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Disaster at sea

After sailing for several weeks, the sonar detected a shallow reef, that is, a rock very close to the surface, just ten meters under the sea surface. That was not frequent, but in the vast ocean sometimes a volcano can appear on its bed, raising from bottom little by littl as it cools down, with no witness other than a column of steam that seems to come out of the sea itself, and due to the immense vastness of the waters it remains without scoring even by the swarm of satellites that are already populating the space surrounding the Earth. There, then, between Hawaii and New Zealand, the keel of our proud cruise ship encountered a sea bottom rise that was quite hard to crack, and due to the enormous inertia of the ship it tore through her entire length.

On the upper decks the passengers and the crew were dedicated to their chores, the former having a good time in their dance halls, gambling halls, film projection rooms, or simply playing chess; and the latter entertaining the passage and doing the necessary maintenance tasks. Only those who were currently on the lower decks noticed a shudder and heard a rather ugly screeching. And little by little they noticed that the water was rising inside the boat. They ran to the deck immediately above and sealed it, but the pressure of the water burst the closures, and the water climbed the seventeen floors or decks, one by one, and soon the captain knew that the ship was lost.

And he ordered to abandon ship.

Eusebius and Sofia were walking on the deck, right next to a lifeboat when the ship’s horn, as well as several sirens, began their strident concert, warning with their shocking noise that the ship had to be abandoned. They had just finished supper and were watching, silently, the sunset when they were assailed by the infernal noise and subsequent screams.

«What do we do?»

«Doesn't this boat sound familiar to you? It's ours. What a coincidence».

Then Eusebius gave her something more precious than an engagement ring: a life jacket he had taken from the boat, and then he put his on.

In that moment arrived two sailors who uncovered the boat and urged them to get on, as well as 30 the other passengers who were congregated there in an instant. The crew members immediately proceeded to lower the boat overboard using an automatic mechanism. When they reached the water, they released the tie ropes and one of the sailors placing himself at the helm, the other distributed the oars and briefly reminded them how to use them, as they had been explained in the abandon ship exercises just a few days ago. Thus they managed to quickly get away from The Spirit of the Ocean, whose list (that is, inclination to one side) was already beginning to become evident, that due to a strange optical effect it seemed to threaten to fall upon them.

In an orderly manner, all the passengers and crew went to the lifeboats, while a request for help was sent by all possible means of communication. From Hawaii and New Zealand, squadrons of amphibious aircraft and fast boats were sent to rescue the survivors, the first arriving in a matter of hours, while the boats needed days.

But not all would receive the long-awaited rescue.

Senén was chatting with a girl younger than him, who he just met, our friend Elsa. Her parents and aunties were elsewhere at the time. They were having coffee in one of the cafes on the upper deck when they heard the honking of the ship's horn. A few days earlier they had done the last drill of abandoning the ship, so they knew this was no drill. He left the cafeteria, followed by his new friend, and saw people running with their life jackets on, or getting them.

«What is happening?» He said into the air, not addressing anyone in particular, but in a voice loud enough for someone to answer him.

«We’re sinking!» He heard an anguished voice say.

Elsa and he looked at each other, scared.

They went to the area the lifeboats area, and saw that some were already getting down onto the sea, others were full and there were people arguing to get on them, despite the fact that there was no room for anybody else, since the maximum per boat was 32 people. The two of them stayed there, as if they were rooted on the deck, with their backs against the screen, or wall, while they watched the people running, some without control, but just as they had seen in the drills. The idea that this time it was for real kept them nailed to the ground, there, watching everyone pass and disappear.

Finally, Senén reacted when he heard someone shout his name:

«Senén, here!»

It was Celia, Wenceslaus's young wife, the most determined woman he had ever known, albeit superficially and only at lunchtime. He looked up at the voice, and saw it aboard a half-empty boat.

«Senén, do come here!» Celia insisted. She had realized that the young man was the victim of a panic attack, and from experience she knew that on these occasions clear and simple orders had to be given. «We are waiting for you!»

He finally reacted. He took Elsa's hand in his, and dragged her behind him to where Celia was. The boat had started to descend, so the two of them had to jump up and get into the boat next to Celia and her husband. He handed each a life jacket.

