The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories Part 1

The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories.

Edited By Ian Watson.

& Ian Whates.

Introduction.

"There is an infinitude of Pasts, all equally valid," wrote Andre Maurois, the French novelist and biographer. "At each and every instant of Time, however brief you suppose it, the line of events forks like the stem of a tree putting forth twin branches." This is quoted in Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, edited by historian and political commentator Niall Ferguson. These days alternative history is almost respectable amongst historians, leading to such other recent well-received volumes of essays as Robert Cowley's What If? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been or Andrew Roberts' What Might Have Been: Leading Historians on Twelve "What Ifs" of History. Some other historians frown at counterfactuality; although, if the "Many Worlds" interpretation of Quantum Physics is correct, all possible alternatives might indeed occur in a branching multiverse. What's more, was our own world's history in any sense inevitable, or even highly plausible, simply because it actually happened? Who, for instance, in 1975 might have imagined that a few years later a female British prime minister would be sending a nuclear-armed armada all the way to the South Atlantic in a quarrel about some remote islands full of sheep? Who could have supposed that British counter-terrorism laws, provoked by planes flying into the World Trade Center, would be used for the first time bizarrely to seize the a.s.sets of a mild-mannered Icelandic bank, on account of mortgages stupidly sold to poor house buyers in the United States?

Essays about What Might Have Been are already fascinating, but it has long been a delight of science fiction writers to put flesh upon the bones. Consequently, here you'll find what might have happened if the Roman Empire had never declined and fallen; how Islam might have triumphed much more widely; how the Native American Indians might have repelled the European invasion; how the other Indians, of India, might have forged an empire in place of the British Empire; how the civilized Chinese might already have been ensconced in California when the uncouth Europeans first arrived there; how the Pope might really have offended King Alfred of the burnt cakes; and much much more that has surely happened elsewhere (or elsewhen) in alternity, even if it didn't happen quite that way in our version of reality. You'll find award-winning cla.s.sics of the sub-genre nestling alongside equally worthy nuggets that might previously have escaped your notice and more recent gems, including three splendid, brand-new stories by special invitees James Morrow, Stephen Baxter and Ken MacLeod. These feature the alternative truth about the t.i.tanic, the trial for heresy of Darwin's bones along with one of his descendants, and a near-future Scotland that begins as far south as London.

Ian Watson and Ian Whates.

The Raft of the t.i.tanic.

James Morrow.

15 April 1912.

Lat. 4025' N, Long. 51 18' W.

The sea is calm tonight. Where does that come from? Some Oxbridge swot's poem, I think, one of those cryptic things I had to read in tenth form - but the t.i.tle hasn't stayed with me, and neither has the scribbler's name. If you want a solid education in English letters, arrange to get born elsewhere than Walton-on-the-Hill. "The sea is calm tonight." I must ask our onboard litterateur, Mr Futrelle of Ma.s.sachusetts. He will know.

We should have been picked up - what? - fourteen hours ago. Certainly no more than sixteen. Our Marconi men, Phillips and Bride, a.s.sure me that Captain Rostron of the Carpathia acknowledged the t.i.tanic's CQD promptly, adding, "We are coming as quickly as possible and expect to be there within four hours." Since the s.h.i.+p of Dreams sailed into the Valley of Death, sometime around 2.20 this morning, we have drifted perhaps fifteen miles to the southwest. Surely Rostron can infer our present position. So where the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is he?

Now darkness is upon us once again. The mercury is falling. I scan the encircling horizon for the Carpathians lights, but I see only a cold black sky sown with a million apathetic stars. In a minute I shall order Mr Lightoller to launch the last of our distress rockets, even as I ask Reverend Bateman to send up his next emergency prayer.

For better or worse, Captain Smith insisted on doing the honourable thing and going down with his s.h.i.+p. (That is, he insisted on doing the honourable thing and shooting himself, thereby guaranteeing that his remains would go down with his s.h.i.+p.) His gesture has left me en pa.s.sant in command of the present contraption. I suppose I should be grateful. At long last I have a s.h.i.+p of my own, if you can call this jerry-built, jury-rigged raft a s.h.i.+p. Have the other castaways accepted me as their guardian and keeper? I can't say for sure. Shortly after dawn tomorrow, I shall address the entire company, clarifying that I am legally in charge and have a scheme for our deliverance, though that second a.s.sertion will require of the truth a certain elasticity, as a scheme for our deliverance has not yet visited my imagination.

