the engineer's lament

"A ship is not built with rivets and steel alone, but with the blood of ambition and the tears of those who dare to defy the sea."
—Christopher MacWard, Logbook Entry #13, 1912

I. Belfast: Forging a God of Steel

Belfast, 1909

The air in Belfast was a symphony of iron—clanging hammers, roaring furnaces, and the ceaseless drone of a city bent on alchemy. I, Christopher MacWard, stood beneath the skeletal ribs of the Titanic, her hull a colossus of ambition, her keel a scar across the Belfast clay. The Harland & Wolff shipyard was a cathedral of progress, its spires of steel piercing a sky forever bruised by smoke.

To me, engineering was never arithmetic. It was poetry in motion —a dance of forces, a language of dreams. The Titanic was no mere vessel; she was a manifesto, a defiance of mortality. Her engines, my creation, were to be the heartbeats of a new age. I poured into her the sweat of my labor, the fire of my pride, and the whispered hope that this ship might just outpace fate itself.

II. Afloat: The Illusion of Perfection

Southampton to the Atlantic, 1912

When she sliced through the water on her maiden voyage, the Titanic was a living myth. Her decks echoed with the laughter of the elite, her salons dripping in gilt and gaslight. But my sanctuary was belowdecks, where the engines roared like dragons in repose. I walked her arteries, tracing the pulse of her mechanical soul, my hands brushing brass fittings that bore the imprint of my own.

Yet even then, a shadow lingered. A steward, wide-eyed and trembling, once asked if she were truly unsinkable. I laughed, but the question gnawed. "Nothing is invincible," I muttered to the darkness that night. "But she is exceptional."

III. The Night the Ocean Remembered

April 14, 1912

The iceberg was a ghost. A shudder, a groan—a breath held too long. Alarms screamed as seawater surged into her belly. I raced to the engines, my boots skidding on wet steel, as Chief Bell’s face etched the truth: "We’re losing her."

We fought like gods. We sealed bulkheads, bled steam, and wrestled valves, but the sea was an old, relentless foe. The lights died. The engines stilled. And then—the split , a sound like the universe’s scream.

The bow plunged first. Passengers, once so grand, were reduced to ants fleeing a collapsing empire. I clutched young Henry’s arm, his terror a mirror to my own. "Run," I barked. "Run or the sea will claim your name!"

IV. Into the Abyssal Embrace

April 15, 1912

The ocean took us. Cold, black, and hungry. I remember the silence—the void above, indifferent, its darkness unbroken by star or moon. The Titanic sank not with a roar, but a sigh, as if she, too, understood her fall.

I swam until the cold stole my breath and the darkness claimed what pride remained. In the end, I thought not of Belfast or engines, but of the day she first kissed the water—a fleeting moment when the world believed in miracles.

As my body succumbed to the relentless cold, my mind wandered, seeking solace in memory. I saw Titanic not as a broken wreck sinking into the darkness, but as she had been, in all her glory—proud, unyielding, a dream made real, a testament to the audacity of human aspiration.

And then, the sea, in its vast, indifferent embrace, took me.