Column: Wasted Words; Love sinks

When the sailing was smooth, Kate and Leo were on top of the world.

They were madly in love – holding hands, butterfly kissing, steaming up windows, even dabbling in light erotica.

And that’s when the RMS Titanic, traveling at 22 knots, collided with an iceberg about 1,000 miles off the eastern coast of the United States. The collision ripped six narrow gashes in the side of the ship and the “unsinkable” started sinking.

Kate freaked and Leo probably wet himself a little. But they had the most important thing in the world – love. And love floats, right?

No. Wait. Hope floats. Love … well, never mind that for now.

When the ship started sinking, Charles Joughin, the vessel’s chief baker, was supposed to take charge of lifeboat No. 10. But Joughin couldn’t bring himself to hop in.

“I would have set a bad example,” he’d say later.

Instead, Joughin threw Kate and other women and children into the boat until it was full and watched it set off without him. Then he went down below and poured himself a stiff drink.

Some accounts say it was whiskey. Others claim a nice, dry gin. The ship supposedly was stocked with more than 1,000 bottles of wine, 850 bottles of various spirits and about 15,000 ales and stouts. So Joughin probably ran the gamut.

When he came back up to the deck, the Titanic twisted hard to port, throwing people over the rail and into the freezing ocean waters.

But Joughin’s inebriated equilibrium allowed him to keep his balance.

He rode the sinking ship down to the frigid ocean and, when deck met wave, started swimming around. Eventually, he found a lifeboat and held onto its side.

“I got to the starboard side of the poop; found myself in the water,” Joughin said in a statement to a British inquiry. “I do not believe my head went under at all. I thought I saw some wreckage, swam toward it and found a collapsible boat with [Cmdr. Charles Herbert] Lightoller and about 25 men on it.

“There was no room for me. I tried to get on, but was pushed off, but I hung around.”

He stayed in the 30-degree water for more than an hour; the liquor in his blood acting like anti-freeze and keeping him alive.

“No trick at all,” he’d say later.

The Hollywood account likely doesn’t focus on Joughin because no one wants to watch a show about a chef or a baker e.g. “Essence of Emeril,” “Emeril Live” and “Emeril.”

Instead, cinema likes to focus on things like beautiful people and love and hope and their respective buoyancies, which brings us back to Kate and Leo.

Kate drifted off in a lifeboat and died alone.

Meanwhile, Leo floated on hope until he couldn’t feel his legs and then, love struck, sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Love sinks.

Stinks.

It stinks and sinks.

Bottoms up.

Aaron Falk is the news editor for the Utah Statesman. Cheers, jeers or cold beers can be sent to acf@cc.usu.edu