Midnight on the Millionarian

No ship has ever been or ever will be unsinkable.

But if ever one came close, it was the RMS Millionarian, an ocean liner built by my company, the Nostalgia Line. We aimed to bring back the era of the ocean liner, the transatlantic vessel designed to cater to every taste of the wealthy families on board while getting people from New York to Southampton and back.

That fateful day in 2002, the Millionarian was on its one hundredth voyage. I had sailed on every single one, being the ship’s owner and all. Out of the over fifty ships that my company had built over the years, it was my favorite. A perfect cross between the new and the old. The Millionarian wasn’t quite as big as, say, the Icon of the Seas (which I would also help build years later once the Nostalgia Line merged with Royal Caribbean post-disaster),but what it lacked in size it made up for in grandeur. Though designed to resemble an early 20th century steamer, it was grander in every way. It cost $1.2 billion to build. And you could tell. You could really tell!

The ship had five funnels, three of which were just there to show off. The grand staircase (and yes, we called it that) was designed to be even grander than the Titanic’s. The ship was painted with the Royal Mail Ship colors, similar to the Titanic but with bolder shades of white, black, and red. Unlike the Titanic or any of its sister ships, however, the ship lacked the covered promenades of ships of that era, instead opting for ocean-view cabins and indoor hallways. It did, however, feature Titanic-style well decks and masts (purely for decorative reasons).

As far as safety was concerned, the ship was top-of-the-line. It had 32 watertight compartments, and required five of them to be flooded in order to be in jeopardy. Even with the front six flooded, the ship would’ve lasted more than long enough for rescue choppers to reach it even if it were in even more remote ocean than the Titanic was when it sank.

Our usual captain, Captain Jack Thorne, was top of the line as well. One time in 1998 when the Millionarian suffered an engine fire, he got everyone off the ship and back into Port Halifax by means of the twice-as-many-as-legally-required lifeboats within just fifteen minutes and the fire out in thirty. The ship was more than okay; just packed with thick black smoke. That was a $56 million dollar fine plus ticket refunds, hospital bills, and fumigation costs I’ll never get back. At least no one was seriously harmed (though the engine room crew and the lower deck passengers all ended up in the hospital with smoke inhalation for a week; all of them lived and most of the crew were back to work as soon as the ship was). In another heroic rescue in 1999, the Millionarian under the command of Captain Thorne came to the rescue of an oil tanker run around on a reef off the coast of Cape Verde. We were able to tow the derelict oil tanker to the safety of a Moroccan seaport and continue on our voyage.

Sadly, a week before the Millionarian’s ill-fated final voyage, I had to put Captain Thorne on leave for three months because he was caught bringing his deck mistresses on the bridge with him for questionable activities while the ship was docked for maintenance in New York Harbor. This would prove a recurring theme for the Nostalgia Line.

So, for that last voyage, we were stuck with Captain Oliver Griebel. Let’s just say, he was no Captain Jack. He once pulled the Millionarian’s sister ship, the Billionarian, into port way too fast, leaving the very front of the bow of the ship crushed like a soda can in a trash compactor. That was of course after the infamous incident with the Trillionarian where he pulled out of port backwards and rear-ended a tugboat (thankfully no one was on the tugboat at the time).

In case you’re wondering why we kept a disaster like Griebel around, blame the board of directors, as his father and his grandfather were both Nostalgia Line board members and jointly owned 45% of the company.

It had been four years since Griebel’s last incident, so I reluctantly cleared him for reassignment to the Millionarian. To my everlasting regret.