repeated itself. The current again bedeviled operations during the ten-day mission, and Jagowas never even launched.

Back to the drawing board.

In 1995, Emlyn was approached by Rehan Bouwer, a professional technical diver who believed he could reach the wreck during a carefully calculated Trimix dive, using a combination of three different breathing mixtures.

The first attempt was defeated by foul weather, and not until January 1997 did Emlyn and Bouwer’s expert divers make another attempt. Pushing mixed-gas decompression tables to the limits, Bouwer and Steve Minne, the two-man team that had successfully dived on the cruise liner Oceanosthat sank almost within sight of Emlyn’s wreck, dropped deep into the restless sea.

They were unable to reach the bottom, the unrelenting current sweeping them thirty-six feet over the wreck. At that depth there was little light from above, and they had to rely on dive lights. They didn’t see much, but there was no doubt in their minds that the vessel they’d drifted over was the size of Waratah.She was lying upright with a slight list. Most of her forward superstructure appeared gone, as if destroyed by a monstrous wave. During the thirty-five-second flyby, Minne was certain that the upper bulwark of the stem could have been that of Waratah.

The dive plan allowed a descent time of only three minutes to reach the seafloor at 340 feet, where they spent twelve minutes. This was followed by a complicated decompression ascent lasting two hours. During the drift-decompression stops, the five-knot current dragged the divers far downstream from the wreck site before they could be retrieved. Rarely had technical deep diving been so severely tested without the slightest mishap.

Over the next two days, the dive team conducted three more descents but could not come close enough to positively identify the elusive ship on the bottom.

Sadly, Rehan Bouwer was later lost in a diving accident in June of 1998.

Undaunted, Emlyn teamed up in 1999 with Dr. Ramsey and his crew from the Marine Geoscience Unit to conduct a high-resolution sidescan sonar image of the wreck off the Xora River. Everyone was certain their highly sophisticated equipment would produce the final proof that the wreck was indeed Waratah. The expedition members set sail in June, which in the Southern Hemisphere is wintertime.

Astounding imagery was captured by the Marine Geoscience team, and all the early indications pointed to a high probability that the wreck was indeed Waratah. Closer inspection of the sonar imagery suggested that the dimensions and various features of the wreck seemed quite similar to those contained in the Waratah’sshipbuilder plans.

A black-and-white camera was mounted on the sidescan and towed seven meters above the wreck. This seemed to be the only plausible way of beating the strong current. For fear of losing an expensive sensor and camera, the gear was not swept as close as Emlyn might have liked. Yet Emlyn found good images that matched portholes, deck machinery, and winches, as the camera flew over the stem section like a kite.

Confident that the wreck was indeed Waratah,and dogged in his stubbornness to prove once and for all that the lost ship was within his grasp, Emlyn initiated what he thought would be the final expedition. For this mission, he hired the services of Delta Oceanographic and their two-man submersible, which flew from the United States especially to close the final chapter on Waratah.

Excitement began to mount when the team arrived over the wreck site. All systems were tested and okayed, the weather was clear without more than a four-knot wind, and the sea was calm. Since all attempts over the past eighteen years had been plagued by technical problems and adverse weather conditions, Emlyn could not believe his luck. Incredibly, even the notorious current seemed to have slackened. Seeing the flat sea, Emlyn thought it might be a sign. Conditions were too good not to have been touched by the wand of good fortune.

He and Dave Slater, the submersible pilot, slipped through the hatch and settled into their cramped positions. The crane lowered them into the water, and divers unhooked the lift cable. Once free, Slater took the sub down to the seafloor. Visibility was more than one hundred feet as the upright image of the ship’s superstructure came into view. Elation began to cool and was replaced by concern as they moved closer to the wreck. What they saw did not square with what they thought they should have been seeing.

Through the submersible’s ports they recognized a military armored tank standing on the bottom. Their mood quickly became one of shock and disbelief.

“It is not the Waratah—I repeat, not the Waratah,”came the voice of Slater over the radio to the stunned team above on the survey ship.

They moved alongside the hull and rose even with the main deck. Tanks, with their guns pointed into the gloom, and rubber tires could be seen still secured where they had been tied down when the ship left port. At first Emlyn naively wondered how Waratahcould have been carrying tanks when World War I was still six years away when she sank. Surely this was not possible. It was difficult to accept the hard fact that this was not the 1909 British mail ship Waratah.

It proved the eye sees what it wants to see. The general characteristics and dimensions of the two ships were very similar. The diver accounts and sidescan sonar recordings had all been misinterpreted. What Emlyn had discovered after all this adversity was most likely a World War II cargo ship that had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. As it turned out, that is exactly what she was.

