To many of those who went it was harder to go than to stay there on the vessel gaping with its mortal wounds and ready to go down. It meant that tossing on the waters they must wait in suspense, hour after hour, even after the lights of the ship were engulfed in appalling darkness, hoping against hope for the miracle of a rescue dearer to them than their own lives.
It was the tradition of Anglo-Saxon heroism that was fulfilled in the frozen seas during the black hours of the night. The heroism was that of the women who went, as well as of the men who remained.
The sympathy of all the world will go out to the stricken survivors of the victims of a world-wide calamity.
INTRODUCTION.
HE human imagination is unequal to the reconstruction of the appalling scene of the disaster in the North Atlantic. No picture of the pen or of the painter’s brush can adequately represent the magnitude of the calamity that has made the whole world kin.
How trivial in such an hour seem the ordinary affairs of civilized mankind—the minor ramifications of politics, the frenetic rivalry of candidates, the haggle of stock speculators. We are suddenly, by an awful visitation, made to see our human transactions in their true perspective, as small as they really are.
Man’s pride is profoundly humbled: he must confess that the victory this time has gone to the blind, inexorable forces of nature, except in so far as the manifestation of the heroic virtues is concerned.
The ship that went to her final resting place two miles below the placid, unconfessing level of the sea represented all that science and art knew how to contribute to the expedition of traffic, to the comfort and enjoyment of voyagers.
She had 15 watertight steel compartments supposed to render her unsinkable. She was possessed of submarine signals with microphones, to tell the bridge by means of wires when shore or ship or any other object was at hand.