I count it a b.l.o.o.d.y miracle that we got so many souls safely off the foundering liner. The Lord and all His angels were surely watching over us. So far we have acc.u.mulated only nineteen corpses: a dozen deaths during the transfer operation - shock, heart attacks, misadventure - and then another seven, shortly after sunrise, from hypothermia and exposure. Grim statistics, to be sure, but far better than the thousand or so fatalities that would have occurred had we not embraced Mr Andrews' audacious plan.

Foremost amongst my immediate obligations is to start keeping a record of our tribulations. So here I sit, pen in one hand, electric torch in the other. By maintaining a sort of captain's log, I might actually start to feel like a captain, though at the moment I feel like plain old Henry Tingle Wilde, the Scouser who never got out of Liverpool. The sea is calm tonight.

16 April 1912.

Lat. 3919 N, Long. 5140 'W.

When I told the a.s.sembled company that, by every known maritime code, I am well and truly the supreme commander of this vessel, a strident voice rose in protest: Vasil Plotcharsky from steerage, who called me "a bourgeois lackey in thrall to that imperialist monstrosity known as White Star Line." (I'll have to keep an eye on Plotcharsky. I wonder how many other Bolsheviks the t.i.tanic carried?) But on the whole my speech was well received. Hearing that I'd christened our raft the Ada, "after my late wife, who died tragically two years ago", my audience responded with respectful silence, then Father Byles piped up and said, so all could hear, "Right now that dear woman is looking down from heaven, exhorting us not to lose faith."

My policy concerning the nineteen bodies in the stern proved more controversial. A contingent of first-cabin survivors led by Colonel Astor insisted that we give them "an immediate Christian burial at sea", whereupon my first officer explained to the aristocrats that the corpses may ultimately have "their part to play in this drama". Mr Lightoller's prediction occasioned horrified gasps and indignant snorts, but n.o.body moved to push these frigid a.s.sets overboard.

This afternoon I ordered a complete inventory, a good way to keep our company busy. Before floating away from the disaster site, we salvaged about a third of the buoyant containers Mr Latimer's stewards had tossed into the sea: wine casks, beer barrels, cheese crates, bread boxes, foot-lockers, duffel bags, toilet kits. Had there been a moon on Sunday night, we might have recovered this jetsam in toto. Of course, had there been a moon, we might not have hit the iceberg in the first place.

The tally is heartening. a.s.suming that frugality rules aboard the Ada - and it will, so help me G.o.d - she probably has enough food and water to sustain her population, all 2,187 of us, for at least ten days. We have two functioning compa.s.ses, three bra.s.s s.e.xtants, four thermometers, one barometer, one anemometer, fis.h.i.+ng tackle, sewing supplies, baling wire, and twenty tarpaulins, not to mention the wood-fuelled Franklin stove Mr Lightoller managed to knock together from odd bits of metal.

Yesterday's attempt to rig a sail was a fiasco, but this afternoon we had better luck, improvising a gracefully curving thirty-foot mast from the banister of the grand staircase, then fitting it with a patchwork of velvet curtains, throw rugs, signal flags, men's dinner jackets, and ladies' skirts. My mind is clear, my strategy is certain, my course is set. We shall tack towards warmer waters, lest we lose more souls to the demonic cold. If I never see another ice floe or North Atlantic growler in my life, it will be too soon.

18 April 1912.

Lat. 3711'N, Long. 5211' W.

Whilst everything is still vivid in my mind, I must set down the story of how the Ada came into being, starting with the collision. I felt the tremor about 11.40 p.m., and by midnight Mr Lightoller was in my cabin, telling me that the berg had sliced through at least five adjacent watertight compartments, possibly six. To the best of his knowledge, the s.h.i.+p was in the last extremity, fated to go down at the head in a matter of hours.

