Personal Narrative: A Traumatic Experience

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Four days into this Titanic trip and I witnessed what I would call a very traumatic experience. Oh, where should I start? Maybe, a half hour before? I was walking up the left side staircase, straining my ears to hear what was going on inside the captain’s nook. The first two days, everything seemed normal, which made me feel better about this whole trip. But the next morning, things got quiet real quick. So I’m investigating. As I slowly walk around the top of that flight of stairs, I hear some yelling. Angry yelling. I heard something about “ice” in the conversation. After about half an hour, the yelling stopped. “Ice” was the most common word said, but for a reason I was not sure why. When the yelling stopped I decided to tell my mom about …show more content…

I felt like I was going to fall over from dizziness. At first I thought it was just from breathing in too much smoke from the engine room, but then when I righted myself for a few seconds, I saw some other people had the same effect. First came the dizziness, then came the ear-ripping sound of metal scraping against each other. The shake of the Titanic was so massive, me and some other kids in the room fell off our feet.
As screams of children and some young adults filled the ship, water started drip from the ceiling and crevices of the wall “... The walls separating the bulkheads extended only a few feet above the waterline, so water could pour from one compartment into another” (“Titanic - Facts & Summary”). The speaker on the ship came on the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen. We need you to evac… mediately. There are lifeboats on the… ont dock. Please hurry,” the intercom was cutting out. I think the speaker was trying to say “front dock” so that’s where I rushed to. People were yelling the rules of the lifeboats when I got there, such as women and children first, and how much one boat can hold “A mere 16 lifeboats, plus four Engelhardt Collapsibles, could accommodate just 1,178 people. Titanic could carry up to 3,547 passengers” (“Titanic - Facts & Summary”). By the time I got there, there were only five lifeboats left and well over 500 women and children waiting to board “The Titanic could carry 64 lifeboats” (“Titanic Facts”). I was …show more content…

A few people on the boat noticed me fall off, and a few others noticed my struggling and yelled to hold the boat. My eyes were covered by water so I couldn’t see, but I did feel a hand wrap around mine. I tightened my grip, though it didn’t help much because it was covered with water. My body felt like it was rising into the heavens. I grabbed the side of the boat with my free hand and lifted myself on. My dripping wet hair made my body even more cold, even though the air felt like Florida compared to the water. The woman who brung me back on the boat looked my dead in the

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