Remembering That Night

(Note: this post began life as an email to my friend Don)

The other night I went to sleep thinking about what it must have been like onboard Concordia. Perhaps this kind of story has appeared on TV, but I don't watch much, so I haven't seen it.

Had Ransom and I been there, we would have been in the dining room when the ship hit the rocks, as we always eat late sitting. Dining rooms tend to be low on the ship; on the Concordia they were on decks three and four, I believe. Had we felt the collision and agreed to leave immediately, we would have climbed to perhaps deck 10 or 11, or higher, our usual cabin location. We try not to ride elevators on ship, just to get some exercise; maybe, feeling some urgency, we would have this time, or maybe the power was already down and the lifts weren't running.

We'd get to our cabin, grab coats and warm clothes, our passports and phones -- though in October, when we boarded the Celebrity Silhouette in Civitavecchia, our passports were taken from us and we didn't see them again for four days. We'd climb back down to deck 4 or 5 to our muster station. When we got there there'd be no one in charge; in fact there'd be no officer whatsoever because, remember, no emergency has been declared. So what would we do?

We'd wander, looking for someone to tell us what's going on, but no one would know anything. All we'd hear is, "everything will be ok" or "please return to your cabin."

After a while the ship would be listing noticeably. If the power hadn't already been off, it would be now. Still no emergency had been called. Just a "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by" kind of message -- in this case, an electrical blackout.

I would be trying not to panic, but what the hell is going on? Who's in charge? What do we do?

This, I imagine, is how it was for even the savviest of passengers. And once the listing got really pronounced everything just got worse. By the time the emergency was acknowledged it was hard to maneuver through the ship. Bedlam overran the muster stations; attempts to get to the lifeboats were thwarted by out-of-the-loop crew and by the physical challenge of walking. The lifeboats couldn't be launched because of the severe list of the ship.

Eventually we might have to decide whether to swim for it or fight our way to the port side of the ship, away from the water. Or maybe we'd find crew members loading people into lifeboats and all would work like it is supposed to.

Scary. Very scary. We would try to keep our heads and get off this damned -- literally -- ship. We're tough; we're pushy Americans. We'd survive.

I think.

I took this of my friend Sergio aboard the QE2 in 2002.

The drill had just ended and we had paid close attention I'm sure.