You have probably experienced five or ten minutes that felt like hours. May be in a hospital waiting room waiting for word about a child or loved one undergoing surgery! Or watching a house on fire with loved ones inside as you waited for rescue personnel to arrive.
For two and a half hours, from 11:40 pm on April 14, 1912, the engineers and electricians of the Titanic fought to save the ship from sinking. It is said that they actually knew it was sinking but they fought to delay it. It is also believed that the band played Nearer my God to Thee until the ship broke up and sank.
Yes, and even as the Titanic fired flares into the sky, the Californian, which was the last to communicate with her before the accident, failed to respond. Neither were other ships nearby able to respond before she sank.
Those who survived left in half full lifeboats. J. Bruce Ismay, Chairman of White Star Line, the owners of the Titanic, would become the world's most scorned man after he jumped into one of those half full lifeboats and fled from the sinking ship.
Imagine too, that you were one of the residents of Southampton where “night and day that crowd of pale,anxious faces had been waiting patiently for the news that did not come”, according to The War Cry, the newspaper published by the Salvation Army.
What would be your reaction in a similar situation?
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