After a.s.signing Mr Moody to the bridge - one might as well put a sixth officer in charge, since the worst had already happened - Captain Smith sent word that the rest of us should gather post-haste in the chartroom. By the time I arrived, at perhaps five minutes past midnight, Mr Andrews, who'd designed the t.i.tanic, was already seated at the table, along with Mr Bell, the chief engineer, Mr Hutchinson, the s.h.i.+p's carpenter, and Dr O'Loughlin, our surgeon. Taking my place beside Mr Murdoch, who had not yet reconciled himself to the fact that my last-minute posting as chief officer had b.u.mped him down to first mate, I immediately apprehended that the s.h.i.+p was lost, so palpable was Captain Smith's anxiety.

"Even as we speak, Phillips and Bride are on the job in the wireless shack, trying to raise the Californian, which can't be more than an hour away," the Old Man said. "I am sorry to report that her Marconi operator has evidently shut off his rig for the night. However, we have every reason to believe that Captain Rostron of the Carpathia will be here within four hours. If this were the tropics, we would simply put the entire company in life-belts, lower them over the side, and let them bob about waiting to be rescued. But this is the North Atlantic, and the water is twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit."

"After a brief interval in that ghastly gazpacho, the average mortal will succ.u.mb to hypothermia," said Mr Murdoch, who liked to lord it over us Scousers with fancy words such as succ.u.mb and gazpacho. "Am I correct, Dr O'Loughlin?"

"A castaway who remains motionless in the water risks dying immediately of cardiac arrest," the surgeon replied, nodding. "Alas, even the most robust athlete won't generate enough body heat to prevent his core temperature from plunging. Keep swimming, and you might last twenty minutes, probably no more than thirty."

"Now I shall tell you the good news," the Old Man said. "Mr Andrews has a plan, bold but feasible. Listen closely. Time is of the essence. The t.i.tanic has at best one hundred and fifty minutes to live."

"The solution to this crisis is not to fill the life-boats to capacity and send them off in hopes of encountering the Carpathia, for that would leave over a thousand people stranded on a sinking s.h.i.+p," Mr Andrews insisted. "The solution, rather, is to keep every last soul out of the water until Captain Rostron arrives."

"Mr Andrews has stated the central truth of our predicament," Captain Smith said. "On this terrible night our enemy is not the ocean depths, for owing to the life-belts no one - or almost no one - will drown. Nor is the local fauna our enemy, for sharks and rays rarely visit the middle of the North Atlantic in early spring. No, our enemy tonight is the temperature of the water, pure and simple, full stop."

"And how do you propose to obviate that implacable fact?" Mr Murdoch inquired. The next time he used the word obviate, I intended to sock him in the chops.

"We're going to build an immense platform," said Mr Andrews, unfurling a sheet of drafting paper on which he'd hastily sketched an object labelled Raft of the t.i.tanic. He secured the blueprint with ashtrays and, leaning across the table, squeezed the chief engineer's knotted shoulder. "I designed it in collaboration with the estimable Mr Bell" - he flashed our carpenter an amiable wink - "and the capable Mr Hutchinson."

"Instead of loading anyone into our fourteen standard thirty-foot life-boats, we shall set aside one dozen, leave their tarps in place, and treat them as pontoons," Mr Bell said. "From an engineering perspective, this is a viable scheme, for each lifeboat is outfitted with copper buoyancy tanks."

Mr Andrews set his open palms atop the blueprint, his eyes dancing with a peculiar fusion of desperation and ecstasy. "We shall deploy the twelve pontoons in a three-by-four grid, each linked to its neighbours via horizontal stanchions spliced together from available wood. Our masts are useless - mostly steel - but we're hauling tons of oak, teak, mahogany and spruce."

"With any luck, we can affix a twenty-five-foot stanchion between the stern of pontoon A and the bow of pontoon B," Mr Hutchinson said, "another such bridge between the amids.h.i.+ps oarlock of A and the amids.h.i.+ps oarlock of E, another between the stern of B and the bow of C, and so on."

"Next we'll cover the entire matrix with jettisoned lumber, securing the planks with nails and rope," Mr Bell said. "The resulting raft will measure roughly one hundred feet by two hundred, which technically allows each of our two thousand plus souls almost nine square feet, though in reality everyone will have to share accommodations with foodstuffs, water casks, and survival gear, not to mention the dogs."

"As you've doubtless noticed," Mr Andrews said, "at this moment the North Atlantic is smooth as gla.s.s, a circ.u.mstance that contributed to our predicament - no wave broke against the iceberg, so the lookouts spotted the b.l.o.o.d.y thing too late. I am proposing that we now turn this same placid sea to our advantage. My machine could never be a.s.sembled in high swells, but tonight we're working under conditions only slightly less ideal than those that obtain back at the Harland and Wolff s.h.i.+pyard."

