473 



T1IK HAMBURG-AMERIKA LINER " IMPERATOR "— THE BIGGEST SHIP AFLOAT. 



THE "TITANIC," AND AFTER. 



The public has a short memory, and 

 even the supreme disaster of the 

 ' Titanic " some fifteen months ago has 

 ceased to be an active fact in the minds 

 of many. The travelling public in par- 

 ticular can never be counted upon to 

 any great and continuing degree in the 

 exercise of pressure to secure reform. 

 But without any really organised pub- 

 lic demand for change, simply because 

 the crime of the " Titanic " was too 

 glaring, much has been done in the past 

 few months in the direction of securing 

 increased safety for ocean travel. It 

 is, perhaps, too much to say, as does 

 T he Times, that " so many measures 

 have been taken to guard against a 

 repetition of this disaster that we may 

 be sure that it will not be repeated." 

 The fact that some changes have been 

 made in the new liners does not remove 

 the awful truth that the great, the 

 enormous, majority of passenger vessels 

 to-day are as liable to sudden disaster 

 in similar circumstances as was the 

 " Titanic," whose advent was heralded 

 as the last word in safety. It is true 

 that the White Star Line, despite all 

 their protestations of having made the 

 ' Titanic " an unsinkable ship, have 



confessed that they deceived the public 

 by spending some £250,000 in adding 

 a new skin to the sister ship, the 

 " Olympic." Besides this they have 

 packed her decks with boats — those 

 illusive hopes of eleventh hour safety 

 which do so much to reassure the timid 

 passengers, and so little in any calamity 

 to secure the safety of the passengers' 

 lives. Still more important is the fact 

 that 111 the new Cunarder, the " Aqui- 

 tania," the obvious principle of water- 

 tight decks has been adopted to supple- 

 ment the bulkhead system. All these 

 measures are good, but there is every 

 reason to fear that they are isolated 

 cases, as much intended for advertise- 

 ment as are the palm gardens or the 

 restaurant of the latest Atlantic flier. 



Real and universal retorm can only 

 come from the Board of Trade, and 

 here, alas! we find the continuance of 

 the old and pernicious system of secret 

 deliberations under the control of the 

 shipowner and the builder. The mari- 

 time department of the Board of Trade 

 is still under the direction of an official 

 who, whatever may be his clerkly 

 abilities, has had no sea experience. 

 And this is the man who holds the 



