The ship designers also understood where their future passengers would be coming from, and fashioned the ship in the image of the affluent young. Many were well-off doctors, attorneys and entrepreneurs of small and large businesses. Most brought their families. The single passengers were in the minority. There was a fair-sized group of senior citizens who looked like they could well afford the finest money could buy.

After dinner, while most young couples danced in the ballroom to a band playing whatever popular music was on the charts, hung out in the nightclub with its floor show or gambled in the casino, those families with children attended the theater and watched the ship's troupe perform the latest Broadway smash success, Sonofagun from Arizona. By 3 A.M., the decks and lounges were empty. No passengers who went to bed that night would have thought that the old grim reaper was about to swing his scythe at the Emerald Dolphin.

Captain Jack Waitkus made a brief inspection of the upper decks before retiring to his cabin. Old by most cruise ship standards, Waitkus was only five days away from his sixty-fifth birthday. He had no illusions about remaining at sea after this voyage. The directors of the company had notified him that he would be on the beach as soon as the ship returned to its home port in Fort Lauderdale after its maiden voyage to Sydney and back. Actually, Waitkus looked forward to retirement. He and his wife lived on a beautiful forty-two-foot sailing yacht. For years they had planned to take a leisurely cruise around the world. Waitkus's mind was already charting a course across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

He had been named commander of the Emerald Dolphin's maiden voyage in honor of his distinguished service to the company. He was a stout man with the jolly appearance of a Falstaff without the beard. His blue eyes had a leprechaun look to them, and his lips seemed always turned up in a warm smile. Unlike many cruise ship captains who did not care to mingle with the passengers, Captain Waitkus enjoyed circulating among them. At his table in the dining salon, he regaled his guests with stories of how he had run away to sea when he was a young boy in Liverpool, sailed on tramp steamers in the Orient, and worked his way up through the ranks. He'd studied hard and passed the ships' officers' tests until finally receiving his master's papers. He'd then served for ten years with the Blue Seas Cruise Lines, as second and first officer until he was named master of the Emerald Dolphin. He was very popular and the directors of the Line were reluctant to let him go, but it was company policy and they felt they could make no exceptions.

He was tired, but never dropped off to sleep until he'd read a few pages of one of his books on underwater treasure. He had one shipwreck in mind that had carried a cargo of gold and gone down off the coast of Morocco that he especially wanted to search for during his retirement journey. He made one final call to the bridge and was told all was normal before he drifted off to sleep.