Denise Phillips             Contents            

Titanic                                                                              

 

They called her unsinkable, why did they tempt fate?

Did their confidence in her perfection result in her sorry state?

She sailed with such promise Mistress of the seas

What could stop her as she rode the waves with ease?

 

She glided from her moorings carrying hopes and more than one fear.

Her suction snapped the ‘New York’s’ ropes and collision was very near.

A narrow escape at the time but we know that it would have been best

To have been hit amidships than to face that terrible test?

 

Blunders and errors, warnings ignored 

She sped ever onward her engines roared.

A quarter to midnight she met her match

The impact so gentle it seemed scarcely a scratch.

 

The iceberg was big and had drifted south

She had tried to avoid it with her hand in her mouth.

Its hidden tentacles did the trick

Ripping out six compartments incredibly quick.

 

On the boat deck some mustered with no sense of alarm

Even with lifeboats lowered, to remain had a charm.

The nearby ‘California’ didn’t respond to her distress

The reason ‘why’ remains forever, for anyone to guess.

 

‘Women and children only,’ then how did it come to pass

that more women in steerage died than rescued men in first class.

The lifeboats were but half filled and they were too few

Of 650 rescued another 400 could have gone too.

 

There were many acts of heroism and many lives were given

For quite a few could have saved themselves instead of dying in a watery prison.

As the last lifeboat left, Titanic’s innards blew

She nose-dived toward the bottom until she broke in two.

 

Those in the lifeboats spoke of the screams and terrible cries

Worse still was the total silence when all noise dies.

She lay now at the bottom, immersed in the brine

The pride and the tragedy of the White Star Line.