As Britannic’s bows sank, her stern lifted. The three giant propellers rose and were now half out of the water and continuing to rise. The further they came out of the sea, the faster they turned, looming like a giant bronze of Poseidon himself. I cowered, hands pressed against my chest, covering the red cross on my starched apron.

Above us, another lifeboat had paused on its way down, but they could not see what was happening immediately below them.

The propellers created a malevolent maelstrom, spray flying through the air to pepper us like holy water at benediction. Turbulence sucked Lifeboat 1 and its seventy-five terrified occupants – the wounded from my ward, the nurses who tended them, my cabin mates – towards the exposed, spinning blades with inescapable force. Somewhere between them was my empty seat, and Matron’s too. Some of those who were facing the propeller saw their doom approach, and started to jump out of the lifeboat like rats from a sinking ship. Thrashing and splashing, they tried to swim away. Everyone else scrambled towards the rear of the lifeboat, terrified by what was about to happen.

Realising the fate awaiting his companions, sea-scout George, the quick-witted errand boy, grabbed a line that dangled from the side of the ship and hung on. The fifteen-year-old raced from end to end of the nine-hundred-foot vessel with messages while good-natured sailors and medical staff called, ‘Run, George, run!’

The lifeboat was pulled from beneath him.

‘Hold on, George!’ I shouted, doubting he could hear me for the roar of turbulence. Everyone clenched their fists. I waved frantically at my patients in that doomed boat. ‘Corporal Perkins, look out! Get away from there! Jump! Swim away!’ I screeched with such vigour my throat burned raw.

Perkins stared as his packed vessel drew nearer the fatal blades, the din of them filling the air until it drowned out the screams of terror. Less than an hour ago, Perkins had winked at me cheekily, enjoying my embarrassed blush. And now . . .

*

Above the Corporal’s helpless craft, the ship’s lights flickered once, then went out. HMHS Britannic bellowed and roared, the sounds rising from the liner’s bowels and shuddering around us.

‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ the chaplain chanted, his voice timorous, two fingers making crosses in the air. ‘I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’

I gripped the side our lifeboat, my knuckles white, hysteria short-circuiting behind my eyes and all my attention fixed on the poor souls in the first lifeboat and those in the water, as the turbulence continued to pull everything towards the propeller blades.

Somebody, help them! God save them!

My body trembled, horror shaking me to the bones. Painfully helpless, I regretted lying about my age.