The Loss of the S.S. Titanic - Lawrence Beesley (e reader books TXT) 📗

engines stopped, is infinitesimal

compared with that on Captain Smith. An old traveller told me on the

Carpathia that he has often grumbled to the officers for what he

called absurd precautions in lying to and wasting his time, which he

regarded as very valuable; but after hearing of the Titanic’s loss he

recognized that he was to some extent responsible for the speed at

which she had travelled, and would never be so again. He had been one

of the travelling public who had constantly demanded to be taken to

his journey’s end in the shortest possible time, and had “made a row”

about it if he was likely to be late. There are some business men to

whom the five or six days on board are exceedingly irksome and

represent a waste of time; even an hour saved at the journey’s end is

a consideration to them. And if the demand is not always a conscious

one, it is there as an unconscious factor always urging the highest

speed of which the ship is capable. The man who demands fast travel

unreasonably must undoubtedly take his share in the responsibility. He

asks to be taken over at a speed which will land him in something over

four days; he forgets perhaps that Columbus took ninety days in a

forty-ton boat, and that only fifty years ago paddle steamers took six

weeks, and all the time the demand is greater and the strain is more:

the public demand speed and luxury; the lines supply it, until

presently the safety limit is reached, the undue risk is taken—and

the Titanic goes down. All of us who have cried for greater speed must

take our share in the responsibility. The expression of such a desire

and the discontent with so-called slow travel are the seed sown in the

minds of men, to bear fruit presently in an insistence on greater

speed. We may not have done so directly, but we may perhaps have

talked about it and thought about it, and we know no action begins

without thought.

 

The White Star Line has received very rough handling from some of the

press, but the greater part of this criticism seems to be unwarranted

and to arise from the desire to find a scapegoat. After all they had

made better provision for the passengers the Titanic carried than any

other line has done, for they had built what they believed to be a

huge lifeboat, unsinkable in all ordinary conditions. Those who

embarked in her were almost certainly in the safest ship (along with

the Olympic) afloat: she was probably quite immune from the ordinary

effects of wind, waves and collisions at sea, and needed to fear

nothing but running on a rock or, what was worse, a floating iceberg;

for the effects of collision were, so far as damage was concerned, the

same as if it had been a rock, and the danger greater, for one is

charted and the other is not. Then, too, while the theory of the

unsinkable boat has been destroyed at the same time as the boat

itself, we should not forget that it served a useful purpose on deck

that night—it eliminated largely the possibility of panic, and those

rushes for the boats which might have swamped some of them. I do not

wish for a moment to suggest that such things would have happened,

because the more information that comes to hand of the conduct of the

people on board, the more wonderful seems the complete self-control of

all, even when the last boats had gone and nothing but the rising

waters met their eyes—only that the generally entertained theory

rendered such things less probable. The theory, indeed, was really a

safeguard, though built on a false premise.

 

There is no evidence that the White Star Line instructed the captain

to push the boat or to make any records: the probabilities are that no

such attempt would be made on the first trip. The general instructions

to their commanders bear quite the other interpretation: it will be

well to quote them in full as issued to the press during the sittings

of the United States Senate Committee.

 

Instructions to commanders

 

Commanders must distinctly understand that the issue of regulations

does not in any way relieve them from responsibility for the safe and

efficient navigation of their respective vessels, and they are also

enjoined to remember that they must run no risks which might by any

possibility result in accident to their ships. It is to be hoped that

they will ever bear in mind that the safety of the lives and property

entrusted to their care is the ruling principle that should govern

them in the navigation of their vessels, and that no supposed gain in

expedition or saving of time on the voyage is to be purchased at the

risk of accident.

 

Commanders are reminded that the steamers are to a great extent

uninsured, and that their own livelihood, as well as the company’s

success, depends upon immunity from accident; no precaution which

ensures safe navigation is to be considered excessive.

 

Nothing could be plainer than these instructions, and had they been

obeyed, the disaster would never have happened: they warn commanders

against the only thing left as a menace to their unsinkable boat—the

lack of “precaution which ensures safe navigation.”

 

In addition, the White Star Line had complied to the full extent with

the requirements of the British Government: their ship had been

subjected to an inspection so rigid that, as one officer remarked in

evidence, it became a nuisance. The Board of Trade employs the best

experts, and knows the dangers that attend ocean travel and the

precautions that should be taken by every commander. If these

precautions are not taken, it will be necessary to legislate until

they are. No motorist is allowed to career at full speed along a

public highway in dangerous conditions, and it should be an offence

for a captain to do the same on the high seas with a ship full of

unsuspecting passengers. They have entrusted their lives to the

government of their country—through its regulations—and they are

entitled to the same protection in mid-Atlantic as they are in Oxford

Street or Broadway. The open sea should no longer be regarded as a

neutral zone where no country’s police laws are operative.

