If you’d just please listen for a moment, I’ve a few things to say.

First, I must assure you this was no choice of mine. That is, this whole waterbed business. If it’d been up to me, I’d have come back as a lion. Best even a young one just rising into his own pride. And if not this, I’d have preferred at least something with some manner of honor about it.

I explained all this to the secretary at Mediumship when I decided I had some things to communicate to the living. “Edward Moody, 1912,” I said, grasping my officer’s cap with my two hands and resting it over my lap. I was handed a form and under “Medium Preferences,” I wrote: Large cats and stately creatures of ocean and land.

Ten years I wait, enduring countless screenings and interviews, and they finally settle on a waterbed. Of all things, a waterbed! I’ve yet to make any sense of it. If it’s within the bounds of your imagination, I’d advise you to just as well forget this part of things altogether. I am Edward Moody, Seventh Officer of the Royal Mail Ship Titanic.

Oh, for almost one hundred years I was perfectly fine with the state of my being. I’d left the world young, only a junior officer yet, but I’d carried myself into the next existence with dignity. A test of proper conduct in the face of a civil disaster of great historic proportions. An officer (rank is of no importance in matters of life and death) down with his ship. A simple, dignified end. My legacy in the world settled. And then comes along this American film hell-bent on re-writing history! I can tell you, from my own personal experience on the very ship, the RMS Titanic, that that film is all drama and no historical fact. It’s just a film, yes, but it’s accuracy is a matter of importance. It’s a matter of history. Of legacy.

It was night. The film managed this correctly. It was quiet too. I didn’t wake to the noise of the collision with the berg. I was awoken by the Second Officer instead. He took me to the starboard side where ice piled on the deck. Not once did he show alarm. I tell you, things were orderly and calm. On the deck, the orchestra began to play. (That was true also, but mind you, it was some lively tune and not that hymnal paced orchestral from the film.) Women and children were placed on the lifeboats and things were calm and in order. I’m telling you this because I was there.

The officers had guns. Yes, this is true as well. It is a standard precaution to carry guns on ship of course. It was important to keep order, understand. Especially under such circumstances. Believe me, the first cabin was calm, but there was panic in the steerage and it was that portion of the ship that shooting was necessary.

Eight or ten steerage passengers were shot. I shot one. And I had to. It was strictly women and children in the lifeboats, see. Despicable! How they’d dart left and right for a boat. Sure there were a handful of male stewards on the boats. But this is all in good order. It was necessary, please understand. Order was necessary.