Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



55 



THE -TITANIC' INQ^UIRY. 



Straight Speech about the Technicians. 



Mr. Joseph Conrad, in the English Reviav, writes 

 \ ery outspokenly on " Some Aspects of the Admirable 

 Inquiry." He says : — 



It is amuiing, if anything connected with this stupid c.itas- 

 trophe can be amusing, to feel the secretly crestfallen attitude of 

 technicians. They are the high priests of the modern cult of 

 perfected material and of mechanical appliances, and would fain 

 forbid the profane from inquiring into its mysteries. We are 

 the masters of progress, they say, and you should remain silently 

 respectful. .\nd they take refuge behind their mathematics. 



It would strike you and me and our little boys (who are not 

 engineers yet) that to approach — I won't s.ay attain — somewhere 

 near absolute safety, the divisions to keep out water should ex- 

 tend from the bottom right up to the uppermost deck of tin- hull. 



And further, as a provision of the commonest humanity, that 

 each of these compartments should have a perfectly independent 

 ami free access to that uppermost deck — that is, into the open. 

 Nothing less will do. Division by bulk-heads that really divide, 

 and free access to the deck from every watertight compartment. 



.\nd if specialists, the precious specialists of the sort that 

 builds " unsinkable ships," tell you that it cannot be done, 



SHIPBUILDERS AND SHIPOWNERS AND THE BOARD OF 



Fitiiilly, the writer turns rouml on the companies, 

 who are, after all, only ticket-sellers and passage- 

 providers, and says to them : — • 



Don't sell so many tickets, my virtuous dignitary. After all, 

 men and women (unless considered from a purely commercial 

 point of view) are not exactly the cattle of the Western-ocean 

 trade, that used some twenty years ago to be thrown overboard 

 on an emergency and left to swim round and round before they 

 sank. If you can't get more boats, then sell less tickets. Don't 

 drown so many people on the finest, calmest night that was ever 

 known in the North .■\tlanlic— even if you have provii led them 

 with a little music to get drowned by. Sell less tickets ! That's 

 the solution of the problem, your Mercantile Highness. 



But there would be a cry, "Oh! This requires consideration!" 

 (Ten years of it— eh?) Well, no ! This does not require con- 

 sideration. This is the very first thing to do. Right away. At 

 once. Limit the number of people by the boats you can handle. 

 That's honesty. 



The writer demands another reform : — 



.\11 these boats should have a motor-engine in them. .-Vnd, 

 of course, the glorified tr.adesman, the mummified official, the 

 technicians, and all these secretly disconcerted hangers-oii to 

 the enormous ticket-selling enterprise, will raise objections 

 to it with every air of superiority. But don't believe them. 



TRADE. 



The original plans drawn up by Messrs. Harland and Wolff, the builders of the "Olympic" and "Titanic," 

 for boat accommodation on these vessels. These plans were not carried out by the White Star Line, who sent 

 the "Titanic" to sea with only sixteen lifeboats. This was in excess of the Board of Trade requirements. 



don't you believe them. It can be done, and they are quite 

 clever enough to do it too. The objections they will raise, 

 however di.sguiscd in the solemn mystery of technical phrases, 

 will not be technical, but commercial. I assure you that there 

 is not much mystery aljout a ship of that sort. She is a tank. 

 She is a lank ribbed, joisted, stayed — but she is no greater 

 mystery than a tank. The Titanic was a tank 8c» feet long, 

 fitle<l as .an hotel, with corridors, bedrooms, halls, and so on 

 (not a very mysterious arrangement truly). 



.■\s an illustration of the experts' arrogance, Mr. 

 ("onrad refers to the question of making each coal- 

 bunki-f of the ship a watertight compartment hy means 

 of a suitable door. To this the experts objected, on 

 grounds shown by the writer to be utterly insufficient. 

 He adds : — 



of course, these doors must not be operated from the bridge 

 licc.ause of the risk of trapping the coal-lrimmers inside tlu- 

 bunker ; but on the signal of all other waterlight diKits in the 

 ship being down (.as would be done in case of a collision) they 

 could be closed on the order of the engineer of the walch, who 

 would sec lo the safety r>f the trimmers. If the rent in the 

 chip's side were within the bunker itself, that would lieconic 

 manifest enough without any signal, anci the rush of water into 

 the stokehold wouM be cut off ilircclly the door-plate came into 

 its place. .Say half a minute on the very outside. 



Doesn't it strike you .as absurd that in this age of mechanical 

 propulsion, of generated power, the boats of such ultra-mo<lern 

 ships are fitted willi oars and sails, implements more than 3,000 

 years old V Old .as the siege of Troy. Older! . . . .\nd I 

 know what I am talking about. t)nly six weeks .ago I was on 

 the river in an ancient, rough, ship's boat, fitted with a two- 

 cylinder motor-engine of 7J h.p. Just a common ship's boat, 

 which the man who owns her uses for taking the workmen and 

 stevedores to and from the ships lo.ading at the buoys off 

 Greenhithe. She would have carried some thirty people. 



A poor boatman who had to scrape painfully the few 

 sovereigns of the price had the idea of putting that engine into 

 his boat. Hut all these designers, directors, managers, con- 

 structors, and others whom we may include in the generic name 

 of Yamsi, never thought of it for the boats of the bigge>t lank 

 on earth, or rather on sea. Ami therefore they assume an air 

 of impatient superiority, and make objections. 



At the close he expresses a feeling which is shared 

 by very many : — 



I h.avc been expecting from one or the other of them all 

 bearing the generic nantc of Vamsi, something, a sign of some 

 sort, some sincere word, in ihe course of this .\dmirable Inquiry, 

 of manly, of genuine compunction. In vain. .Ml Ir.ide talk. 

 Not a whispir— except for the conventional expression of regret 

 at the beginning of the yearly report — which otheiwisc is acheer- 

 lul document. Dividends, you know. The shop is <)'ijng well. 



