“The solution to this crisis is not to fill the lifeboats to capacity and send them off in hopes of encountering the Carpathia, for that would leave over a thousand people stranded on a sinking ship,” 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 lifebelts 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 Titanic. 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 lifeboats, 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.”