Captain Smith's moustache and beard parted company, a great gulping inhalation, whereupon he delivered what was surely the most momentous speech of his career.

"Step one is for Mr Wilde and Mr Lightoller to muster the deck crew and have them launch all fourteen standard life-boats - forget the collapsibles and the cutters - each craft to be rowed by two able-bodied seamen a.s.sisted where feasible by a quartermaster, boatswain, lookout, or master-at-arms. Through this operation we get our twelve pontoons in the water, along with two roving a.s.sembly craft. The AB's will forthwith moor the pontoons to the t.i.tanic's hull using davit ropes, keeping the lines in place until the raft is finished or the s.h.i.+p sinks, whichever comes first. Understood?"

I nodded in a.s.sent, as did Mr Lightoller, even though I'd never heard a more demented idea in my life. Next the Old Man waved a sc.r.a.p of paper at Mr Murdoch, the overeducated genius whose navigational brilliance had torn a three-hundred-foot gash in our hull.

"A list from Purser McElroy identifying twenty carpenters, joiners, fitters, bricklayers, and blacksmiths - nine from the second-cabin decks, eleven from steerage," Captain Smith explained. "Your job is to muster these skilled workers on the boat deck, each man equipped with a mallet and nails from either his own baggage or Mr Hutchinson's shop. For those who don't speak English, get Father Montvila and Father Peruschitz to act as interpreters. Lower the workers to the construction site using the electric cranes. Mr Andrews and Mr Hutchinson will be building the machine on the leeward side."

The Old Man rose and, shuffling to the far end of the table, rested an avuncular hand on his third officer's epaulet.

"Mr Pitman, I am charging you with provisioning the raft. You will work with Mr Latimer in organizing his three hundred stewards into a special detail. Have them scour the s.h.i.+p for every commodity a man might need were he to find himself stranded in the middle of the North Atlantic: water, wine, beer, cheese, meat, bread, coal, tools, s.e.xtants, compa.s.ses, small arms. The stewards will load these items into buoyant coffers, setting them afloat near the construction site for later retrieval."

Captain Smith continued to circ.u.mnavigate the table, pausing to clasp the shoulders of his fourth and fifth officers.

"Mr Boxhall and Mr Lowe, you will organize two teams of second-cabin volunteers, supplying each man with an appropriate wrecking or cutting implement. There are at least twenty emergency fire-axes mounted in the companionways. You should also grab all the saws and sledges from the shop, plus hatchets, knives and cleavers from the galleys. Team A, under Mr Boxhall, will chop down every last column, pillar, post and beam for the stanchions, tossing them to the construction crew, along with every bit of rope they can find, yards and yards of it, wire rope, Manila hemp, clothesline, whatever you can steal from the winches, cranes, ladders, bells, laundry rooms and children's swings. Meanwhile, Team B, commanded by Mr Lowe, will lay hold of twenty thousand square feet of planking for the platform of the raft. Towards this end, Mr Lowe's volunteers will pillage the promenade decks, dismantle the grand staircase, ravage the panels, and gather together every last door, table and piano lid on board."

Captain Smith resumed his circuit, stopping behind the chief engineer.

"Mr Bell, your a.s.signment is at once the simplest and the most difficult. For as long as humanly possible, you will keep the steam flowing and the turbines spinning, so our crew and pa.s.sengers will enjoy heat and electricity whilst a.s.sembling Mr Andrews's ark. Any questions, gentlemen?"

We had dozens of questions, of course, such as, "Have you taken leave of your senses, Captain?" and "Why the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l did you drive us through an ice-field at twenty-two knots?" and "What makes you imagine we can build this preposterous device in only two hours?" But these mysteries were irrelevant to the present crisis, so we kept silent, fired off crisp salutes and set about our duties.

19 April 1912 Lat. 3618 'N, Long. 5248' W Still no sign of the Carpathia, but the mast holds true, the spar remains strong and the sail stays fat. Somehow, through no particular virtue of my own, I've managed to get us out of iceberg country. The mercury hovers a full five degrees above freezing.

