rather more than
twenty years ago in Sydney, N.S.W. Ships were beginning then to grow
bigger year after year, though, of course, the present dimensions were
not even dreamt of. I was standing on the Circular Quay with a Sydney
pilot watching a big mail steamship of one of our best-known companies
being brought alongside. We admired her lines, her noble appearance, and
were impressed by her size as well, though her length, I imagine, was
hardly half that of the _Titanic_.

She came into the Cove (as that part of the harbour is called), of course
very slowly, and at some hundred feet or so short of the quay she lost
her way. That quay was then a wooden one, a fine structure of mighty
piles and stringers bearing a roadway--a thing of great strength. The
ship, as I have said before, stopped moving when some hundred feet from
it. Then her engines were rung on slow ahead, and immediately rung off
again. The propeller made just about five turns, I should say. She
began to move, stealing on, so to speak, without a ripple; coming
alongside with the utmost gentleness. I went on looking her over, very
much interested, but the man with me, the pilot, muttered under his
breath: "Too much, too much." His exercised judgment had warned him of
what I did not even suspect. But I believe that neither of us was
exactly prepared for what happened. There was a faint concussion of the
ground under our feet, a groaning of piles, a snapping of great iron
bolts, and with a sound of ripping and splintering, as when a tree is
blown down by the wind, a great strong piece of wood, a baulk of squared
timber, was displaced several feet as if by enchantment. I looked at my
companion in amazement. "I could not have believed it," I declared.
"No," he said. "You would not have thought she would have cracked an
egg--eh?"

I certainly wouldn't have thought that. He shook his head, and added:
"Ah! These great, big things, they want some handling."

Some months afterwards I was back in Sydney. The same pilot brought me
in from sea. And I found the same steamship, or else another as like her
as two peas, lying at anchor not far from us. The pilot told me she had
arrived the day before, and that he was to take her alongside to-morrow.
I reminded him jocularly of the damage to the quay. "Oh!" he said, "we
are not allowed now to bring them in under their own steam. We are using
tugs."

A very wise regulation. And this is my point--that