Marlon, Siebold, and their remaining crewmen were on edge as they worked to get the last two boats off the roof. Both groups set up oars for make-shift ramps as three men on each side slid Collapsible A and B off the roof. Around 90 people gathered around the officer's quarters. 50 people waited to board Collapsible A, and 40, including Gary and Goh, waited to get on Collapsible B.
Collapsible A slid off the roof first, breaking the oars and sliding down the deck by a couple of inches. The crew on the port side were less fortunate. They pushed Collapsible B, making it flip off the roof, with 2-3 sailors falling onto the deck. The raft landed upside down, pinning one of the sailors.
As Siebold and his men tried to flip Collapsible B, Gary and Goh rushed to the other side, hoping the crew there had better luck. When they arrived, the crew had tied the raft to the davits. One of the sailors saw the water getting closer to reaching the boat deck, and his face grew pale.
"Sir, there's no time. Let's load the boat and let it drift off!" he shouted.
"No, we have time to prepare and lower the boat," Marlon said. "Get the women and children on board."
"Sir, there's no children and hardly any women left," a second sailor said.
Marlon looked behind him to find only a few women among the dozens of people waiting to get on. He knew there was not enough room for everyone, and he needed a couple of crew members to command the boat.
"Fine. Load the boat with as many people as possible," he ordered.
The sailors nodded, and after connecting the falls to the boat, they began letting people in. Gary and Goh tried to push their way through as the crowd tried to get on the boat, with the crew only allowing a couple of people in at a time. But just as Gary and Goh got closer, someone in between them shoved them with such force that they nearly lost their balance.
"Out of my way, you vermin!"
Gary and Goh regained their balance and saw Mivashkama ramming his way to the lifeboat. They tried to catch up, but several people passed them, making it harder to squeeze their way through. Gary could see Mivashkama ordering a sailor to let him pass, and the sailor fearfully complied.
"First class gentleman, my bum," Gary said. "Probably will try to push us out when we get on the boat."
"If he does, we'll show him how his status doesn't mean jack right now," Goh said.
Gary grinned, liking his friend's thinking. Unfortunately, time didn't let them get the chance. Just as roughly 25-45 people got it into the boat, Titanic took a sudden dip as it returned to an even keel, causing water to begin rushing the deck. Passengers screamed as the sudden rush of water under the boat caused it to tip with the fall ropes still attached to it.
On the port side, Collapsible B was still upside down and began floating off the ship with about 12 people on board, including Siebold. They began helping aboard as many as possible until around 30-32 people occupied the lifeboat. At that point, they started pushing others away.
"There's no time to lower!" Marlon shouted. "Cut those falls! Cut them! Cut them if you have to!"
"We need knives!" a sailor shouted.
Gary looked at the sturdy robes attached to the boat, and he took out his pocket knife from his pants pocket. He turned to Goh, who took out his knife and nodded to his companion. They opened their knives, held on to the blades with their teeth, jumped on opposite sides of the boat, Goh on the left, Gary on the right, and began cutting the ropes. A couple of other third class men joined in with their knives. The boat tilted at a 90-degree angle, and three-quarters of the people on the boat fell off, leaving about 14 people left, including Mivashkama. A few sailors got into the water and tried pushing the boat away from the water, but it was still tilted, and water was getting in it.
Finally, Goh, Gary, and the other men with knives cut the falls, and Collapsible A leveled up, albeit half filled with water. People in the water tried getting into the lifeboat, but those still on pushed them back, afraid of the boat tilting again. Gary and Goh got into the water and tried to get on, but Mivashkama saw what they were doing and pushed them back with an ore. At the same time, Chloe was rowing away from the ship on Collapsible D and saw her husband and their friend trying to get in.
"Get back! You'll swap us!" Mivashkama shouted.
"Come on! Let us on! There's more than enough room!" Goh shouted.
"Back! Back, you animals," Mivashkama barked.
"We just freed your bum from the boat tipping over, you limey jackass!" Gary shouted. "The very least you could do is give us a chance to live!"
"I said get back!" Mivashkama roared.
The next thing Chloe saw was Mivashkama lifting his oar and slamming it onto Gary's head like a sledgehammer. He hit his head three times with the ore's edge, cutting Gary's scalp open. His body became limp, and he let go of the boat's edge, floating away with blood coming from the top of his head.
"Gary!" Chloe screamed.
Goh swam to Gary's side and lifted his head to see the damage. He shook Gary, but his friend remained motionless with his eyes half closed.