Yesterday Colonel Astor and Mr Guggenheim convinced Mr Andrews to relocate the Franklin stove from amids.h.i.+ps to the forward section. Right now our first-cabin castaways are toasty enough, though by this time tomorrow our coal supply will be exhausted. That said, I'm reasonably confident we'll see no more deaths from hypothermia, not even in steerage. Optimism prevails aboard the Ada. A cautious optimism, to be sure, optimism guarded by Cerberus himself and a cherub with a flaming sword, but optimism all the same.

I was right about Mr Futrelle knowing the source of "The sea is calm tonight." It's from "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold. Futrelle has the whole thing memorized. Lord, what a depressing poem. "For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor cert.i.tude, nor peace, nor help for pain." Tomorrow I may issue an order banning public poetry recitations aboard the Ada.

When the great s.h.i.+p t.i.tanic went down, the world was neither various and beautiful, nor joyless and violent, but merely very busy. By forty minutes after midnight, against all odds, the twelve pontoons were in the water and lashed to the davits. Mr Boxhall's second-cabin volunteers forthwith delivered the first load of stanchions, even as Mr Lowe's group supplied the initial batch of decking material. For the next eighty minutes, the frigid air rang with the din of pounding hammers, the clang of furious axes, the whine of frantic saws and the squeal of ropes locking planks to pontoons, the whole mad chorus interspersed with the rhythmic thumps of lumber being lowered to the construction team, the steady splash, splash, splash of provisions going into the sea, and shouts affirming the logic of our labours: "Stay out of the drink!" "Only the cold can kill us!" "Twenty-eight degrees!" "Carpathia is on the way!" It was all very British, though occasionally the Americans pitched in, and the emigrants proved reasonably diligent as well. I must admit, I can't imagine any but the English-speaking races constructing and equipping the Ada so efficiently. Possibly the Germans, an admirable people, though I fear their war-mongering Kaiser.

By 2.00 a.m. Captain Smith had successfully shot himself, three-fifths of the platform was nailed down, and the t.i.tanic's bridge lay beneath thirty feet of icy water. The stricken liner listed horribly, nearly forty degrees, stern in the air, her triple screws, glazed with ice, lying naked against the vault of heaven. For my command post I'd selected the mesh of guylines securing the dummy funnel, a vantage from which I now beheld a great ma.s.s of humanity jammed together on the boat deck: aristocrats, second-cabin pa.s.sengers, emigrants, officers, engineers, trimmers, stokers, greasers, stewards, stewardesses, musicians, barbers, chefs, cooks, bakers, waiters and scullions, the majority dressed in lifebelts and the warmest clothing they could find. Each frightened man, woman and child held onto the rails and davits for dear life. The sea spilled over the tilted gunwales and rushed across the canted boards.

"The raft!" I screamed from my lofty promontory. "Hurry! Swim!" Soon the other officers - Murdoch, Lightoller, Pitman, Boxhall, Lowe, Moody - took up the cry. "The raft! Hurry! Swim!" "The raft! Hurry! Swim!" "The raft! Hurry! Swim!"

And so they swam for it, or, rather, they splashed, thrashed, pounded, wheeled, kicked and paddled for it. Even the hundreds who spoke no English understood what was required. Heaven be praised, within twelve minutes our entire company managed to migrate from the flooded deck of the t.i.tanic to the sanctuary of Mr Andrews's machine. Our stalwart ABs pulled scores of women and children from the water, plus many elderly castaways, along with Colonel Astor's Airedale, Mr Harper's Pekingese, Mr Daniel's French bulldog and six other canines. I was the last to come aboard. Glancing around, I saw to my great distress that a dozen lifebelted bodies were not moving, the majority doubtless heart-attack victims, though perhaps a few people had got crushed against the davits or trampled underfoot.

The survivors instinctively sorted themselves by station, with the emigrants gathering at the stern, the second-cabin castaways settling amids.h.i.+ps, and our first-cabin pa.s.sengers a.s.suming their rightful places forward. After cutting the mooring lines, the ABs took up the lifeboat oars and began to stroke furiously. By the grace of Dame Fortune and the hand of Divine Providence, the Ada rode free of the wreck, so that when the great steamer finally snapped, breaking in two abaft the engine room, and began her vertical voyage to the bottom, we observed the whole appalling spectacle from a safe distance.

