RMS TITANIC (original) (raw)

From Charles Pellegrino's nonfiction study, Ghosts of the Titanic_, an account of tennis star Richard Norris Williams II, immediately after the sinking_:

Finally he noticed a man sitting in front of him in the lifeboat, apparently dozing off and in danger of slipping into the water. It was the man's derby hat that siezed Richard's attention.

Richard tapped him on the shoulder: "Do you realize your derby is dented?"

The man did not reply, but Richard refused to give up. He tried German, French, Italian- but the man continued to show no interest. The tennis player was overtaken by what became to him a personal and desperate mission to make the man understand that his derby hat was dented, but even after the hat was knocked overboard and began sinking to the bottom, Richard did not succeed in getting a reaction.

*

In the present day, Dr. Pellegrino is examining artifacts from the wreck:

And I have seen a derby hat raised. It had, like much of the ship's hull, fallen prey to a bacterial assault, yet still visible on one side was a large dent. I could not bring myself to touch the hat.