Our sense organs 45

water here will soon be death’s prize. I wasn’t to
know that at this very moment, only about 100
metres from the stricken vessel, the torpedo boat
Löwe was already taking the first of the survivors
on board.
“Many sets of eyes are now staring at the sinking
colossus as she readies herself for dying; now the
very second of her death has arrived for the ship. A
loud booming sound comes from the Gustloff, as
the last bulkheads are broken. The ship is listing
more and more, as the screaming of those still on
board reaches a crescendo. As the wreck tilts even
further, suddenly the unexpected happens. As if
controlled by a ghostly hand, in an instant the
entire ship’s lighting comes on – the vessel shines
in full splendour, looking like a magnificent apparition.
The Gustloff goes down with full festive lighting.
As if illuminated by the glow of her carefree
days of peacetime, reflected a thousand-fold in the
foaming ocean, the sinking coffin tips towards the
waves and plunges into a watery grave. Blinded by
the light, clusters of writhing people, bunched like
grapes, spill overboard from the twenty metre wide
sundeck, a scream of despair on their lips before
they hit the water.
“What now - another ghostly happening? The
ship’s siren starts operating, all by itself, heralding
the end of the Gustloff. A long drawn-out howling
sound fills the air, then becomes weaker and
hoarser. Then the howling siren is choked off, the
light extinguished. The ship is dead – it sinks
finally into the surging waters. A massive mountain
of water crashes over the Gustloff, extinguishing
the very last death cry.”
(Heinz Schön: Die Gustloff-Katastrophe, Motorbuch
Verlag Stuttgart, 4. Auflage 1995 pp 332,
335-336)
Another never-to-be-forgotten tragedy of maritime
voyaging, one which is probably the bestknown
worldwide, occurred in the year 1912. It
was the sinking of the . On her maiden voyage,
she was already set on a course to her death.
The trauma of this story has remained to this day.
The Titanic was regarded as the most significant
ship of 1912. Costing more than seven million
dollars, she was the largest movable object ever
made by human hands. She was a skyscraper
among ships, an oceanic giant four street blocks
long, and eleven stories high. The shipping company,
White Star Line, was exceptionally proud of
her, giving this luxury liner the label “unsinkable”.
The bulkheads to her 16 compartments could be
individually closed to make them watertight; even
if two of these compartments filled with water,
the Titanic would float on. This was one of the
reasons why the usual safety requirements were
only partially fulfilled. For instance, there were
only enough lifeboats for every second person on
board.
On April 10, 1912 the Titanic left Southampton in
the south of England on her maiden voyage,
bound for New York. Among the more than 2,200
people on board were some of the richest people
on earth. Also some of the poorest, wanting to
make a new life in America. Both the famous and
the forgotten were on the passenger list. A suite
for the journey cost 5,000 dollars. Not surprisingly,
morale and atmosphere on board was excellent;
after all, the ship was the world’s fastest and
safest, catering for its passengers’ every possible
need. No one imagined that any harm could befall
her. Iceberg warnings, among them those from
the German ship Amerika, were widely ignored,
since the Titanic was supposed to be especially
invulnerable to iceberg damage.
On the night of April 14, the world’s first and only
“unsinkable” ship was about 400 nautical miles
east of Newfoundland. Not a single cloud
obscured the glittering stars on this moonless,
bitterly cold night. The unusually dead calm conditions
made the surface of the Atlantic appear
like a sheet of polished glass. At 11:40 p. m. on
Sunday, April the 14th, 1912, as the Titanic knifed
through the smooth black sea, her starboard
(right) side scraped along a massive iceberg, protruding
about 30 metres above the water. A horrendous,
91 metre long gash opened up in the
269 metre long hull.
The Titanic was now a death ship, with no one yet
aware of it. Most of the passengers were in their
cabins. A few crew members still sat talking in the
first class dining salon on D deck. As they spoke,
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