22 April 1912 Lat. 3342' N, Long. 53 11' W We've been at sea a full week now. No Carpathia on the horizon yet, no Californian, no Olympia, no Baltic. Our communal mood is grim but not despondent. Mr Hartley's little band helps. I've forbidden them to play hymns, airs, ballads or any other wistful tunes. "It's waltzes and rags or nothing," I tell him. Thanks to Wallace Hartley's strings and Scott Joplin's syncopations, we may survive this ordeal.

Although no one is hungry at the moment, I worry about our eventual nutritional needs. The supplies of beef, poultry and cheese hurled overboard by the stewards will soon be exhausted, and thus far our efforts to harvest the sea have come to nothing. The spectre of thirst likewise looms. True, we still have six wine-casks in the first-cabin section, plus four amids.h.i.+ps and three in steerage, and we've also deployed scores of pots, pans, pails, kettles, washtubs and tierces all over the platform. But what if the rains come too late?

Our sail is unwieldy, the wind contrary, the current fickle, and yet we're managing, slowly, ever so slowly, to beat our way towards the thirtieth parallel. The climate has grown bearable - perhaps forty-five degrees by day, forty by night - but it's still too cold, especially for the children and the elderly. Mr Lightoller's Franklin stove has proven a boon for those of us in the bow, and our second-cabin pa.s.sengers have managed to build and sustain a small fire amids.h.i.+ps, but our emigrants enjoy no such comforts. They huddle miserably aft, warming each other as best they can. We must get farther south. My kingdom for a horse lat.i.tude.

The meat in steerage has thawed, though it evidently remains fresh, an effect of the cold air and the omnipresent brine. I shall soon be obligated to issue a difficult order. "Our choices are clear," I'll tell the Ada's company, "fort.i.tude or refinement, nourishment or nicety, survival or finesse - and in each instance I've opted for the former." Messrs Lightoller, Pitman, Boxhall, Lowe and Moody share my sentiments. The only dissenter is Murdoch. My chief officer is useless to me. I would rather be sharing the bridge with our Bolshevik, Plotcharsky, than that fusty Scotsman.

In my opinion an intraspecies diet need not automatically entail depravity. Ethical difficulties arise only when such cuisine is practiced in bad faith. During my one and only visit to the Louvre, I became transfixed by Theodore Gericault's Scene de naufrage "Scene of a s.h.i.+pwreck", that gruesome panorama of life aboard the notorious raft by which the refugees from the stranded freighter Medusa sought to save themselves. As Monsieur Gericault so vividly reveals, the players in that disaster were, almost to a man, paragons of bad faith. They ignored their leaders with insouciance, betrayed their fellows with relish and ate one another with alacrity. I am resolved that no such chaos will descend upon the Ada. We are not orgiasts. We are not beasts. We are not French.

4 May 1912 Lat. 2955' N, Long. 54 12' W At last, after nineteen days afloat, the Ada has crossed the thirtieth parallel. We are underfed and dehydrated but in generally good spirits. Most of the raft's company has settled into a routine, pa.s.sing their hours fis.h.i.+ng, stargazing, card-playing, cataloguing provisions, bartering for beer and cigars, playing with the dogs, minding the children, teaching each other their native languages, repairing the hastily a.s.sembled platform and siphoning seawater from the pontoons (to stabilize the raft, not to drink, G.o.d knows). Each morning Dr O'Loughlin brings me a report. Our infirmary - the area directly above pontoon K- is presently full: five cases of chronic mal de mer, three of frostbite, two of flux, and four "fevers of unknown origin".

Because the Ada remains so difficult to navigate, even with our newly installed wheelhouse and rudder, it would be foolish to try tacking towards the North American mainland in hopes of hitting some hospitable Florida beach. We cannot risk getting caught in the Gulf Stream and dragged back north into frigid waters. Instead we shall latch onto every southerly breeze that comes our way, eventually reaching the Lesser Antilles or, failing that, the coast of Brazil.

As darkness settled over the North Atlantic, we came upon a great ma.s.s of flotsam and jetsam from an anonymous wreck: a poaching schooner, most likely, looking for whales and seals but instead running afoul of a storm. We recovered no bodies - lifebelts have never been popular amongst such scallywags - but we salvaged plenty of timber, some medical supplies, and a copy of the New York Post for 17 April, stuffed securely into the pocket of a drifting macintosh. At first light I shall peruse the paper in hopes of learning how the outside world reacted to the loss of the t.i.tanic.

