Titanic Disaster.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 252, 24 April 1912, Page 5

Titanic Disaster.

• THE OFFICIAL EXAMINATION. (MR. ISMAY'S POSITION. By Cable—Press Association —Copyright London, April 22. Shipping circles at Liverpool are indignant at the American committee's methods of examining Mr. Ismay, especially by innuendoes. They emphasise that during his management of the White Star Line he consistently studied the safety and comfort of passengers. His aim in accompanying the Titanic •a her maiden voyage was largely confined to that consideration. In a further statement, Mr. Ismay •aid: "The only reason I wished the crew to return home was for their own benefit. When wirclessly ordering their return I was not aware that an enquiry was contemplated. When I entered the boat with Career, a passenger, no wome* or other passengers remained on the &eck. The disaster proved the futility of unsinkable vessels. The present legal requirements are inadequate, and must be changed. Owners have placed too much reliance on watertight compartments and wireless telegraphy. Steamers must have lifeboats and rafts for every soul, with men to handle them." Mr. Ismay emphatically declares that he was simply a passenger, and was not •onsulted either regarding the speed or navigation of the vessel; neither did he make suggestions nor exercise any privileges. He saw the captain only ocea•ionally, and was never- in his room nor on the bridge until after the accident. Be said it was an unqualified falsehood that he wished to make a record. The only information that ice was sighted was the Baltic's message on Sunday to the captain, informing him of this in the evening, and he posted it for the officers' information. William Carter, interviewed at Philadelphia, states that an injustice has been done to Mr. Ismay. He emphasises the fact that the boat they escaped in contained two seamen and forty steerage women and children. He continues: "Mr. Ismay. I and several officers walked up and down the deck for several minutes before shouting. "Are there any more women?" There was no response, and the officers then told Mr. Ismay that he could enter the boat if he rowed. This he did until the «Carpatliia was sighted. A BRITISH ENQUIRY. HEROIC ENGINEERS. London, April 2'2. Mr. Buxton, in the House of Commons, said that steps were being taken to constitute the strongest possible court of enquiry into the Titanic disaster. Lord Charles Beresforel. in a letter to the Times, says the fact that lights were burning a few minutes before the last plunge shows that the engineers remained at their posts two hours after it was known that a terrible death awaited them at any minute through the bursting of a steam pipe. THE CONTINENT AWAKENED. Berlin, April 22. Herr Delbruck, in the Reichstag, said that precautions for the safety of passengers were under active revision. Vienna, April 22. The Government is equipping all liners with wireless telegraphy. A SUGGESTIVE STORY. REVISED APPLIANCES. T.onaon, April 22. New York newspapers report Whiteley as saying that ?. boat was lowered on the starboard side before the officers had issued orders. It contained an American millionaire, his wife and child, two valets and seven firemen ■whom they had bribed, each receiving five pounds when aboard the Carpathia. Two French children, Lolo and Louis Hoffmann, are among the saved. Their parents are unknown. There is generally a demand in America that every liner shall have adequate lifeboats and for the standardisation of wireless apparatus under Government supervision by marine operators. Ruthless control by amateurs in violation of the regulations, it is suggested, should be made a criminal offence. The confusion of earlier stories respecting the safety of all passengers arose from the picking up of fragments of wireless messages. ALTERED PLANS. London, April 22. It is understood that the plans for the White Star' gigantic liner now being built at Belfast have been altered to proTide for cellular sides for the engineroom and the stokehold, and also to provide cellular sides above the waterline in the other holds. iMEMORIAL SERVICES. London, April 22. Memorial services for those lost on the Titanic were held on all British battleships, also throughout Canada, South Africa and the United States. Many congregations sang "Nearer, my God, to Thee," the hymn the band on the Titanic played as the vessel sank. The disaster has placed six hundred families in necessitous circumstances in Southampton. Ottawa, April 22. As a tribute to the memory of Mr. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk line, who was among the victims of the Titanic, every wheel along the line of the Grand Trunk Company in Canada and the United States will cease turning during the course of the memorial service to the deceased president.

