To Ride Into Neptune's Domain

The first bottle went down quickly and easily. In his position as chief baker on the Titanic, Charles Joughin knew that when he awoke to the news that the ship had struck an iceberg and they were loading lifeboats it was time to work. He polished off the bottom half bottle of whisky bottle he kept stashed in a foot locker and headed to the galley.

Panic had reared its ugly head head and the tendrils of chaos were worming their way through every corridor on the ship. With a little fortitude in him from the drink, he directed confused passengers, and even a few ship’s crew, as he made his way to the D Deck. More than once he thought to himself that everyone else could use a small drink to take the edge off. He knew Captain Smith to have the well deserved reputation as the best there was, so if everyone would just calm down a bit it would all work out ok.

Joughin was the last of his crew of thirteen to arrive at the galley. He could tell all of the men were nervous. “Ok fellows,” he said, voice steady as to reassure, “They are loading the lifeboats and we need to get provisions on them. Now they likely won’t be in the water long as rescue will be coming fast, but food tends to calm nerves.”

The crew of thirteen was made up of ten bakers, two confectioners, and a Vienna baker and they worked well together, most having served with each other on the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. Their baking experience was not what was needed now, but their ability to quickly get provisions to the lifeboats before they were launched. Each man was given four loaves of spare bread from the larder and a lifeboat number to deliver to.

As they departed, one of the bakers lingered behind momentarily. He looked at Charles with worry, “Mr. Joughin, will there be enough boats for us all?”

This was the first time that idea had entered Charles’ mind. The math stumbled through his mind, twenty lifeboats would not be enough for the over two thousand people on board. “Here George,” Joughin reached into one of the cabinets and pulled out a whisky bottle he kept stashed there for quick nips, “a little shot here to steady yourself and then get that bread delivered. All will work itself out in the end.”

George Chitty’s nerves embolden with the warm whisky set off to accomplish his task. Joughin set off on the task of finishing off his second bottle of whisky for the night.

The warm brown liquid calmed the storm that was building up in his mind. His two older brothers had been in the Royal Navy and he enjoyed the stories they told, even the ones they tried to scare him with about shipwrecks and riding the boat down to Neptune’s domain.

Two bottles down, Joughin laughed to himself, if I am to meet Neptune then I shall do it feeling no worries. With everything done below, and after a stop by the third class passengers’ bar to fill a flask with whiskey and pocketing the rest of the bottle, he headed up to the boat deck to assist.

It was after midnight when he spied his friend Chief Officer Henry Tingle helping load women and children into Lifeboat 10.

“Hello there, Charles,” Tingle called to him as he approached, “you want to give a hand here, some of the passengers are starting to think they will be safer on the Titanic than in a lifeboat.”

The listing of the ship painted a different story in his mind and Joughin, who had been on the high seas since he was eleven, knew then that the unsinkable ship was in fact not. After a few more women refused to climb aboard, Joughin called to Tingle, “I’ll be right back,” and set off after the deserters.

Along the way to catch up with them he took a few swigs from his flask. Joughin didn’t feel wobbly or unsteady, but he could feel the drink at work warming his blood and embolden his mind. He caught up with the group of four women and two children and after an impassioned plea convinced them to return to climb aboard the lifeboat.

With the boat filled, Tingle instructed Joughin that he could board, but seeing that the boat was already crewed by two sailors and a steward he passed on the opportunity and returned to his quarters to grab a pocket watch that had once belonged to his grandfather.

Sitting down on his bunk, he retrieved the heirloom and held the silver watch and chain in his hand thinking of the last time he had seen the old man in Southampton. Grandfather had been a lifelong sailor and the one that inspired his grandsons to seek a destiny on the ocean. Joughin refilled his flask and then polished off the remainder of the bottle, it went down and quickly and easily as the first one did.

Not wanting to feel despair, Joughin sought some action to occupy his mind and hands and headed back up to the boat deck with another pass by the bar to snag a bottle of whiskey. On the boat deck he discovered all of the boats had been lowered and the talk, amongst the crew who were left behind, was to throw anything they could in the water that might float for those not in boats when the ship went down. At this point, Joughin knew that would be the fate of the Titanic. She would descend into Neptune’s Domain.

The crew split up and Joughin joined a couple of people on the A Deck promenade throwing wooden chairs into the ocean. He had thrown about fifty chairs when he stumbled over a chair and fell to the deck. At first, Joughin thought the drinking had finally caught up with but quickly realized it wasn’t him, the ship had buckled.

Panic set in with those who had been holding it together and now he joined the headlong fleeing heading toward the poop deck. As the crowd crossed the well deck the Titanic listed suddenly to port throwing everyone aside. Joughin grabbed the rail and saved himself. That was close he thought, thankful that the drink had not dulled his reflexes. The Titanic was in her death throes and she wanted to take Charles Joughin with her.

The ship went up on her end and Joughin climbed along the rail as if it were a ladder trying desperately to stay ahead of the water. When he ran out of room to climb he held tightly to the rail with his left arm and then fished out the flask with his right hand and finished off the drink. With a hard fling he sent the flask end over end into the water.

The fate accorded to Joughin, he realized, was to ride into Neptune’s domain.

The water closed in.

The whiskey that got him through the rush of what was coming now clouded his mind as the worst arrived. I’ll just walk off in the water he thought as he sank closer and closer. The water surface hit his feet and he stepped away from the rail. He began to paddle around in the dark, he knew the water was cold, but to Joughin he felt warm as he treaded water.

Off to his right he could see the outline of an iceberg in the ocean. His eyes strained as he looked at it, something was on the iceberg. Unsure if it was real or a figment of his whiskey clouded imagination, but there on the ice was a polar bear and it was waving at him. He drifted away from the iceberg and lost sight of the bear, unsure if it was real or not.

It seemed as hours had passed and the daylight began to break over the water as he kept treading along. The cold water, that had undoubtedly killed those who had spent the same amount of time as he had, seemed to have been staved off by the warmth the whiskey had brought him.

There ahead of him he could see an upturned collapsible lifeboat with people clinging to it. Joughin swam to the boat and could see one of the survivors was Second Officer Charles Lightoller standing on the side of the boat.

Lightoller greeted Joughin as he pulled him up, “Charles, you made it. How did you manage to survive all this time in the water?”

All Joughin could muster was, “Whiskey.”