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 petitioned 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 destitute 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.”

18 June 1912

Lat. 25°31’N, Long. 53°33’W

To reward our steerage passengers for accepting the Medusa initiative with such élan, 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 Titanic would beat that of her sister ship, the Olympic. Also, nobody 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.