Ode to a Ship

A bigger ship there never was,
She was the most luxurious one you ever saw.
She was a big sensation because,
She was supposed to be free from any flaw.
She was built in the shipyards of Belfast,
The best ones there were then.
Her body was held fast,
By 3 million rivets hammered in by men.
Her passengers were of three classes,
They were considered very lucky
By the huge numbers of the masses.
But later they were the most unlucky.
She would journey through the Atlantic
And across it, towards New York.
So smoothly, no one on board could ever be seasick.
The first class ate with silver fork
And spoon while the others ate by hand.
The first class passengers had their own cabin,
While the third class slept in the hull, deep within.
When she left out to sea,
Not a person on board felt not free!

Her builders, however, made a big mistake
The ship was supposed to be unsinkable,
But the claim was hopelessly a fake
And later, to keep afloat, she was unable.
She struck a block of ice
On the 14th of April.
The result was not nice
For it killed hundreds of people and many more mice.
All asleep after they had had their fill.

The unsinkable did sink at last,
And as it went down, a large road did it pave.
It took two hours to do that, not very fast.
But the road took more then 1500 to a watery grave.
On the 12th of September 1975,
When not one of her passengers was left alive,
A sub went down into the sea, to pick
The remains of that great ship, Titanic.

Aviv Nair
23/8/2000