The Arrival that Never Came

from Ampersand 2019

A Fair Go and a Fighting Chance

Luke Ehlert , Year 7

They should have known something was going to happen. Several messages, warnings from other ships. It was directly ahead of them. They should have shelved their pride and turned. They should have known that even the RMS Titanic couldn’t withstand the might of an iceberg.

It happened at night, when only the crew were awake. All of the guests were asleep, either in the fine apartment-sized buildings of the first-class passengers, or the modest rooms of the second- and third-class guests. I could see their dreams. Many were uneasy, a dream of the ship sinking, or a horror from the deep ascending and mutilating the ship.

I could not change these dreams, I could only see them. My only power lies in collecting the souls of those who depart from the world. I have been on this sorry planet from the start. I will not cease to exist, unlike so many others whose souls are now mine. Only when Death ends will I perish. I have been called many things – Satan, the Grim Reaper, Hades – I am all of them, yet none of them. And I have a job to do. Don’t ask me why, it’s just how it is. I watch over the world and collect the souls of those who can’t go on.

Darcy Varghese - Year 9 The captain thought he had everything under control. When he went to bed, I knew the crew didn’t stand a chance. Their orders were to carry on, straight ahead. Right into the iceberg.

I don’t know why. Perhaps the captain had thought that the ‘practically unsinkable’ Titanic would plough right through it. After all, the manufacturers of the ship had told him not to worry, that the Titanic was made to withstand that kind of obstruction. So they carried on.

When they saw the tiny iceberg floating on the surface of the water, the crew laughed. ‘The Titanic could shred that into a million pieces with the slightest nudge!’ they jeered. But they couldn’t see what I saw. They couldn’t have possibly seen that the iceberg scaled about 100 feet underwater. They couldn’t possibly know that their pride and joy, the most powerful and luxurious ship in the world, was hopeless against the properties of ice.

At the very bottom of the Titanic were 14 compartments, underneath the third-class rooms and the boiler room. Any four compartments could fill up with water and the ship wouldn’t be damaged. They were the ship’s main defence against icebergs. As the ship and the iceberg collided, though, a gash was torn in the side of the Titanic. Water flooded the compartments, crashing through, slowly filling every single one. The sound was deafening. But I watched silently as the water coursed through the 14th compartment, and into the boiler room.

There were 15 men in there, working the enormous fires that fuelled the ship, when the water started to flow into the massive room.

One man, evidently the leader of the group, yelled ‘Grab the buckets, we got a leak, boys!’

The others ran off and soon returned with pails in their arms. They started casually shovelling water into them. I waited patiently. As the strength of the water flow increased, their urgency went with it, and soon they were wading into the freezing cold water. All around the room, fires were being extinguished by the constant torrent of water.

‘Run!’ One man yelled. The men desperately scrambled to the doors, swimming as hard as they could in now shoulderheight water.

‘Close the watertight doors!’ screamed the leader. As the men struggled towards the doors, another worker paddled to the control panel and slammed a button. The watertight doors started lowering slowly. But then a sudden gust of

icy water sent the men tumbling across the room, away from the now nearly closed doors. The men picked up their pace, holding on to their last reserves of strength. But their efforts were in vain. The doors closed with an ominous clang, leaving the men trapped.

The men froze where they were for a moment, pure, unmasked fear and horror etched into their faces as they realised that their chances of survival were hanging on a thread.

‘Oh no!’ one man said.

‘Up the ladder!’ another cried, and the men, desperate to find a way out of this danger, propelled themselves toward the ladder on the other side of the room, currently unaffected by the current of water.

A few moments later, most of the men had grabbed the ladder and started to haul themselves up, but the first man wasn’t even halfway up when a section of the wall suddenly collapsed and landed in the shoulder-high water with a tremendous splash. Water surged through the widened gap in the weakened structure of the wall, throwing the men around the room as the water twisted and churned, collapsing in on itself. The men on the ladder redoubled their efforts, trying to reach the top, but the water level was rising faster then they could possibly climb, and soon they were submerged with the others.

And outside, I collected the souls, one by one. Finally, after ten minutes struggling against the tsunami, the last man was hurled against a wall, his back breaking instantly. I felt him weaken, and then, slowly, I reached in and took his soul for my own. Finally, as the water started crashing through the third-class rooms, I knew that tonight Death would have its hands full.