It was a symposium of horror and heroism, the like of which has not been known in the civilized world since man established his dominion over the sea.

Many of those who elected to remain might have escaped. 'Chivalry' is a mild appellation for their conduct. Some of the vaunted knights of old were desperate cowards by comparison. A fight in the open field, or jousting in the tournament, did not call out the manhood in a man as did the waiting till the great ship took the final plunge, in the knowledge that the seas round about were covered with loving and yearning witnesses whose own salvation was not assured.

[T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

“We may want to be more like telegrapher Jack Phillip telling Harold Bride to leave the radio room while calmly tapping out the distress signal that fateful night aboard the Titanic. What greater love can one give than to sacrifice his life for another.” ~Tom Baker

I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…