15. TO DREAM ON THE SHIP OF SORROWS
At 3:30 a.m. aboard the Keldysh, the cleaning of the two Titanic “crosses” was memorialized in Charles Pellegrino, photo log and notes, Expedition Titanic XIII, Sept. 10–11, 2001; personal experiences with family members (cousins Donna and Sharon). Captain Paddy Brown’s at-home and on-the-job habits: personal communication with friends Olinda Cedeno and Mary Leung, members of the Brown family, and Ladder 3. His fights with the “red devil” and the rescue of Jessica Rubenstein: anonymous, in eulogy read by Mike Daly, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, Nov. 9, 2001.
The “How Much Does Darkness Weigh?” conference and Roy Cullimore’s comments about “a sense of justice”: Charles Pellegrino, written log, Expedition Titanic XIII, p. 126; personal communication with Roy Cullimore, Aug. 2001. The actions of Atta and Abdulaziz in Maine, while we prepared for dive 7 and history’s first rescue of one robot by another: Reporters and editors of Der Spiegel, Inside 9–11 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 2, 26. Events aboard the Keldysh: Pellegrino, written log, Expedition Titanic XIII, Sept. 11, 2001, pp. 103–145.
An hour and a half behind Titanic time, in New York, Paddy Brown signed in: artifacts at 3 House of the fire department (the chalkboard and journal, on which the crew signed in for the last time). The story of the close-knit members of two families, located on Flights 11 and 175 and inside the Twin Towers: H. McClure (friend of the two families), personal communication, 2002; Reporters and editors of Der Spiegel, Inside 9–11 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 36–38, 41, 68–70.
About the time Flight 175 became airborne, we placed the two “crosses” in the Titanic sample return tray and launched the Mir-1: Pellegrino, photo log and notes, Expedition Titanic XIII, Sept. 11, 2001. Event impact collapse timing, and seismic results: The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); Lamont Geophysical Observatory, Palisades, New York.
16. FALLING STARS
Information about Ruth McCourt and Ron Clifford, personal communication with Holly McClure. Mary Leung, looking east across the river, wishing it was not real and pleading for Jim Cameron to yell, “Cut!”: Leung, personal communication. The Keldysh, the International Space Station, and the Antarctic overwinter team were among the most isolated outposts of humanity on September 11, 2001, at 10:40 a.m. Titanic time. No clear video reached us, and news of family members and friends safe or missing trickled in slowly, over the course of two days: Charles Pellegrino, personal experiences; Pellegrino, written log, Expedition Titanic XIII, Sept. 11–13, 2001, pp. 123–130; Pellegrino, Keldysh-Mir communications log, Sept. 11–13, 2001, pp. 132–133. Continuing biomedical research in the deep-ocean pharmacy referenced in Pellegrino, e-mail to Ed Bishop from the Keldysh, Sept. 13, 2001, p. 146.
17. MOVEMENTS OF FIRE AND ICE
William Murdoch and the tragic practice of “cracking on”: Susanne Stormer, The Biography of William McMaster Murdoch (Kosel, Germany: Hans Christian Andersen, 1995), 60–61, 160; George Rowe, letter to Walter Lord, 1955, L/P file, pp. 317–318. Murdoch to Samuel Hemming: Hemming, British Inquiry, May 24, 1912, p. 421.
Aboard the Keldysh, the Americans reflected on the number of warnings that had been missed: Eleanor Hill, New Jersey Record, Sept. 19, 2002; R. Schlesinger and W. Washington, Boston Globe, May 17, 2002. Regarding Jim Cameron’s insistence that “it is not 11:40 p.m.”: Charles Pellegrino, written log, Expedition Titanic XIII, logged Sept. 21, 2001, pp. 259–260.
18. FRAILTY
Note: The chapter title is a nod to the film of the same name starring Bill Paxton.
The Yeltsin event (1995) is recounted in the film Countdown to Zero, National Geographic Channel, 2011. The last warning to the Titanic, from the Californian, was affirmed by C. F. Evans, British Inquiry, May 15, 1912, p. 202.
Charles Lightoller discussed in 1936 how he and Samuel Hemming had worked to free boat B as the final plunge began; Hemming, who had insisted all along that there was plenty of time, decided that time might actually have been running out after alclass="underline" Jack Winocour, ed., The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors (New York: Dover, 1960), p. 297; Hemming, American Inquiry, Apr. 23, 1912, p. 666; Hemming, British Inquiry, May 24, 1912, p. 422.
Lightoller’s critical observations in determining the angle between the bridge and the crow’s nest—and his remarkable escape: American Inquiry, Apr. 24, 1912, pp. 72, 90, 94; British Inquiry, May 21, 1912, p. 318; Winocour, The Story of the Titanic, pp. 297, 299.
On the fall of the first smokestack: James Cameron, “Thayer: The Dance of the Smokestacks,” in Jack Thayer, In Their Own Words: Titanic, http://www.charlespellegrino.com. Thayer also spoke of a smokestack falling near boat B in his Sinking of the SS Titanic (Indian Orchard, MA: Titanic Historical Society, 1940), 24.
Thayer has often been attached to sensational newspaper reports and to a series of drawings, attributed to him, describing the ship breaking apart in such a manner that the bow’s tip resurfaced near him and among the falling smokestacks. In Sinking of the SS Titanic, 24, 25, Thayer described parts of the ship, including the second funnel and some of the upper-deck “superstructure,” splitting apart and buckling upward as the region around the officers, quarters and the crystal dome submerged. He did not believe the ship itself actually broke in two—and especially not at a point near the first two smokestacks and the grand stairway in such a manner as to draw the tip of the bow being pulled all the way back to his location. The drawings attributed to Thayer, made famous after the Ballard expeditions really did prove that the Titanic broke in two, were sketched in 1912 by reporter L. D. Skidmon of Brooklyn, based on second-hand information.
Eugene Daly surfaced from the final plunge into horrors that were described by him to Dr. Frank Blackmarr on the rescue ship Carpathia and published by J. T. Harper, “Dr. Frank Blackmarr’s Remarkable Scrapbook,” Titanic Commutator 22, no. 3 (Jan. 1999): 27.
Almost two decades later, Lightoller told what he had heard people calling to one another during those last minutes: Lightoller, personal communication to Walter Lord, L/P file, p. 575. Anthony El-Khouri, in an e-mail to Charles Pellegrino, Jan. 11, 2011, speculated about what Lightoller must have felt when he heard those calls and why he felt it.
Thayer reported that despite the horror, he was entranced: Thayer, Sinking of the SS Titanic (Indian Orchard, MA: Titanic Historical Society, 1940), 25. August Wennerstrom’s account was recorded in Wyn Craig Wade, Titanic: End of a Dream (New York: Penguin, 1979), 314.