Eleven tanks were counted, and scattered dumps of small arms. Emlyn and Slater searched for a name or some identifying clue that would reveal the identity of the sunken cargo ship, but none was found.

Disheartened, Emlyn and his team returned to Cape Town. His later research showed that the name of the ship he had thought was Waratahwas actually the 4,926-ton Nailsea Meadow.She was transporting a cargo of tanks and other military hardware for General Montgomery’s Eighth Army on a voyage north toward the Suez Canal to Egypt when she was torpedoed by the U-196in 1942. Like so many ships found by NUMA, she was not where she was supposed to be. Documented records put her four miles north of her actual watery grave.

So where was Waratah?Why has all the evidence gathered over years of intense research pointed to this location? The thinking now is that the old liner lies much closer to shore, a theory I’ve always held because it seemed unlikely to me that Roos could have seen Waratahfrom the air through 350 feet of water—150 to 200 feet maybe, but not beyond the length of a football field, plus the yardage of the goalpost and then some.

There is little doubt that Joe Conquer witnessed a ship with a black hull and khaki-colored upper deck superstructure roll over and sink in a violent storm. If he and Roos are correct, then Waratahlies much closer to shore than where Emlyn found Nailsea Meadow.

Emlyn’s efforts have not been abandoned. He remains focused, and we are both more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the mystery. Early in 2001, Emlyn conducted a helicopter surveillance survey over the waters off the Xora River where we think Waratahis most likely to be found. His primary objective was to establish boundaries for an extensive sidescan sonar search to be held later in the year when the weather settled down.

I still have great confidence in Emlyn and his NUMA team. The search will continue, but, for now, Waratahretains her secrets, and the mystery lives on.

PART TEN
R.M.S. Carpathia

I
Savior of the Seas 1912,1918

“Bridge!” wireless operator Harold Cottam shouted into the speaking tube.

A few seconds passed before the booming voice of Carpathia’ssecond in command, Miles Dean, answered.

“Bridge, go ahead,” Dean said.

“I have received a CQD,” the operator said.

“CQD,” Dean boomed, “from what vessel?”

“Let me adjust the radio,” Cottam said. “Hold one second, please.”

Straining to hear through the speaking tube, Dean could just make out the faint wavering sounds of the radio. The radio shack was less than a hundred yards aft, but as Dean waited, the source of the noise seemed miles distant. Keeping his ear close to the speaking tube, Dean scanned the water with a pair of binoculars. A full moon was reflecting off the water, which allowed night visibility, and Dean was concerned with ice floes. Twice already tonight, Dean had ordered course corrections, and he wanted to be alert in case another was necessary.

“Sir,” Cottam said, “I have a complete message now.”

“Go ahead, then,” Dean said.

“It’s Titanic,sir,” the operator said slowly.

“What about her?” Dean said.

“She’s struck an iceberg, sir,” the operator said, “and reports she’s sinking.”

“What’s her location?”

“Latitude 41 degrees, 46 minutes north,” the operator read from his pad, “50 degrees, 41 minutes west.”

“Stand by,” Dean said.

Racing over to the chart table, he plotted out the location on a chart.

“Telegraph Titanicthat we are forty-eight miles distant,” Dean said. “Explain that with all the ice floes in the area, we cannot steam at full speed.”

“How long, sir?” the operator said quickly. “How long should I tell them?”

“Tell them we’re at most four hours away,” Dean said.

“Yes, sir,” the operator said.

Dean turned to the watch officer. “Awake Captain Rostron. Tell him we have received a distress call from Titanicand I’ve set a course north.”

The man sprinted from the wheelhouse and raced down the deck.

“Helmsman,” Dean said, “Starboard one-half, increase speed one-quarter.”

The helmsman repeated the commands while Dean once again scanned the surface of the water with his binoculars.

“God in heaven,” he muttered to himself, “take us through in safety and speed.”

* * *

As Titanicfilled with water, First Operator John George Phillips continued transmitting as long as possible. CQD followed by MGY, the call sign for Titanic.

“Have you tried the new sign?” Second Operator Harold Bride asked.

“SOS?” Phillips asked, as the carpet under his feet became soaked.

“Yes,” Bride said.

“No,” Phillips said, “but I will now.”

Phillips began tapping the keys. It was the first SOS ever sent.

* * *

From the deck of Titanic,seamen began firing rockets into the air.

After streaking skyward, they exploded in a crescendo of white.

