Definately, and I do enjoy the debate! No harsh feelings at all That is what is so facinating about this disaster. People have so different perspective on what happened, who behaved like what, and so on (its almost as mystifying as trying to put together what happened that night).

Indeed, what does make a hero? Have you seen the movie "Flag of our Fathers?" If not, the main point of the movie is that we make heros for our own need to have something that is bigger and better than ourselves. And furthermore, people do not see themselves as heros (such as the soldiers on Iwo Jima, who were just doing their job).

I always thought Harold Bride was someone to admire (after the sinking), being horribly frost bitten and sick, and at the same time helping Thomas Cottom to the point of sheer dropdead exhaustion sending the mainland the precious names of the people who survived to waiting family members.

But at the same time, he never talked about Titanic aparently ever again after his interview in New York. He just became a traveling sailsman and vanished into obscurity. He possibly may have lived with the thought of not getting those last messages delivered. May have had the same guilt as lookout Fredrick Fleet had, that poor soul who hung himself!

But I do agree with you with calling the entire engineering department heros. Staying in the bowles of the ship even after Chief Engineer Bell released them. Or Shepard and Harvey in boiler rooms 5 and 6. When I hear John 15:13 from the Bible, I always think of those men - "Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends".