Distant Waves (23 page)

The center of this novel, of course, is the sinking of the
Titanic,
which occurred at two thirty in the morning on April 15, 1912, although it had been considered unsinkable. It hit an iceberg on its starboard side and immediately began taking on water. Its rudder did not crack, as seen in the novel, but a panel convened afterward at the Waldorf-Astoria did find that the rudder was too small for the massive ship and was the reason it could not steer away from the iceberg quickly enough. Its sinking is considered one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters ever. One thousand, five hundred and seventeen people died.