From a floating palace of heat and light to a dreary place of haze and cold – the shock must have been incredible for the passengers of Titanic.

In a lifeboat two hundred yards south of Titanic,Molly Brown watched the scene unfold in horror. The lights on the great liner remained burning as she groaned and creaked while the thousands of gallons of water filled her breached hull. From a distance, it seemed like a horrible joke, only the screams of the dying intruding.

Then, all at once, Titanic’sgiant stern rose in the air as if to wave good-bye.

She slipped below the surface with one final burp.

* * *

Ten miles and a thousand lives from Titanic,the vessel Californianwas dead in the water. Just to be safe, her captain was awaiting the light of dawn to try to pick her way through the ice field. Californianwas an awkward six-thousand-ton vessel owned by the Leyland Lines and was designed more for cargo than passengers. Though she had cabin space for forty-seven passengers, tonight she carried none. Her route for this journey was London to Boston, but at this instant she was surrounded by an ice field that allowed for no safe movement.

Second Officer Harold Stone waited for morning in the bridge. He watched the ship in the distance through binoculars. Whatever vessel it was had also stopped. Stone did not know Titanic had struck an iceberg. Californian’swireless operator had shut the set off for the night before the distress call had been sent, so those on watch just assumed the ship on the horizon was waiting for first light to continue on.

* * *

Captain Rostron burst into the wheelhouse, still buttoning the top few buttons on his starched white shirt.

“Captain on the bridge,” Dean shouted.

“How far away do you place us?” Rostron said without preamble.

“Forty-six miles and just under four hours, sir,” Rostron said quickly.

“Watch?” Rostron shouted.

A seaman stood next to the window with a pair of binoculars trained on the sea.

“Sir, I have bergs to both sides,” the seaman answered. “Seems like a field ahead.”

Rostron turned to Dean. “What speed have you ordered?”

“Three-quarters ahead, sir,” Dean noted.

“Roger,” Rostron said. “Sound the alarm to awake the crew, Mr. Dean, then alert the galley to start as much soup and other hot liquids as they possibly can.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said.

“Then place two sailors on the bow and one in the crow’s nest as lookouts.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said.

Rostron turned to another brass speaking tube. “Engine room.”

“This is Engineer Sullivan,” a sleepy sounding voice answered.

“Sullivan,” Rostron shouted, “Titanichas struck an iceberg forty-five miles distant and we’ve been called to help with the rescue.”

“Yes, sir,” Sullivan said quickly.

“I’m going to need every ounce of steam you can give me, Sullivan,” Rostron said. “The crew is being wakened now.”

“I understand, sir,” Sullivan said. “You can count on us.”

“Full steam ahead, then, Mr. Sullivan,” Rostron said.

“Full steam ahead,” Sullivan answered.

Carpathia’stop speed was rated at fourteen knots.

Within a quarter hour, Sullivan had her flying through the water at just over seventeen.

Carpathiawas a buzz of activity. She was flying across the water like a winning thoroughbred. From her stack, a thick stream of smoke and ash trailed off the stern. At 560 feet in length, with a breadth of 64 feet 3 inches, she could not be called a nimble ship. Still, Rostron was steering her through the ice fields as if she were a pleasure yacht. With a gross tonnage of 13,555 tons, Carpathiathrew a large wake as she raced north. To the front, her bow parted the icy water like a razor through a hair. Twice already Captain Rostron had felt his keel scrape across underwater ice as his command had come close to icebergs. Even with that, he refused to back off the pace.

“Signal from the bow lookout,” the helmsman shouted, “ice to port.”

“Starboard an eight,” Rostron ordered.

* * *

Ship’s engineer Patrick Sullivan wiped his forehead with a rag, then stared again at the wall of gauges. Sullivan loved Carpathiaand her inner workings, loved the feeling of power that was now surging through her hull. Built by C. S. Swan & Hunter with engineering by Wallsend Slipway Company for the Cunard Line, Carpathiafeatured a stack that rose a full 130 feet above the bottom of the vessel, and for Sullivan this was a blessing. The immense height of the stack created a great draft for the fires that supplied her power, and at this exact instant the fires were raging.

Sullivan stared aft, where teams of firemen were singing a ditty while shoveling ton after ton of coal into the fireboxes. At each of the seven scotch boilers, a pair of men with loaded shovels would approach the open doors and heave their fuel into the flames. After stepping to the side to refill their shovels at a bunker port, another pair with loaded shovels would step forward and fling their contents into the inferno, only to be followed by another pair of men. There were three pairs of shovelers per boiler, forty-two men in all. The chanting men were stripped to the waist, covered with sweat and coal dust and constantly in motion.

