Adventures of a Sea Hunter_ In Search of Famous Shipwrecks - James P. Delgado [33]
We turn around and move aft to where the first-class staircase, in all of its ornately carved splendor, once led below. At the edge of one deck, two chandeliers are visible, hanging from their wiring, a reminder of former elegance in this ruin. We follow the sloping deck to the break in the hull where the ship ripped apart as the stern rose high into the air. For years after the tragedy, some people argued that Titanic sank intact, while others insisted that the ship was torn apart. The arguments ended with the discovery of the wreck in 1985.
We descend to the seabed again, turning forward to look into the severed bow section’s boiler room. Here Titanic fractured: the torn and crumpled steel, the half crushed and twisted water and steam pipes, and the five massive boilers that rise before us as high as a three-story-tall wall, are impressive not only in their mass but in the gargantuan scale of the damage. The steel is deformed and stretched in some areas like saltwater taffy on a hot summer’s day. Other hull plates have jagged edges like a shattered porcelain plate. Everywhere is a tangled mess of electrical wires. As we edge along this open wound, we look up to see the towering mass of the decks above us. The danger of a sudden collapse and our burial in the debris spurs Genya to pull away at last and head out across the abyssal plain to examine the stern.
The debris field that lies between the two sections of the hull is an array of hardware, hunks of steel, lumps of coal and occasional items that speak to the splendor of the ship and the lives changed by or lost in the disaster. I see linoleum tiles, a ceramic sink bowl, plates, a section of brass bench and shoes. I also see a copper pan from the ship’s galley, looking amazingly bright after nearly nine decades in the sea. The shifting sands keep it polished, Genya suggests. I have been told that the debris field looks as if a small city exploded in space and rained down, and it is an apt description.
The bow section of Titanic is separated from the stern by some 1,790 feet. That distance seems to go on forever down here, but gradually, the pieces of debris get larger. We pass a crank from an engine that seems to be as big as an average family minivan, and then one of the ship’s boilers. Finally, we reach the stern. The stern is a mangled, deformed mass of steel, but in its wreckage we can discern the form of the hull as it swept back to the rudder, the deckhouses, a half-fallen cargo crane, the stub of a mast and the graceful curve of the poop deck. We edge forward to view the massive reciprocating steam engines. The cast iron is fractured because the cylinders, each the size of a large truck, imploded with the pressure of the sea as the stern sank. Nestled between the cracks and broken pipe is a beautiful ceramic teapot; its handle is intact but the spout is broken. Lighter debris, like the teapot, rained down for hours after the ship sank, falling onto the heavier wreckage that had plummeted to the bottom first.
Titanic is such a part of the mass-media world in which we live that my mind keeps flashing back to the various written stories and films. Here, inside the engine room, as I look at the teapot, I think back to a scene in the 1958 classic movie A Night to Remember. The chief engineer is talking to the men who are running the electrical system. The chief is asked, “How are things up top, sir? Any chance for us?” He stops and says, “Whatever happens, we’ve got to keep the lights going. I’ll give the word when it’s time to go, and then it’s every man for himself.” He pauses and goes on. “But it won’t be so bad, they say the Carpathia is on her way to us, should be here any time now.” As he leaves, the engineer in charge turns to his men and says, with a slight smile, “Well, let’s hope they’re right, eh boys? If anyone feels