Titanic Affair by Amanda P Grange Page B

goodnight to you. I hope you were not too unwell?’
    ‘No, it was nothing. Just a little sea sickness, that’s all,’ she said.
    She did not know why, but she had a feeling he did not believe her. But she could not tell him the truth, that she had been distressed to learn of his forthcoming engagement.
    ‘I hope you’re feeling all right now?’
    ‘Yes, thank you. I have quite recovered.’
    ‘Good. I’m glad. Sea sickness can be very unpleasant. Even on a ship like this it’s impossible to completely avoid it.’ He glanced out over the calm water. ‘There might not be any motion caused by the waves, but there is always the throb of the engines.’
    ‘That is so.’
    The wind had risen, and although her hat was held on with pins, she did not trust them and put her hand on her hat to stop it blowing away.
    ‘But if you are feeling better then ill health can’t be the cause of the worried expression you were wearing just now. So what caused it?’
    He looked at her searchingly.
    ‘It’s nothing,’ she said.
    He waited.
    She tried to keep it in, but at last her feelings got the better of her.
    ‘Mr Latimer, just how safe is this ship?’ she burst out.
    He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Has something happened to make you concerned?’ he asked.
    ‘No. Not really. It’s just that I heard one of the crewmen talking. He was saying he didn’t like the ship. And that he’s not the only one. A number of crew members have had presentiments of disaster.’
    ‘Sailors always have presentiments of disaster,’ he said reassuringly, ‘but they very rarely come true. If they did, every ship ever built would end up on the bottom of the sea.’
    She gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Even so, just how safe is Titanic ?’
    ‘She’s probably the safest ship ever built.’
    ‘So if there were an accident, she wouldn’t sink?’ she asked, holding on to her hat more tightly. The wind had become even stronger, and it whipped her coat around her ankles as well as trying to pull the hat from her head.
    ‘It’s very unlikely. She has some of the most up-to-date safety features ever devised. I was talking to Andrews about it only yesterday. She has a double hull, and  a series of watertight bulkheads down below that will protect her if she should, by any chance, hit something. Say she’d hit the small vessel that broke its moorings when we were leaving Southampton, and say the collision had punched a hole in her, she would still have been able to float.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ said Emilia with a frown. ‘I don’t know what you mean by bulkheads.’
    ‘They’re like walls, dividing the lower part of the ship into sixteen separate compartments,’ he explained. ‘That way, if the hull’s ruptured, only one of the compartments will flood and the water will be kept out of the rest of the ship.’
    ‘So the compartments are like boxes?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes, but without a lid.’
    ‘Without a lid? But if they don’t have a lid, what’s to stop the water from getting into one compartment and then going over the top of the bulkhead into the next one?’
    ‘In theory, nothing. But the ship would have to be taking on a lot of water for that to happen. The bulkheads reach ten feet above the waterline.’
    ‘But if one of them’s flooded, as long as water doesn’t spill over the top into the next one, the ship can still float?’
    ‘Yes And not just with one compartment flooded, but with two compartments flooded, or four of the smaller bow compartments. So you see, even if we do hit something, there’s almost no chance the ship will founder.’
    Emilia breathed a sigh of relief.
    ‘Did you believe in the superstitions?’ he asked her curiously.
    ‘Not exactly. But it did make me think. If anything happened to us out here, we’d be a long way from help.’
    She looked out over the ocean.
    ‘We’re not as far away from assistance as you think,’ he said. ‘Ships use these routes all the