unable to understand what the second officer is saying to them. We
are so informed by the press from the other side. Even such a

simple expression as that one of the look-out men was stationed in
the "eyes of the ship" was too much for the senators of the land of

graphic expression. What it must have been in the more recondite
matters I won't even try to think, because I have no mind for

smiles just now. They were greatly exercised about the sound of
explosions heard when half the ship was under water already. Was

there one? Were there two? They seemed to be smelling a rat
there! Has not some charitable soul told them (what even

schoolboys who read sea stories know) that when a ship sinks from a
leak like this, a deck or two is always blown up; and that when a

steamship goes down by the head, the boilers may, and often do
break adrift with a sound which resembles the sound of an

explosion? And they may, indeed, explode, for all I know. In the
only case I have seen of a steamship sinking there was such a

sound, but I didn't dive down after her to investigate. She was
not of 45,000 tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was

impressive enough. I shall never forget the muffled, mysterious
detonation, the sudden agitation of the sea round the slowly raised

stern, and to this day I have in my eye the propeller, seen
perfectly still in its frame against a clear evening sky.

But perhaps the second officer has explained to them by this time
this and a few other little facts. Though why an officer of the

British merchant service should answer the questions of any king,
emperor, autocrat, or senator of any foreign power (as to an event

in which a British ship alone was concerned, and which did not even
take place in the territorial waters of that power) passes my

understanding. The only authority he is bound to answer is the
Board of Trade. But with what face the Board of Trade, which,

having made the regulations for 10,000 ton ships, put its dear old
bald head under its wing for ten years, took it out only to shelve

an important report, and with a dreary murmur, "Unsinkable," put it
back again, in the hope of not being disturbed for another ten

years, with what face it will be putting questions to that man who
has done his duty, as to the facts of this disaster and as to his

professional conduct in it--well, I don't know! I have the
greatest respect for our established authorities. I am a

disciplined man, and I have a natural indulgence for the weaknesses
of human institutions; but I will own that at times I have

regretted their--how shall I say it?--their imponderability. A
Board of Trade--what is it? A Board of . . . I believe the Speaker

of the Irish Parliament is one of the members of it. A ghost.
Less than that; as yet a mere memory. An office with adequate and

no doubt comfortable furniture and a lot of perfectly irresponsible
gentlemen who exist packed in its equable atmospheresoftly, as if

in a lot of cotton-wool, and with no care in the world; for there
can be no care without personal responsibility--such, for instance,

as the seamen have--those seamen from whose mouths this
irresponsibleinstitution can take away the bread--as a

disciplinary measure. Yes--it's all that. And what more? The
name of a politician--a party man! Less than nothing; a mere void

without as much as a shadow of responsibility cast into it from
that light in which move the masses of men who work, who deal in

things and face the realities--not the words--of this life.
Years ago I remember overhearing two genuine shellbacks of the old

type commenting on a ship's officer, who, if not exactly
incompetent, did not commend himself to their severe judgment of

accomplished sailor-men. Said one, resuming and concluding the
discussion in a funnily judicial tone:

"The Board of Trade must have been drunk when they gave him his
certificate."

I confess that this notion of the Board of Trade as an entity
having a brain which could be overcome by the fumes of strong

liquor charmed me exceedingly. For then it would have been unlike
the limited companies of which some exasperated wit has once said

that they had no souls to be saved and no bodies to be kicked, and
thus were free in this world and the next from all the effective

sanctions of conscientious conduct. But, unfortunately, the
picturesque pronouncement overheard by me was only a characteristic

sally of an annoyed sailor. The Board of Trade is composed of
bloodless departments. It has no limbs and no physiognomy, or else

at the forthcominginquiry it might have paid to the victims of the
Titanic disaster the small tribute of a blush. I ask myself

whether the Marine Department of the Board of Trade did really
believe, when they decided to shelve the report on equipment for a

time, that a ship of 45,000 tons, that ANY ship, could be made
practically indestructible by means of watertight bulkheads? It

seems incredible to anybody who had ever reflected upon the
properties of material, such as wood or steel. You can't, let

builders say what they like, make a ship of such dimensions as
strong proportionately as a much smaller one. The shocks our old

whalers had to stand amongst the heavy floes in Baffin's Bay were
perfectly staggering, standing" target="_blank" title="prep.&conj.虽然；还是">notwithstanding the most skilful handling,

and yet they lasted for years. The Titanic, if one may believe the
last reports, has only scraped against a piece of ice which, I

suspect, was not an enormously" target="_blank" title="ad.巨大的，庞大的">enormously bulky and comparatively easily seen
berg, but the low edge of a floe--and sank. Leisurely enough, God

knows--and here the advantage of bulkheads comes in--for time is a
great friend, a good helper--though in this lamentable case these

bulkheads served only to prolong the agony of the passengers who
could not be saved. But she sank, causing, apart from the sorrow

and the pity of the loss of so many lives, a sort of surprised
consternation that such a thing should have happened at all. Why?

You build a 45,000 tons hotel of thin steel plates to secure the
patronage of, say, a couple of thousand rich people (for if it had

been for the emigrant trade alone, there would have been no such
exaggeration of mere size), you decorate it in the style of the

Pharaohs or in the Louis Quinze style--I don't know which--and to
please the aforesaid fatuous handful of individuals, who have more

money than they know what to do with, and to the applause of two
continents, you launch that mass with two thousand people on board

at twenty-one knots across the sea--a perfect exhibition of the
modern blind trust in mere material and appliances. And then this

happens. General uproar. The blind trust in material and
appliances has received a terrible shock. I will say nothing of

the credulity which accepts any statement which specialists,
technicians and office-people are pleased to make, whether for

purposes of gain or glory. You stand there astonished and hurt in
your profoundest sensibilities. But what else under the

circumstances could you expect?
For my part I could much sooner believe in an unsinkable ship of

3,000 tons than in one of 40,000 tons. It is one of those things
that stand to reason. You can't increase the thickness of

scantling and plates indefinitely. And the mere weight of this
bigness is an added disadvantage. In reading the reports, the

first reflection which occurs to one is that, if that luckless ship
had been a couple of hundred feet shorter, she would have probably

gone clear of the danger. But then, perhaps, she could not have
had a swimming bath and a French cafe. That, of course, is a

serious consideration. I am well aware that those responsible for
her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate accents to believe

that if she had hit end on she would have survived. Which, by a
sort of coy implication, seems to mean that it was all the fault of

the officer of the watch (he is dead now) for trying to avoid the
obstacle. We shall have presently, in deference to commercial and

industrial interests, a new kind of seamanship. A very new and
"progressive" kind. If you see anything in the way, by no means

try to avoid it; smash at it full tilt. And then--and then only
you shall see the triumph of material, of clever contrivances, of

the whole box of engineering tricks in fact, and cover with glory a
commercial concern of the most unmitigated sort, a great Trust, and

a great ship-building yard, justly famed for the super-excellence
of its material and workmanship. Unsinkable! See? I told you she

was unsinkable, if only handled in accordance with the new
seamanship. Everything's in that. And, doubtless, the Board of