Little by little the boat was lowered until it reached the surface of the sea. Two men arrived late, when the boat was already halfway to the sea, Ramiro and Alfonso, Senén's acquaintances. They did not think it twice: , they grabbed hold of the ropes of the descending boat, and they went down to get on it and escape the shipwreck. Ramiro let go, no doubt because the friction of the rope burned his hands, and fell from a height of 30 meters. He did not come to the surface again. Alfonso was luckier and held out until he was only five meters from the boat. It fell into the sea. The water was very cold, so they held out an oar for him to come on board. They helped him, and he had to undress and use a blanket to get some heat, but when he fell he had hit something, perhaps a life jacket or some other hard object, and got a wound, from which he died hours later. What to do with poor Alfonso? A corpse in a place as small as that could only cause problems and diseases, so they did what is done in these cases: after some prayers for the eternal rest of its soul, they dropped it into the sea without much ceremony.

«Mum!» Elsa said heartbrokenly. She was barely 14 years old. She was a mother's little girl, as she had never encountered any setbacks. From a wealthy family, she had always been very spoiled, and now for the first time in her life she saw herself without the company of her parents and her aunts, who were traveling with her. She liked to disappear around the ship, so that they didn't know where she was, and the poor aunts spent half their time looking for her. They scold her a lot for that, although they had already resigned themselves to her wayward and mischievous girl behavior.

«Don't worry», Senén told her. «Surely they have been saved in one of those boats», he pointed out to the flotilla of these that was moving away from the boat in front of them, since they had been the last to go down to the water.

Senén joined those who were rowing with all their might to get away from the ship. There were seven men and six women, counting Elsa. They also did their part with the oars. However, the other boats had their full crews, and they were moving further and further away from them.

Little by little they moved away from the ship, until they lost sight of her lights. However, it gave them the impression that she was not sinking, but that the lights, which they had seen obliquely, seemed to be regaining horizontality. Optical effect? The boat in which Eusebius and Sofia were traveling had been the first to go on sea, and therefore they had an idea before anyone else of the magnitude of the misfortune. Everyone was silent, watching, and fear seized them.

«What happened?», one of those unfortunates asked the sailor at the helm.

«The ship», he replied in a gloomy voice, «touched a rock that shouldn't be there, in the middle of the ocean, and the keel has split open like cheese. By the way, my name is Pascual, and until we make landfall or are rescued, I am the accidental skipper of this boat. You will have to do what I tell you, if you want to get out of this alive».

«How come they didn't detect it in time?», asked an elderly man.

«When we detected it we did not have time to maneuver, because The Spirit of the Ocean is very heavy and has a lot of inertia. It makes no sense that the seabed has risen up to ten meters from the surface...»

The lights of the cruiser were still visible in the distance when they stopped paddling, exhausted. It was reckless: two other boats loaded with frightened people like them had not stopped rowing, and they charged into the dark. Although the crash itself was not very strong, it overturned them, and they were soon all in the sea. Eusebius had been thrown off by the crash itself, and if it hadn't been for the life jacket, he would have drowned. Sofia had never been in such a dangerous situation. She looked for it with her eyes, but it was difficult to find it, because it was a dark night, without a moon. It was precisely this lack of visibility that had caused the accident, because although each boat had its regulation lights, they had stopped working for some unknown reason. Soon Sofia found herself in the water, as the boat turned around, forced by the flow of water that entered through the gap on its side, precisely. She swam out to avoid being caught underneath the boat, which when it finished turning, was afloat because of the layer of air that had been trapped underneath. Others were not so lucky, and although they did not lack air to breathe, they did not manage to swim out of there, because the life jacket did not allow them to submerge, and the panic did not let them reason enough to take it off. Suddenly Sofia noticed a hand on her shoulder, which made her turn around and face a familiar voice:

«Sofia, is it you?»

«Yes, Eusebius. Thank God it's you. Are you okay?»

«Yes, I fell soft. And you?»

«Yes too. I got out of the boat before it turned around. What will become of us?»

«We cannot turn this thing around ourselves. Look, I'm going to see if I can get on».

