Night To Remember Essay, Research Paper
A Night To Remember by Walter Lord is about the well known disaster that the
luxury cruse ship the "Titanic" went thorough. This story takes place
on the ship and on its many decks. During the story the Titanic sails along the
Atlantic Ocean. Walter Lord wrote this book in 1955, but the famous collision
occurred on April 14, 1912 at 11:40 P.M. In this novel the author, Walter Lord
wants to show what happened at every moment on the cruse liner. The Novel also
has not one main character, that is, all characters have the same value in the
story. On April 14, 1912, 2:00 P.M. was when the Titanic left Queenstown for New
York on the huge Voyage carrying 1316 passengers and 891 crew. All was calm
cruising along the Atlantic at 221/2 knots and the ocean looked like a sheet of
ice. The watchman in the crows nest accounted for an iceberg but since the ship
was unsinkable there was no need to worry right? All was calm on the ship as
well some were playing cards, looking out at the night sky, listening to the
band play, and some people decided to sleep. Until that "grinding"
noise came, at around 11:40 that night some people heard a grinding noise that
seemed to be coming from the inside of the ship. All but a few cared about it -
if they even heard it. The ship’s reputation would hold up to some grinding
noise any day. So after a while the word got around that they had, in fact,
stuck an iceberg. Surprisingly no one cared and everyone went back to bed. The
captain of the Titanic could if in emergency hit a electric button and many
air-tight doors sealed off special rooms that could keep the ship afloat even if
it had a hole in its double reinforced hull. As word soon spread that the
collision was a lot worse than before expected, the captain and the crew members
went to go check the damage. The blow caused a two foot gash in the side of
boiler room number 5. The people had to get into the emergency row boats right?
Wrong! The Titanic only had enough row boats for a fraction of the passengers.
So the only likely thing to do was to make the women and children go first then
if there was any other room left (which there couldn’t be) the men could go on.
The calls came from all around shouting "Women and children on the
emergency row boats." That really startled the people on the ship. They
wanted to know why they had to go on the emergency boats if the ship was
unsinkable. But if they had to… they would. People went back in their rooms
and they took things that were most valuable to them. One person took a Bible
that was given to him by his brother. But almost all of the people (in the upper
class) took jewelry and money. At 12:15 A.M. the next day, the first wireless
call for help was made. The water was getting higher and higher. The departing
said their final good-byes. Soon the Titanic would be under the great Atlantic
Ocean. So they would have to act fast. But they were also were ready to go down
by the ship. The ship was taking on more and more water, faster and faster. Some
people panicked and jumped over the edge thinking that they could swim for their
lives. But the water was so cold that they died quickly. The ship was now on
such a tilt that it was no longer easy to stand. People were tumbling left and
right. People were also going crazy because they either saw their spouse or
friend drown in front of them. As the Titanic was in its final stages of being
above the sea, some accounted that the huge ship looked like a gigantic jagged
rock sticking out of the water. No one could save the Titanic now the only hope
was to save the people who got off the ship with the help of the ship Carpathia
who dropped the lines out to save those in the life boats. Back home Newspapers
read that all were saved from the massive collision. But that was far from the
truth. There was only about 705 survivors. The Titanic was the single most
popular ship in History that was noticed as one of the worst tragedies.
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