"Dastard! Murdering dog!" Goh yelled.
"So the world has one less lowlife to deal with. It's no skin off my back," Mivashkama said. "Now get back, or you'll be joining him."
Mivashkama pushed Goh away with the bottom end of his oar. Goh swam away from the boat with Gary still in his arms. He patted Gary's face as if to snap him out of a daze, but deep down, he knew that his friend was either gone or dying of his injuries no matter what Goh did. Accepting there was nothing he could do, Goh closed Gary's eyes and let his body float away.
Goh looked around for another way to get out of the water until he saw Chloe's boat in the distance. There was a good chance no one apart from his wife would allow him in the boat because he was a man, and getting him in might turn the boat over. Still, the only boats closest to him apart from Mivashkama's were Collapsible B and D, and the former was floating upside down. At least with Collapsible D, no one in the water was trying to get in, and he might be safe with Chloe. Goh swam toward Chloe's boat, and his wife's eyes widened with hope.
"Come on, Goh! You can do it! Come to me!" Chloe called out.
But just as Goh was halfway to the lifeboat, he heard loud snapping and something splashing into the water. He looked to his left and saw the galvanized steel wire ropes, otherwise known as shrouds, holding Titanic's forward funnel breaking off. The water reached the part of the Boat Deck and A Deck where casings carried the massive funnels. The comparatively light casing holding the forward funnel couldn't take the excessive pressure against the water, causing the casing to collapse, taking the seating from under the funnel. With nothing below to hold it up, the funnel began to buckle, creating pressure that caused the shrouds to snap.
"Goh, look out!" Chloe shouted.
The funnel tilted with the bottom bending like crushing a soda can until it completely disconnected from the ship and fell forward. Goh and dozens of other people in the water with him screamed and held their hands up before the funnel fell on top of them. The funnel created a tidal wave that nearly flipped over Collapsible A and missed Collapsible B by mere inches, sending Siebold and the other people holding onto the boat far away from the ship.
"Goh! Goh, no!" Chloe screamed. "Get back up! Please get back up!"
"Lady, whoever you're calling out to ain't getting back up alive from that," the quartermaster leading the boat said.
"He can get up! He's got to!" Chloe screamed. "He just needs to swim around that thing and get back up! My husband is a great swimmer! He's going to -"
"Woman, that funnel weighs 60 tons. Your husband died the moment it landed on him," The quartermaster shouted. "Now, keep rowing, lest you want to get sucked down with the ship."
Chloe looked at the quartermaster and then at where the funnel sunk into the ocean. She whimpered momentarily before she began wailing, calling out Goh's name. The quartermaster huffed and ordered a steward to push Chloe away, take her oar, and row in her place. An elderly first class woman sitting next to Chloe held her close and let her cry on her shoulder. As far as she can remember, Chloe mourned through the night, feeling alone without Goh and unsure whether Ash and Serena would make it.
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Ash and Serena took the stairs past the first class smoking room to C Deck. Titanic continued to go down faster until the stern was rising from the water. With no more lifeboats, people began rushing toward the stern, screaming. By the time Ash and Serena reached the aft deck, hundreds of people crowded the area and began squeezing their way through the crowd. The electric lights began to flicker, scaring passages even more.
As they squeezed their way to the stern, they saw Father Birch with scores of people on their knees and bowing their heads with their hands clasped. Reportedly, he helped third class passengers onto the lifeboats and twice denied getting on one himself. He heard confessions and gave absolution to over a hundred passengers trapped in the stern. Ash and Serena heard Father Birch recite the Rosary, a 13th-century meditative prayer that asks the Virgin Mary to pray for us as we seek to grow closer to Jesus.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus," Father Birch said. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, a world without end. Amen."
Ash and Serena wanted to stick together with the man that had married them, but they knew time was short, and they had not accepted defeat like Father Birch had. The lights flickered again as Ash and Serena went up the narrow steps to the very end of the stern. Ash reached over the railing, firmly grabbed one of the bars, and wrapped his other arm around Serena. Serena wrapped her arms around Ash and rested her head on his shoulder.
By this point, the ship's rudder and propellers had fully emerged from the water. As the stern continued to rise, several dozen people jumped off the ship on opposite sides and the very end of the stern, believing it better to be off the ship than to experience what was to come. Unfortunately, lifebelts in the 1910s had a significant design flaw. Where lifebelts today would allow someone to go under the water and slowly bring you up, these lifebelts stopped as soon as they hit the water. When the people who jumped off the ship landed in the water, their lifebelts shot up and broke their necks.