"THEN ROSE .FROM SEA TO SKY THE \ WILD FAREWELL." i | To the Editor, i Sir, —When Lord Byron, in writing on the might of the ocean, said of ''The Armaments," "Which thunder strike the walls of rock-built cities, These are thy (the ocean's) toys)." he does not seem to this day to have much overestimated the forces of the ocean, which, despite the devices of man's ingenuity, are virtually "unconquered still." although the appalling catastrophe which has just recently overwhelmed the colossal liner, the Titanic, , might almost point to oversight or mismanagement on the part of maritime authorities and directors. The unhappy captain, although cautioned and warned, apparently, of the proximity of ice in his course, seems to have maintained a speed of 18 or 20 knots after nightfall, with the object, quite likely, of achieving a record trip, which same object has probably consigned more than one vessel to the bottom of the sea. If th-e speed had been slowed down to not more than 10 knots, the impact with the ice- • berg might not have been so fatal or terrific. It seems almost inconceivable that ocean linprs of the Titanic's dimensions, with her living freight, should not have been provided with effective searchlight.?. A powerful one fixed at the "fore" would, have thrown a light over the sea for a mile or more ahead and round the ship, disclosing any obstacle in time to divert the vessel's course and so avoid collision. Without such light on a dark or stormy night the portion of a submerged iceberg awash or above water can only be noticed flashing on the sea top, too close for such an ultra ponderous mass as the Titanic to obey her helm quickly enough to avoid. The excessive luxurious fittings now lavished on steamships of the time seem only a mockery, tinsel for alluring patronage while hiding the risks and perils of the sea, the prodigious size of the vessels giving a feeling of more, security. A less strict lookout or watch may be kept' than on lesser ships, whereas, when such a host conveyed, increased caution, rather, should be the rule. On the whole, the tragedy of the Titanic might be suggestive of the opinion that such floating colossi for the deep seas promise to be little more than ghastly failures.—l am, etc, ' C.W.W. Fitzroy, April 23, 1012. THE TRIUMPH OF THE TITANIC. ('By Tohunga, in the Auckland Herald). When the sinking of the Titanic has become as a tale that is told, when the the tears of the sorrowing have been wiped away by the gentle hand of Time, and when the sympathy of the world lias : been transformed into a kindly recollection, then we shall realise that this stupendous disaster has given to our seafaring people an example of discipline and heroism unexcelled in the whole his- > torv of the world. In the years to come, the Titanic will be placed with the J Birkenhead in the annals of national ■ duty-going, and the men who died off Cape Race will be honored and glorified with the men who died at Trafalgar. That 1.500 sank with the Titanic seems to us now to be the dominating fact of an appalling catastrophe, but in fifty years the world will think more important the manner in which this 1500 died. For death comes to every man sooner or j latir, to millionaire and to pauper, to hero and to coward, to those who do their duty and to those who shirk it; and that which counts in every man's life and in every man's death is the contribution lie makes to the welfare of his people. Nothing else is of any particular value, and nothing else is counted as of value in the unerring judgment of future generations. Judged by this standard, the Titanic went to her doom as to a triumph, and took with her 1500 men who upheld in tneir dying the. greatest and noblest and most precious of all human ideals. Can we not picture for ourselves this triumphant passing of the Titanic, sinking in the icy waters of the Atlantic with crew and passengers,, who had proved themselves worthy of their nation? Around her, rowed far to escape the maelstrom of that monstrous sinking, every boat that she could launch, and every boat packed deep with sobbing women and wondering children! On the sinking monster 'ISOO English-speaking men: in their boats only the pitiful handful of necessary seamen with eleven male passengers, no more! Above, the cold-gleaming stars and beneath the bottomless sea! There has been no such picture on the seas since, the spirit of God first moved upon the face of the waters, and if that which is greater and ) highest in men's hearts comes to us from the. All-Father, surely the spirit of Mod moved and stirred and became incarnate on the face of the Atlantic that night! Sometimes we are told that civilisation is utterly degenerate, that the white man is sinking into heathenism, that the British stock is not as it was before the age of steam and electricity. And sometimes, it is true, things happen which make for hopelessness, and the soul of our race seems sunk in sloth and rotting with indifference. But who can think of the Titanic and not feel that the old heroism still exists in the British heart, that self-sacrifice and selfdevotion, love of order and fearlessness of death, and generons chivalry for women and little ones, are with us as they ever were, perhaps more than ever? The Titanic was sent to sea as a masterpiece of peril-defying shipbuilders. She was the greatest vessel ever launched, the most powerful, the most complete. In her holds were the strength of 100,000 horses. In her huge mass was the hurtling weight of 45,000 tons. She had compartments, wireless tele- ! graphv. hanging gardens, swimming I baths, bands, and tennis courts —and a piece of ice sent her to the bottom as a boy-thrown stone cripples a sparrow'. The Titanic, masterpiece, of which we thought so much, broke and failed us. This huge monster of which we boasted became as naught when the ice struck it. This supremely wonderful thing which wit s to make the ocean a playground and the dreaded passage an 'excursion snapped asunder like a twig on which one leans. liut the human organisation of which we thought so little, did not fail. The men whom we have been despising, whose souls we have been belittling, whose selfishness we have been denouncing, held together to the end and turned the sinking of the Titanic I into a monumental victory. The crew and passengers of the Titanic were a little world in themselves. There were gaudy millionaires whose only thought seemed to be for self-indulgence, and grimy stokers whose language would have shocked the Y.'M.C'.A. There were men of every Christian sect and men of no sect at all, men who lived conventional lives and men who laughed at conventions, men who worked with their brains and men who worked with their hands, and men who in ver worked at all, with women to match. They were like the world at large—divided into classes and sections, despising one another, hating one another, antagonising one another. Those who doubt the inherent manliness of our people would have said that in the face of death every man would strike, for himself, and the women and children would be flung aside to die. We know what happened The gaudy millionaire and the grimy stoker heard

! the wireless bugle that speaks in every .Northern heart and answered its call together. Tlie little world of the Titanic found itself. Too few the boats, but enough for the women! The men paid the price, and the women live to this day. The men died —as British men should ever die when need comes—and in their dying they taught us a lesson we can never forget. For they were as we are, and if they could do this great thing we can do great things also. They will erect monuments to the Titanic dead—monumoi' i of brass and stone, lettered in gold and black in marble—but the real monument to the Titanic dead is one they themselves are erecting at this moment in our national thoughts. They have taught us that a common humanity still binds us together, that in the hour of dire peril all true British men are brothers, and all women and children their common care. They have shown us that class-hatreds and class-divisions are only skin-deep, and that at national need all good men will sacrifice themselves to save the most precious. ' And they have reminded us that the British sailor is depend- . able: in time of trouble, even though lie is harder to handle than are lascars and foreigners while things go well.