* * *

Cold and fear. A stabbing cold from frozen water and frigid air. A palpable fear from witnessing death. The screams of the dying surrounded the few lifeboats that had been launched. To mark Titanic’sgrave, the sea was littered with chunks of cork, floating deck chairs, and lifeless bodies bound in life belts. High overhead, a hoar frost framed the moon. Down at sea level, puffs of steam from the lungs of the survivors marked the presence of those who were lucky.

* * *

On Carpathia,Captain Rostron never wavered, never faltered.

He kept his command running at full speed through a field of ice floes that could spell the same doom for him that Titanichad met. On April 11, Carpathiahad left New York bound for Gibraltar, Genoa, Trieste, and Fiume. She carried a total of 725 passengers in first and second class. The passengers were seeking warmth and sun, so it came as a surprise when the few that began awaking that night did so from the chill. As soon as Carpathiahad turned north, the temperature began falling. It was cold – bitterly cold.

* * *

Ten miles from Titanic’slast position, Second Officer Stone had watched the rockets light the night sky. He alerted Captain Lord, who was sleeping on the couch in the chart room. Lord inquired as to whether the rockets had all been white. After receiving a yes from Stone, Lord had gone back to sleep.

Then the lights of the liner had sunk lower in the water, as if she were steaming away.

The time was 2:45 A.M.

At 4 A.M., Stone was relieved by Chief Officer Frederick Stewart. He related the strange events to Stewart, then went belowdecks to sleep.

* * *

Smoke trailing from her towering stack and rockets blasting from her decks, Carpathiaarrived at the reported coordinates at 4 A.M. Captain Rostron expected to see the Titanicstill afloat.

After ordering the engines stopped, he ordered the lookouts to scan the surrounding area.

There was nothing.

Eight hundred and eighty-two feet of the finest ship yet constructed had vanished.

To the north, Rostron could see an unbroken line of ice. At the spot where Carpathiawas stopped, the sea was littered with chunks of ice and several large bergs. Minute by minute, the sky began to lighten. The flickering stars overhead began to disappear as the coming light fought the darkness. Slowly, the scene came into focus.

At that instant, a green flare streaked skyward.

“Starboard a quarter,” Rostron ordered.

Carefully maneuvering through the chunks of ice, Carpathiapulled abreast of a lifeboat.

Mrs. Walter Douglas in Lifeboat 2 was hysterical. “Titanichas gone down with all hands,” she screamed up at those on the deck of Carpathia.

As deckhands secured Lifeboat 2 and began to unload the passengers, Rostron scanned the sea in the growing light. He could make out lifeboats on all sides now, along with the flotsam from a ship now dead.

A thick fur coat rolled on the light waves. A swamped steamer trunk was just barely above water. Wooden deck chairs, planks, and empty life vests. To add to the chaotic scene were chunks of ice and a pair of nearby bergs, which towered nearly two hundred feet over Carpathia’shighest point. Seat cushions and ornate rugs floated past. Hundreds of sheets of paper formed a floating parquet of a story never to be read. A case of champagne, another filled with tins of snails. Bottles and casks and wooden slats ripped from Titanic on her plunge to the depths.

A Bible, a hatbox, several pair of shoes. A single body dead for hours.

“Get the survivors off the boats and into the salon,” Rostron ordered.

One by one, the lifeboats rowed closer.

* * *

The nagging doubts that had plagued Chief Officer Stewart finally proved too much.

At 5:40 A.M., he woke the Californian’swireless operator, Cyril Evans, and related what Stone had told him. Evans struggled to awake, then warmed up his wireless set and adjusted the dial. Seconds later, he heard the news.

“Titanichas sunk,” he shouted to Stewart.

Stewart immediately raced back to the bridge with the news and woke Captain Lord.

Within minutes, Lord began to steer a course for Titanic’slast position.

* * *

The sun was above the horizon, and the temperature had warmed some.

Carpathiawas a blur of activity, as more lifeboats arrived and the passengers were off-loaded. The passengers stumbled onto the deck in a daze. Most were dressed in a haphazard fashion – some in formal attire, others in everything from silk kimonos to velvet smoking jackets. Most were wearing hats, as was the fashion: the men in fedoras and bowlers with a sprinkling of tall top hats and a few snap-brim tweed caps; the women in a variety of headgear, from Russian fur caps to formal black boaters. The survivors’ shoes were a study in contrasts as well-an eclectic collection from silk opera slippers to rubber boots to polished black evening shoes to high-heeled pumps.

All the passengers were wet, and all were cold.

