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 bloody hell was Murdoch trying to do? Back up the ship like a bloody 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 Titanic 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 ship than RMS Titanic 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. 20°16 ‘N, Long. 52°40 ‘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 ship upon a painted ocean. The Ada abides. Life goes on.