hour.

One who has looked into modern methods for safeguarding

{illust. caption = LIFE-BOAT AND DAVITS ON THE TITANIC

This diagram shows very clearly the arrangement of the life-boats and
the manner in which they were launched.}


a vessel of the Titanic type can hardly imagine an accident
that could cause her to founder. No collision such as has
been the fate of any ship in recent years, it has been thought
up to this time, could send her down, nor could running against
an iceberg do it unless such an accident were coupled with
the remotely possible blowing out of a boiler. She would
sink at once, probably, if she were to run over a submerged
rock or derelict in such manner that both her keel plates and
her double bottom were torn away for more than half her
length; but such a catastrophe was so remotely possible that
it did not even enter the field of conjecture.

The reason for all this is found in the modern arrangement
of water-tight steel compartments into which all ships now
are divided and of which the Titanic had fifteen so disposed
that half of them, including the largest, could be flooded
without impairing the safety of the vessel. Probably it was
the working of these bulkheads and the water-tight doors
between them as they are supposed to work that saved the
Titanic from foundering when she struck the iceberg.

These bulkheads were of heavy sheet steel and started at the
very bottom of the ship and extended right up to the top side.
The openings in the bulkheads were just about the size of the
ordinary doorway, but the doors did not swing as in a house,
but fitted into water-tight grooves above the opening. They
could be released instantly in several ways, and once closed
formed a barrier to the water as solid as the bulkhead itself.

In the Titanic, as in other great modern ships, these doors
were held in place above the openings by friction clutches.
On the bridge was a switch which connected with an electric
magnet at the side of the bulkhead opening. The turning
of this switch caused the magnet to draw down a heavy weight,
which instantly released the friction clutch, and allowed the
door to fall or slide down over the opening in a second. If,
however, through accident the bridge switch was rendered useless
the doors would close automatically in a few seconds.
This was arranged by means of large metal floats at the side
of the doorways, which rested just above the level of the
double bottom, and as the water entered the compartments
these floats would rise to it and directly release the clutch
holding the door open. These clutches could also be
released by hand.

It was said of the Titanic that liner compartments could be
flooded as far back or as far forward as the engine room and
she would float, though she might take on a heavy list, or
settle considerably at one end. To provide against just such
an accident as she is said to have encountered she had set back
a good distance from the bows an extra heavy cross partition
known as the collision bulkhead, which would prevent water
getting in amidships, even though a good part of her bow should
be torn away. What a ship can stand and still float was
shown a few years ago when the Suevic of the White Star
Line went on the rocks on the British coast. The wreckers
could not move the forward part of her, so they separated her
into two sections by the use of dynamite, and after putting
in a temporary bulkhead floated off the after half of the ship,
put it in dry dock and built a new forward part for her. More
recently the battleship Maine, or what was left of her, was
floated out to sea, and kept on top of the water by her water-
tight compartments only.



CHAPTER III

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC

PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE--SCENES OF GAYETY--THE
BOAT SAILS--INCIDENTS OF THE VOYAGE---A COLLISION
NARROWLY AVERTED--THE BOAT ON FIRE--WARNED OF
ICEBERGS.

EVER was ill-starred voyage more auspiciously begun
than when the Titanic, newly crowned empress of
the seas, steamed majestically out of the port of
Southampton at noon on Wednesday, April 10th, bound for
New York.

Elaborate preparations had been made for the maiden
voyage. Crowds of eager watchers gathered to witness the
departure, all the more interested because of the notable
people who were to travel aboard her. Friends and relatives
of many of the passengers were at the dock to bid Godspeed
to their departing loved ones. The passengers themselves
were unusually gay and happy.

Majestic and beautiful the ship rested on the water,
marvel of shipbuilding, worthy of any sea. As this new queen
of the ocean moved slowly from her dock, no one questioned
her construction: she was fitted with an elaborate system of


{illust. caption = STEAMER "TITANIC" COMPARED WITH THE LARGEST STRUCTURES IN THE WORLD
1. Bunker Hill Monument. Boston, 221 feet high. 2. Public

{illust. caption = J. BRUCE ISMAY

Managing director of the International Mercantile
Marine, and managing director of the White....}

{illust. caption = CHARLES M. HAYS

President of the Grand Trunk
Pacific Railways, numbered among the heroic men....}


water-tight compartments, calculated to make her unsinkable;
she had been pronounced the safest as well as the most sumptuous
Atlantic liner afloat.

There was silence just before the boat pulled out--the
silence that usually precedes the leave-taking. The heavy
whistles sounded and the splendid Titanic, her flags flying
and her band playing, churned the water and plowed heavily
away.

Then the Titanic, with the people on board waving handkerchiefs
and shouting good-byes that could be heard only
as a buzzing murmur on shore, rode away on the ocean,
proudly, majestically, her head up and, so it seemed, her
shoulders thrown back. If ever a vessel seemed to throb
with proud life, if ever a monster of the sea seemed to "feel
its oats" and strain at the leash, if ever a ship seemed to
have breeding and blue blood that would keep it going until
its heart broke, that ship was the Titanic.

And so it was only her due that as the Titanic steamed
out of the harbor bound on her maiden voyage a thousand
"God-speeds" were wafted after her, while every other vessel
that she passed, the greatest of them dwarfed by her colossal
proportions, paid homage to the new queen regnant with the
blasts of their whistles and the shrieking of steam sirens.


THE SHIP'S CAPTAIN


In command of the Titanic was Captain E. J. Smith,
a veteran of the seas, and admiral of the White Star Line
fleet. The next six officers, in the order of their rank, were
Murdock, Lightollder,{sic} Pitman, Boxhall, Lowe and Moody.
Dan Phillips was chief wireless operator, with Harold Bride
as assistant.

From the forward bridge, fully ninety feet above the sea,
peered out the benign face of the ship's master, cool of aspect,
deliberate of action, impressive in that quality of confidence
that is bred only of long experience in command.

From far below the bridge sounded the strains of the ship's
orchestra, playing blithely a favorite air from "The Chocolate
Soldier." All went as merry as a wedding bell. Indeed,
among that gay ship's company were two score or more at
least for whom the wedding bells had sounded in truth not
many days before. Some were on their honeymoon tours,
others were returning to their motherland after having passed
the weeks of the honeymoon, like Colonel John Jacob Astor
and his young bride, amid the diversions of Egypt or other
Old World countries.

What daring flight of imagination would have ventured
the prediction that within the span of six days that stately
ship, humbled, shattered and torn asunder, would lie two
thousand fathoms deep at the bottom of the Atlantic, that
the benign face that peered from the bridge would be set in
the rigor of death and that the happy bevy of voyaging brides
would be sorrowing widows?


ALMOST IN A COLLISION

The big vessel had, however, a touch of evil fortune before
she cleared the harbor of Southampton. As she passed down
stream her immense bulk--she displaced 66,000 tons--drew
the waters after her with an irresistible suction that tore

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