The dry wood is a G.o.dsend. Thanks to this resource, I expect to encounter only a modic.u.m of hostility whilst making my case next week for what might be called the Medusa initiative for avoiding famine. "Only a degenerate savage would consume the raw flesh of his own kind," I'll tell our a.s.sembled company. "Thanks to the Franklin stove and its ample supply of fuel, however, we can prepare our meals via broiling, roasting, braising, and other such civilized techniques."

5 May 1912 Lat. 2810'N, Long. 5440 'W I am still reeling from the New York Post's coverage of the 15 April tragedy. Upon reaching the disaster site, Captain Roston of the Carpathia and Captain Lord of the Californian scanned the whole area with great diligence, finding no survivors or dead bodies, merely a few deck chairs and other debris. By the following morning they'd concluded that the mighty liner had gone down with all souls, and so they called off the search.

The Ada's company greeted the news of their ostensible extinction with a broad spectrum of responses. Frustration was the princ.i.p.al emotion. I also witnessed despair, grief, bitterness, outrage, amus.e.m.e.nt, hysterical laughter, fatalistic resignation, and even - if I read correctly the countenances of certain first-cabin and amids.h.i.+ps voyagers - fascination with the possibility that, should we in fact b.u.mp into one of the Lesser Antilles, a man might simply slip away, start his life anew, and allow his family and friends to count him amongst those who'd died of exposure on day one.

If the Post report may be believed, our would-be rescuers initially thought it odd that Captain Smith had neglected to order his pa.s.sengers and crew into lifebelts. Rostron and Lord speculated that, once the t.i.tanic's entire company realized their situation was hopeless, with the Grim Reaper making ready to trawl for their souls within a mere two hours, a tragic consensus had emerged. As Stanley Lord put it, "I can hear the oath now, ringing down the t.i.tanic's companionways. 'The time has come for us to embrace our wives, kiss our children, pet our dogs, praise the Almighty, break out the wine and stop trying to defy a Divine Will far greater than our own.' "

Thus have we become a raft of the living dead, crewed by phantoms and populated by shades. Mr Futrelle thought immediately of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". He muttered a stanza in which the cadaverous crew, their souls having been claimed by the skull-faced, dice-addicted master of a ghost s.h.i.+p (its hull suggestive of an immense ribcage), return to life under the impetus of angelic spirits: "They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, nor spake nor moved their eyes. It had been strange, even in a dream, to have seen those dead men rise." And when we all come marching home to Liverpool, Southampton, Queens-town, Belfast, Cherbourg, New York, Philadelphia and Boston - that too will be awfully strange.

9 May 1912 Lat. 2714'N, Long. 5521' W This morning the Good Lord sent us potable water, gallons of it, splas.h.i.+ng into our cisterns like honey from heaven. If we cleave to our usual draconian rationing, we shall not have to take up the Ancient Mariner's despairing chant - "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" - for at least two months. Surely we shall encounter more rain by then.

Predictably enough, my directive concerning the steerage meat occasioned a lively conversation aboard the Ada. A dozen first-cabin voyagers were so scandalized that they began questioning my sanity, and for a brief but harrowing interval it looked as if I might have a mutiny on my hands. But in time more rational heads prevailed, as the pragmatic majority apprehended both the utilitarian and the sacramental dimensions of such a menu.

Reverend Bateman, G.o.d bless him, volunteered to oversee the rite - the deboning, the roasting, the thanksgiving, the consecration - a procedure in which he was a.s.sisted by his Catholic confreres, Father Byles and Father Peruschitz. Not one word was spoken during the consumption phase, but I sensed that everyone was happy not only to have finally received a substantive meal but also to have set a difficult precedent and emerged from the experience spiritually unscathed.

14 May 1912 Lat. 2741' N, Long. 5429' W Another wreck, another set of medical supplies, another trove of cooking fuel - plus two more legible newspapers. As it happened, the Philadelphia Bulletin for 22 April and the New York Times for 29 April carried stories about the dozens of religious services held earlier in the month all over America and the United Kingdom honouring the t.i.tanic''s n.o.ble dead. I explained to our first-cabin and second-cabin pa.s.sengers that I would allow each man to read about his funeral, but he must take care not to get the pages wet.