 

Of course there are difficulties in the way of drafting international

regulations: many governments would have to be consulted and many

difficulties that seem insuperable overcome; but that is the purpose

for which governments are employed, that is why experts and ministers

of governments are appointed and paid—to overcome difficulties for

the people who appoint them and who expect them, among other things,

to protect their lives.

 

The American Government must share the same responsibility: it is

useless to attempt to fix it on the British Board of Trade for the

reason that the boats were built in England and inspected there by

British officials. They carried American citizens largely, and entered

American ports. It would have been the simplest matter for the United

States Government to veto the entry of any ship which did not conform

to its laws of regulating speed in conditions of fog and icebergs—had

they provided such laws. The fact is that the American nation has

practically no mercantile marine, and in time of a disaster such as

this it forgets, perhaps, that it has exactly the same right—and

therefore the same responsibility—as the British Government to

inspect, and to legislate: the right that is easily enforced by

refusal to allow entry. The regulation of speed in dangerous regions

could well be undertaken by some fleet of international police patrol

vessels, with power to stop if necessary any boat found guilty of

reckless racing. The additional duty of warning ships of the exact

locality of icebergs could be performed by these boats. It would not

of course be possible or advisable to fix a “speed limit,” because the

region of icebergs varies in position as the icebergs float south,

varies in point of danger as they melt and disappear, and the whole

question has to be left largely to the judgment of the captain on the

spot; but it would be possible to make it an offence against the law

to go beyond a certain speed in known conditions of danger.

 

So much for the question of regulating speed on the high seas. The

secondary question of safety appliances is governed by the same

principle—that, in the last analysis, it is not the captain, not the

passenger, not the builders and owners, but the governments through

their experts, who are to be held responsible for the provision of

lifesaving devices. Morally, of course, the owners and builders are

responsible, but at present moral responsibility is too weak an

incentive in human affairs—that is the miserable part of the whole

wretched business—to induce owners generally to make every possible

provision for the lives of those in their charge; to place human

safety so far above every other consideration that no plan shall be

left unconsidered, no device left untested, by which passengers can

escape from a sinking ship. But it is not correct to say, as has been

said frequently, that it is greed and dividend-hunting that have

characterized the policy of the steamship companies in their failure

to provide safety appliances: these things in themselves are not

expensive. They have vied with each other in making their lines

attractive in point of speed, size and comfort, and they have been

quite justified in doing so: such things are the product of ordinary

competition between commercial houses.

 

Where they have all failed morally is to extend to their passengers

the consideration that places their lives as of more interest to them

than any other conceivable thing. They are not alone in this:

thousands of other people have done the same thing and would do it

to-day—in factories, in workshops, in mines, did not the government

intervene and insist on safety precautions. The thing is a defect in

human life of to-day—thoughtlessness for the well-being of our

fellow-men; and we are all guilty of it in some degree. It is folly

for the public to rise up now and condemn the steamship companies:

their failing is the common failing of the immorality of indifference.

 

The remedy is the law, and it is the only remedy at present that will

really accomplish anything. The British law on the subject dates from

1894, and requires only twenty boats for a ship the size of the

Titanic: the owners and builders have obeyed this law and fulfilled

their legal responsibility. Increase this responsibility and they will

fulfil it again—and the matter is ended so far as appliances are

concerned. It should perhaps be mentioned that in a period of ten

years only nine passengers were lost on British ships: the law seemed

to be sufficient in fact.

 

The position of the American Government, however, is worse than that

of the British Government. Its regulations require more than double

the boat accommodation which the British regulations do, and yet it

has allowed hundreds of thousands of its subjects to enter its ports

on boats that defied its own laws. Had their government not been

guilty of the same indifference, passengers would not have been

allowed aboard any British ship lacking in boat-accommodation—the

simple expedient again of refusing entry. The reply of the British

Government to the Senate Committee, accusing the Board of Trade of

“insufficient requirements and lax inspection,” might well be—“Ye

have a law: see to it yourselves!”

 

It will be well now to consider briefly the various appliances that

have been suggested to ensure the safety of passengers and crew, and

in doing so it may be remembered that the average man and woman has

the