“Mayday!  Mayday!  We need a rescue!  There’s a fire!  A fire!  We’re going down!  Scramble rescue!  Scramble rescue!”  Captain Max Pruss screamed into the crackling radio, he could hear the fire spreading behind him where the flames first caught.  ‘How could this happen?!  How?!  How?!’  It was a question he doubted he would ever know the answer to.  He looked out the window of the Hindenburg, the island of the Commonwealth was a dot in the distance, a growing dot, yes, but not nearly fast enough.  The dirigible would go down in the sea.  ‘If only this disaster waited another twenty minutes… if only we’d gone a little faster…’  He cursed his ill luck.

It had been beautiful cruising weather and for the entire morning, they’d taken their time, having launched ahead of schedule.  Now this was the result… instead of being over land behind them, or over land in front of them, there was only a blue grave below.

‘I always hated the ocean… I never imagined I’d die in it, not in a job like this.’  Max thought in a peculiar moment of clarity as the ship slowly tilted.  “Release the ballast!”  He shouted, and the water they carried to help stabilize the airship began to rain down over the strait.

The screams of the passengers made communicating his order almost impossible, he didn’t even know whether the crew could hear him, but if they didn’t?  Then they did themselves credit by taking the initiative.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“We hear you!  We’re sending help as fast as possible!”  The voice came through over the radio, but whatever else was said, he missed it.  

The sea grew larger, and larger…

‘You’re going down in history as the man who destroyed the Monarchy of the Commonwealth… this isn’t the legacy you wanted for yourself…’  The Captain closed his eyes and clung only to regret, shouting “Brace yourselves!”  

The tilt grew worse as the flames cast off the rear part of the ship, he clung to his wheel as a captain should, privately resolving, ‘I will not let go!’  

The crash of furnishings, bodies, breaking glass and crumbling metal frames reached his ears, and the heat drew closer to his body.

‘Sabotage?’  He wondered the word as the ship fiercely kissed the icy waves, the noise of water crashing in competed with the screams of those who had not been knocked unconscious by striking something harder than themselves.

That was another question he would never have an answer to.  ‘I will live.’  He vowed against all reason, and as the forward end of the Hindenburg hit the water, he clung to the wheel, even as it was ripped free of its position, casting him through the burning flames consuming cloth and hydrogen, even as his lungs filled with smoke, and then with sea water… even as the blackness took him while the screams went up in every direction…

Captain Max Pruss, never let go of the wheel.

Which was why he was the only one on the ship to wake up, after the Royal family of the Commonwealth died.