Needless to say, our most ill.u.s.trious voyagers were accorded lavish tributes. The managers of the Waldorf-Astoria, St Regis, and Knickerbocker hotels in Manhattan observed a moment of silence for Colonel John Jacob Astor. (Nothing was said about his scandalously pregnant child bride, the former Madeleine Force.) The rectors of St Paul's church in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, commissioned three Tiffany windows in memory of the dearly departed Widener family, George, Eleanor and Harry. Senator Guggenheim of Colorado graced the Congressional Record with a eulogy for his brother, Benjamin, the mining and smelting tyc.o.o.n. President Taft decreed an official Day of Prayer at the White House for his military adviser, Major b.u.t.t. For a full week all the pa.s.senger trains running between Philadelphia and New York wore black bunting in honour of John Thayer, Second Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. During this same interval the flags of all White Star Line steamers departing Southampton flew at half-mast in memory of the company's president, J. Bruce Ismay, even as the directors of Macy's Department Store in Herald Square imported a Wurlitzer and arranged for the organist to play each day a different requiem for their late employer, Isidor Straus. The Denver Women's Club successfully pet.i.tioned the City Council to declare a Day of Mourning for Margaret Brown, who'd done so much to improve the lot of uneducated women and dest.i.tute children throughout the state.

On the whole, our spectral community took heart in their epitaphs, and I believe I know why. Now that our deaths have been duly marked and lamented, the bereaved back home can begin, however haltingly, to get on with the business of existence. Yes, throughout April the mourning families knew only raw grief, but in recent weeks they have surely entered upon wistful remembrance and the bittersweet rewards of daily life, wisely heeding our Lord's words from the Gospel of Matthew, "Let the dead bury their dead."

18June 1912 Lat. 2531'N, Long. 5333'W To reward our steerage pa.s.sengers for accepting the Medusa initiative with such elan, I made no move to stop them when, shortly after sunrise, they killed and ate Mr Ismay. I could see their point of view. By all accounts, from the moment we left Cherbourg Ismay had kept pressing the captain for more steam, so that we might arrive in New York on Tuesday night rather than Wednesday morning. Evidently Ismay wanted to set a record, whereby the crossing-time for the maiden voyage of the t.i.tanic would beat that of her sister s.h.i.+p, the Olympic. Also, n.o.body really liked the man.

I also went along with the strangling and devouring of Mr Murdoch. There was nothing personal or vindictive in my decision. I would have acquiesced even if we didn't detest each other. Had Murdoch not issued such a boneheaded command at 11.40 p.m. on the night of 14 April, we wouldn't be in this mess. "Hard a-starboard!" he ordered. So far, so good. If he'd left it at that, we would've steamed past the iceberg with several feet to spare. But instead he added, "Full astern." What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l was Murdoch trying to do? Back up the s.h.i.+p like a b.l.o.o.d.y motorcar? All he accomplished was to severely compromise the rudder, and so the colossus slit us like a hot knife cutting lard.

When it came to Mr Andrews, however, I drew the line. Yes, before the t.i.tanic sailed he should have protested the paucity of lifeboats. And, yes, when designing her he should have run the bulkheads clear to the brink, so that in the event of rupture the watertight compartments would not systematically feed one another with ton after ton of brine. But even in his wildest fancies, Mr. Andrews could not have imagined a three-hundred-foot gash in his creation's hull.

"Let him amongst you who has designed a more unsinkable s.h.i.+p than RMS t.i.tanic cast the first stone," I told the mob. Slowly, reluctantly, they backed away. Today I have made an eternal friend in Thomas Andrews.

5 December 1912 Lat. 2016 'N, Long. 5240 'W Looking through my journal, I am chagrined to discover that the entries appear at such erratic intervals. What can I say? Writing does not come easily for me, and I am forever solving problems more pressing than keeping this tub's log up to date.

Since getting below the Tropic of Cancer, we have endured one episode of becalming after another. Naturally Mr Futrelle supplied me with an appropriate stanza from Coleridge. "Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down - 'twas sad as sad could be, and we did only speak to break silence of the sea." And yet we are much more than the poet's painted s.h.i.+p upon a painted ocean. The Ada abides. Life goes on.