Holding on to some ropes hanging from the boat sides, he managed to climb onto the keel, and from there he Sofia’s hand, and so the two of them were soon riding on it, as if they were riding a horse. She had to roll up her skirt to feel comfortable. Seeing them, others imitated them.

Suddenly they heard frantic thumps coming from inside the boat, no doubt from those that had been trapped inside. But there was nothing they could do for them, unfortunately. And suddenly the blows stopped as mysteriously as they had begun.

They spent the whole night riding those waves several meters high on horseback on the overturned lifeboat, unable to sleep, as they could slip and fall from their makeshift mount, and drown.

Later they saw the position lights of other boats that passed by them, a few meters away. They asked for their help, but the sailors did not stop gut told them they were full and left them to their fate.

That night was very hard. When dawn came they understood the reason for those blows: around the boat they saw ten or twelve shark fins circling slowly. The 22 unfortunate ones that were missing, both inside and near the boat, had been grazed by those predators, who continued to circle the boat in case something else fell for them.

But sharks weren't the only problems those poor castaways had. Soon the Sun rose and sent its rays, warm at first, and oppressive later. There was drinking water and food in the boat, but to access them they would have to jump into the water and get inside the boat, and then the sharks would tell who dared to commit such nonsense. Those sharks were unwilling to give up their prey. Throughout the day several of those wretches fell asleep, and slid down the hull towards the sea, falling victim to those butchers almost without waking up. Eusebius was holding Sophia with one hand, as well as a knot that linked her shirt to his by means of the skirt that she had taken off after climbing on the keel. His other hand had been tied to a bulge in the keel so that even if they both fell asleep or lost consciousness, they would not fall.

As evening fell they heard the sound of an engine. A reconnaissance plane approached them. He took a pass a few meters high and verified that there were four people left on the keel of that overturned boat. Eusebius had fallen asleep, but awakened by the engine, he looked around and saw that Sofia was missing: the knot of her skirt had been undone, and only that garment remained of her. He felt like crying. Suddenly he heard the sound of gunfire. The aircraft was a seaplane, and it came to rest near them. The sharks were not there. The device approached them, and when they were a few meters from the boat, two men jumped into the sea and rescued them. When Eusebius was put on the plane, he collided with a soft bulge. He touched it with his hand, and heard a groan. He looked more closely and breathed in relief: it was Sofia. Her beautiful tan complexion was blackened and peeling in places. Her hair was dirty and ugly, but she would come out of this. She had come loose from the knot with the rocking of the waves, but luckily at that moment the plane had arrived and the sea vultures had left, scared at the shots.

«You were lucky», one of those men told them. «On the capsized boat, you would not have lasted until tomorrow in these shark-infested seas».

«Where are they?» Eusebius managed to say.

«We shot them away with repellent. They left. Those will not come back for hours».

«And Sophia?» He asked, pointing at her.

«Do not worry sir. Your wife is unconscious, but she will survive. We found her in the water, on the other side of the boat. Luckily, face up».

My wife, Eusebius smiled. Yes, I like how it sounds. Others are united until death do them part. It seems that death has united the two of us. Let's see what she thinks of when she wakes up...

«How many have been rescued?» He asked when they got to Honolulu.

«Almost everyone. Only 200 out of 4,600 people have died, almost all of them due to their own negligence».

As they were later explained, there was one more collision besides their own. In the confusion of the abandonment of the ship, they failed to turn on the position lights of all the boats, in other cases, like theirs, they did not work; there were people who jumped from the boat, possessed by terror. Those who fell to their feet suffered a thermal shock, and died suddenly, or after drowning, or of cold. Those who fell headlong lost consciousness, and the rest broke like glass. Others fell out of the boats, and when they tried to get back up they were not always allowed by those inside. Fear is the worst enemy at sea.

In Hawaii they were kept in a hospital for more than a week. They took them for a married couple, and put them in the same room. So they could catch up, and Eusebius told Sofía his theory about that since death brought them together, convincing her to marry him, becoming what everyone thought of them, that they were a married couple that had gone through a very traumatic experience.

Yes, out of the 4,600 people who traveled on that ship, almost all of them, 4,400, had been saved. The prompt response of the Hawaiian and New Zealand authorities had played a very important role in this, despite being so far away.