LACK OF DISCIPLINE ARRAIGNED.
Lack of discipline among the crew and cowardice of some of its members indicated after the crash was scathingly arraigned. To the two Titanic wireless operators—Phillips and Bride—the speaker paid a glowing tribute. He lauded Captain Rostrom, of the rescue ship, Carpathia.
In eloquent terms the chairman, Senator Smith, depicted the folly of sending out the greatest ship afloat without sufficiently testing a strange crew and with no drills or discipline. The Titanic, he said, was following the proper course, although one known to be dangerous at that season, but the speed was gradually and continually increased until the maximum was the death-blow.
Rebuke for those in half-filled lifeboats who “stood by” and refused aid to struggling, drowning swimmers until “all the noise had ceased” was voiced.
“Upon that broken hull,” the Senator concluded, “new vows were taken, new fealty expressed, old love renewed, and those who had been devoted in life went proudly and defiantly on the last life pilgrimage together. In such a heritage we must feel ourselves more intimately related to the sea than ever before, and henceforth it will send back to us on its rising tide the cheerful salutations from those we have lost.
“At 10 o’clock on that fateful Sunday evening this latest maritime creation was cutting its first pathway through the North Atlantic Ocean with scarcely a ripple to retard its progress.
“From the builders’ hands she was plunged straightway to her fate and christening salvos acclaimed at once her birth and death. Builders of renown had launched her on the billows with confident assurance of her strength, while every port rang with praise for their achievement; shipbuilding to them was both a science and a religion; parent ships and sister ships had easily withstood the waves, while the mark of their hammer was all that was needed to give assurance of the high quality of the work.
“In the construction of the Titanic no limit of cost circumscribed their endeavor, and when this vessel took its place at the head of the line every modern improvement in shipbuilding was supposed to have been realized; so confident were they that both owner and builder were eager to go upon the trial trip; no sufficient tests were made of boilers or bulkheads or gearing or equipment, and no life-saving or signal devices were reviewed; officers and crew were strangers to one another and passengers to both.
PASSENGERS AND CREW STUPEFIED.
“Neither was familiar with the vessel or its implements or tools; no drill or station practice or helpful discipline disturbed the tranquillity of that voyage, and when the crisis came a state of absolute unpreparedness stupefied both passengers and crew and, in their despair, the ship went down, carrying as needless a sacrifice of noble women and brave men as ever clustered about the judgment seat in any single moment of passing time.