By the time I arrived, at perhaps five minutes past midnight, Mr Andrews, who’d designed the Titanic, was already seated at the table, along with Mr Bell, the chief engineer, Mr Hutchinson, the ship’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 bumped him down to first mate, I immediately apprehended that the ship 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 lifebelts, 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 succumb to hypothermia,” said Mr Murdoch, who liked to lord it over us Scousers with fancy words such as succumb 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 Titanic has at best one hundred and fifty minutes to live.”