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参赛者姓名:曾帷

参赛短文题目:Titanic Key Auctioned by a Chinese

    A tiny vital key that could have saved the Titanic from the direct collision with the Atlantic huge iceberg before it went down on her first voyage was auctioned by a Chinese.

    The key was used to open the ship's binocular store. By using the binoculars, it would enable the crew spot the fatal iceberg at a long distance before the deadly accident.

    But it was not on the ship after this great liner had sailed via Southampton for several hours because Second Officer David Blair was taken in at the last minute and he forgot to hand the important key to his replacement.

    As a result, lookouts in the great liner had no access to using the binoculars. Instead, they had to depend on their naked eyes to detect threats to the great liner during the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

    When they found the giant iceberg, it was too late to avoid the tragedy.

    Crew member Fred Fleet, who survived the sinking, told investigators if they had binoculars they would have seen the iceberg soon enough to prevent from it.

    Alan Aldridge of the auctioneers Henry Aldridge in Devizes described it as “one of the most important artifacts from the Titanic to have come to light”.

    Since the key was announced to be auctioned, it has been attracted much attention all over world. On September 22, the auction was held in Christies, the famous auction house in London.

    After 20 rounds in thirty minutes, eventually, the key was auctioned by Dongjun Shen, a Chinese businessman, running a Jewelry transnational corporation now.

    “Being the CEO for a large company,” said Shen, “what I care about is the significance of the key. Failures of the details may lead to a fatal ending. As an old Chinese idiom says, ‘a small leak will sink a great ship’.”