The passengers on Carpathiaraided their trunks for dry clothes that were passed out by the crew. The kitchen kept vats of soup, coffee, and cocoa filled, along with large silver platters piled with sandwiches of ham, turkey, and roast beef, but few of the survivors could muster an appetite.

The shock, cold, and horror they had witnessed rendered many mute, their senses numb.

At 8:30 A.M., Lifeboat 12, the last still afloat, was secured and the survivors unloaded. Harold Bride, the brave wireless operator from Titanic,had stayed on his station until the last possible instant, radioing the distress calls to sea. Ordered into a lifeboat, he had survived the ordeal.

Crewmen from Carpathia pulled him from the last lifeboat as much dead as alive. As soon as he reached the deck, Bride collapsed. The surgeon on Carpathiawould need to administer stimulants to revive him enough to tell his story.

Captain Rostron had the 705 survivors safely on board – now what would he do with them? The Olympic, Titanic’ssister ship, was drawing nearer. She radioed Carpathiaand offered to take survivors on board.

“Absolutely not,” Rostron told Second Officer Dean. “Can you imagine the shock to the survivors if they saw a near mirror image of their sunken vessel come alongside and ask them to come aboard? These people have suffered enough.”

“What, then, Captain?” Dean asked.

“New York,” Rostron said quietly. “We turn around and take them home.”

“Very good, sir,” Dean said.

“But first have the clergy aboard come to the bridge,” Rostron said.

* * *

The sun was burning brightly over the scene of the disaster at 8:50 A.M.

After a brief multidenominational ceremony to honor the dead, there was nothing more Carpathiacould do. Captain Rostron ordered a course set for New York City.

At full steam, Carpathiawas four days away.

* * *

A crowd numbering ten thousand milled around the Battery in New York City as Carpathiasteamed past the Statue of Liberty, carrying the Titanicsurvivors. Captain Rostron had no way of knowing how much the story of the sinking of the great liner had captivated the public’s attention.

“Look at the crowds,” Rostron said to Dean, who stood alongside him on the bridge.

“That’s the last thing the survivors need,” Dean said quietly. Rostron nodded. The last few days had given him an opportunity to observe some of the survivors firsthand. Most were still suffering from a deep shock. Captain Rostron had noted two distinct feelings. The first was surprise. Surprise at how quickly they had been thrown from a floating palace into a freezing hell. The second was grief, tinged with remorse. Grief that others had died; remorse that they had somehow survived.

“I want you to take charge of boarding at quarantine,” Rostron said to Dean, “and keep the reporters from boarding.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said.

Rostron knew this was but a stopgap. Once Carpathiawas moored along the White Star Pier on the East River and the survivors had disembarked, there was nothing he would be able to do to protect them from the hordes. Still, he wanted to give them as much time as possible to collect their thoughts.

UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN had fared better than most. Her hardscrabble existence in the mining camps of Colorado had given her an inner strength on which she could call in times of trouble. Even so, as Carpathialeft quarantine and steamed up the East River, surrounded by tugboats and pleasure craft, she realized she was party to an event that defined an era. The great industrial age of which she was a part had shown its rotting underbelly. The ship that “God himself could not sink” lay far below the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, and people would no longer place their faith blindly in the creations of man.

Spitting into the water alongside, she turned to a crewman nearby.

“From this day forward,” she said, “I shall always be defined by what happened.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Brown?” the crewman asked.

“Whatever I do in the future will pale,” Brown said, “and when I die, the first sentence they write will be that I was a survivor of Titanic.”

“You and the others,” the crewman agreed.

“I wonder why I lived when others died?” Brown said.

“I think,” the crewman said quietly, “that that is a question only God can answer.”

* * *

At 8:37, Carpathiabegan unloading the Titanic’slifeboats so she could moor. At 9:35 Thursday evening, she was finally tied fast, and the journey was at an end. Captain Rostron had done all he could. He and the entire crew of Carpathiahad performed their jobs with honor.

“Lower the gangplank,” Rostron ordered.

Three minutes later, the first survivors struggled onto land. Not one of the survivors imagined their savior would meet a similar fate.

SIX YEARS LATER

A pair of tugs began pushing Carpathiafrom the pier in Liverpool. July 15, 1918, was a typical summer day in Great Britain – it was raining. But it was not the type of rain that plagued the island in the North Sea in winter, spring, and fall. This sprinkle was a halfhearted affair, lacking purpose and strength. At first it came from the north, then switched directions from east to west. It ebbed and flowed like a dying tide, at times opening to pockets of sunlight and dry air.