Carpe Diem #124, Iceberg (provided by YerPirate)

Dear haijin, visitors and travelers,

Today we share haiku on 'Iceberg' (provided by Yer Pirate of Tea with a Pirate's Haiku Moments) a wonderful prompt I think with a lot of posiibilities. When I am preparing this episode of Carpe Diem I thought about that one Iceberg that's so well known all over the world. The one which caused the sinking of the Titanic.

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, US. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,502 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in modern history. The RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. She was the second of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, and she was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast with Thomas Andrews, who perished with the ship, as her naval architect. On her maiden voyage, she carried 2,224 passengers and crew.

Under the command of Edward Smith, her passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere throughout Europe seeking a new life in North America. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. She also had a powerful wireless telegraph provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for operational use. Though she had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, she lacked enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard. Because of outdated maritime safety regulations, she carried only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people—slightly more than half of the number traveling on the maiden voyage, and one-third her total passenger and crew capacity.

After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading westwards towards New York.[2] On 14 April 1912, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm ship's time. The glancing collision caused Titanic's hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea; the ship gradually filled with water. Meanwhile, passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly loaded. A disproportionate number of men were left aboard because of a "women and children first" protocol followed by the officers loading the lifeboats. By 2:20 AM, she broke apart and foundered, with well over one thousand people still aboard. Just under two hours after the Titanic foundered, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene of the sinking, where she brought aboard an estimated 705 survivors.

Maybe you have seen the movie (with Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet) a romantic epic on the sinking of the Titanic. I have seen it several times and every time I enjoyed watching it, not because the sinking, but for the wonderful people who played in it.

Romance was in the air and was starting ... before it could be something ... Titanic sank.

feeling free as a bird
on the head of Titanic
no iceberg in sight

no iceberg in sight
Titanic on her maiden trip
finally sank

finally sank
in collision with an iceberg
feeling free again

This series of haiku was inspired on the romance in this motion picture. A seventeen-year-old aristocrat, expecting to be married to a rich claimant by her mother, falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

Have fun, be creative and share your haiku on Iceberg with Carpe Diem.

This prompt will stay on 'till February 19th 11.59 AM (CET) and I will post our new episode, 'wisdom', later on today around 10.00 PM (CET).