About a dozen people were also holding on to the railing opposite Ash and Serena. A woman held her 7-year-old child, whimpering as she repeatedly told her boy, "It'll be over soon. It'll be over soon." Serena looked up to see the Johto flag at the very end of the ship, then looked at her surroundings again before looking at Ash with a smile.
"Ash, this is where we first met," she said.
Ash looked at Serena and then looked around to realize she was right. He kissed his wife's forehead and tightened his hold on her, with Serena resting her head on his shoulder again and his head on top of hers. The stern rose to the point that passengers were beginning to lose their balance and slide down towards the head of the ship and into the water. People grabbed anything they could find attached to the ship, including Father Birch. His voice shook as he quoted Revelation 21:4, a passage regarding all things made new through the Lord Jesus Christ.
"Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth," for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
All of Titanic's electric lights suddenly went out in the blink of an eye. No one could see anything except the stars in the sky and an oil lamp faintly glowing on the after mast. People screamed, with many of them not knowing where they were or didn't have something to hold on to. Serena tightened her hold on Ash and buried her face on his chest to assure herself that her beloved was still with her.
The next thing they heard was the roaring sound of metal bending and the wooden floors of the aft deck snapping. Steel walls slowly and gradually failed until each member gave out from the strain, and the stern tore apart from the bow. Everyone on the ship screamed as the stern fell back, only attached to the bow at the bottom. The stern stayed afloat for several seconds before the bow pulled it down vertically. Anyone not holding onto the ship slid down to the ocean, and anyone inside the stern was thrown into a heap.
"Serena, we need to climb over the railing!" Ash shouted. "Hold on to the railing, and I'll help you climb over!"
Serena let go of Ash and wrapped her arms around the railing. Ash climbed over the railing using the flagpole and reached out to Serena. Serena couldn't tell Ash had his hand out to her until she felt it touching her cheek and grabbed it. Ash pulled her over the railing, and they stood on it on all fours as the stern rose until it stuck out in the water. The bow finally detached itself from the stern and sank into the abyss while the stern stayed still.
Serena struggled to keep herself together as she heard people losing their hold on the ship and screaming until they were silenced by hitting another part of the ship or landing in the water. Ash wrapped his arm around Serena and moved closer to her. For about a minute or so, the stern remained still, then Ash and Serena felt themselves moving closer to the ocean. Titanic's two mighty engines were pulling the stern down in its hull.
"This is it!" Ash shouted.
Serena's heart raced. Though she couldn't see it, she could feel the end of the ship coming closer to the water. More people lost their hold on the ship and fell. Water broke through air pockets inside the stern and burst through parts of the deck. The bulkheads and walls separating Titanic's cabins and passenger spaces inside the stern were mainly thin timber. With no proper time to flood, the air was violently pushed out as water began to surge inside, breaking down the cabin bulkheads and walls with enormous force. Anybody caught in the way would likely have been killed by blunt force trauma as tons of water demolished the interior rooms and space. Ash let go of Serena's waist and grabbed her hand, and she clasped it tightly.
"Remember what Mr. Durbin said, Serena. The ship is going to suck us down," Ash said. "Take a deep breath when I say 'now.' Kick for the surface and keep kicking. Do not let go of my hand! We're gonna make it, Serena! Trust me!"
"I trust you!" Serena shouted.
Ash and Serena took deep breaths, ready to hold their breaths when the time came. The screams died down as people fell into the water and got sucked in until only Ash, Serena, and a handful of other passengers holding on to the railing were left. Ash listened carefully until the sound of the water sucking the ship in was about two dozen feet away from him and Serena.
"Now!" he screamed.
Ash and Serena took deep breaths and held them just as the rest of the ship plunged into the sea. They kicked with all their might, feeling the stern suck them down. Unfortunately, the stern sank so quickly that it wasn't yet completely filled with water. Whatever spaces remained full of air had immense water pressure and began to act on them from the outside and increased as the stern sank lower. Ash and Serena heard huge explosive booms coming from underneath them as massive pockets inside the stern section were overwhelmed by the pressure of tons of water. At about 500 feet in depth, the air pockets violently burst and ripped vast sections of the stern. Anybody trapped alive inside the air pockets was instantly killed.
Suddenly, the suction increased, and Ash's hand slipped from Serena's grasp. She reached out to grab it, but Ash was nowhere within reach. With her eyes closed and Ash separated, Serena was alone, with nothing around her but the icy void.