STORAGE BATTERIES FOR LIGHTS
“Of course we must hear both sides, but personally I am far more disposed to lay blame when two vessels collide than when one collides with a berg or a derelict. In a channel where sea room is limited and currents due to enormous tidal rise exist, more than the usual care at sea should be exercised.
“There should be on all passenger vessels storage batteries that would light up enough lights in passageways and about the decks to enable passengers to move freely and special colored lights, well understood, to show the means of reaching the upper deck.
“These are the lessons. They have all been known all the time, but heeding them can only be arrived at through crushing disaster that will hold the attention of travelers by sea long enough for them to show their appreciation of the lines which best safeguard life at sea.
“After all, the transatlantic lines will provide such safety as modern ingenuity may evolve, and they will install devices in deference to demands of the traveling public. The difficulty is that the greater part of such public are fatalists when they go to sea.”
DOUBLE HULL ABOVE WATER
Alexander MacGregor, engineer commander, retired, Royal Naval Reserves, who lives in Inverness, Scotland, after a lifetime on the seas of all the world, declared that such an accident as befell the Empress of Ireland spells certain and quick destruction to any steamship of the prevailing type now engaged in passenger as well as cargo traffic.
“Double hulls extending well above the water line are the only safeguard for the ship, and individual unsinkable garments for the passengers their only certain protection,” Mr. MacGregor said. “I knew the Empress of Ireland. She was of the same construction type as the Titanic. She, and practically every other, except four of the largest passenger steamships out of New York, has only a double shell far below the water line, a protection only from damage about the keel. It cost more than $1,000,000 to reconstruct with a double hull one of the biggest transatlantic service steamships after the Titanic went down. The expense and great reduction of cargo capacity have been a bar to general adoption of that type.
“Under the rules of the sea, the Empress of Ireland appears to have been properly at a standstill and the collier steaming on in the dense fog against the rule. If the Empress had a double hull it would have been practically impossible for the other to have torn out both her shells, which usually are built four feet apart, and opened up all the bulkheads.
“Passenger vessels navigating narrow waters like the St. Lawrence should have life-saving apparel close at hand for passengers. Boats are of no use if you can’t get to them. Few men could last long in the icy waters of the St. Lawrence at this season.”