"The shortest course between New York and the English Channel lies across Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Consequently the shortest water route is over seas where navigation is dangerous by reason of fog and ice. It is a notorious fact that the transatlantic steamships are not navigated with due regard to safety; that they steam at practically full speed in the densest fogs. But the companies cannot properly be blamed for this practice, because if the 'blue liners' slow down in a fog or take a safe route, clear of ice, the public will take passage on the 'green liners,' which take the shortest route, and keep up their schedule time; regardless of the risks indicated."
PROMPT REFORMS
The terrible sacrifice of the Titanic, however, is to have its fruit in safety for the future. The official announcement is
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made by the International Mercantile Marine that all its ships will be equipped with sufficient life-boats and rafts for every passenger and every member of the crew, without regard to the regulations in this country and England or Belgium. One of the German liners already had this complement of life-boats, though the German marine as a whole is sufficiently deficient at this point to induce the Reichstag to order an investigation.
Prompt, immediate and gratifying reform marks this action of the International Mercantile Marine. It is doubtless true that this precaution ought to have been taken without waiting for a loss of life such as makes all previous marine disasters seem trivial. But the public itself has been inert. For thirty years, since Plimsoll's day, every intelligent passenger knew that every British vessel was deficient in life-boats, but neither public opinion nor the public press took this matter up. There were no questions in Parliament and no measures introduced in Congress. Even the legislation by which the United States permitted English vessels reaching American ports to avoid the legal requirements of American statute law (which requires a seat in the life-boats for every passenger and every member of the crew) attracted no public attention, and occasional references to the subject by those better informed did nothing to awake action.
But this is past. Those who died bravely without complaint and with sacrificing regard for others did not lose their lives in vain. The safety of all travelers for all times to come under every civilized flag is to be greater through their sac-rifice. Under modern conditions life can be made as safe at sea as on the land. It is heartrending to stop and think that thirty-two more life-boats, costing only about $16,000, which could have been stowed away without being noticed on the broad decks of the Titanic, would have saved every man, woman and child on the steamer. There has never been so great a disaster in the history of civilization due to the neglect of so small an expenditure.
It would be idle to think that this was due simply to parsimony. It was really due to the false and vicious notion that life at sea must be made showy, sumptuous and magnificent. The absence of life-boats was not due to their cost, but to the demand for a great promenade deck, with ample space to look out on the sea with which a continuous row of life-boats would have interfered, and to the general tendency to lavish money on the luxuries of a voyage instead of first insuring its safety.