Tuesday,
May 24th, 2013
Titanic
A big white ship was moving slowly
on the cold North Atlantic. It had no captain and no crew. It was following the
sea, and the sea was talking it south.
That white ship was an iceberg. In
spring these mountains of ice escape from the glaciers of the Arctic or the
Antarctic and, like strange ships, they move with the sea. Some of them are
more than seventy meters high and can exist for several years. They are
beautiful, but dangerous – only about 20 percent of their mass is visible; the
rest is below the surface of the sea.
It was 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912.
The night was clear and the sea was calm. A big black ship was sailing toward
the North American coast. This was her first voyage – from England to the
United States. She was carrying 2, 227 passengers and crew. Her name was
‘’Titanic’’. She was considered unsinkable.
The passengers were happy that
night. They were getting to the end of a marvelous trip across the Atlantic.
Some of them were dancing, while others were drinking at the bar. Then, just
before midnight, the ‘’Titanic’’ hit an iceberg. In less than three hours, the ‘’unsinkable’’
black ship sank into the darkness of the North Atlantic. 1, 522 people died;
only 705 survived.
The white ship could not stop. It
went on moving slowly toward the south. But now it sailed on an empty sea.