tion of the problem, your Mercantile Highness.

But there would be a cry, "Oh! This requires consideration!" (Ten years
of it--eh?) Well, no! This does not require consideration. This is the
very first thing to do. At once. Limit the number of people by the
boats you can handle. That's honesty. And then you may go on fumbling
for years about these precious davits which are such a stumbling-block to
your humanity. These fascinating patent davits. These davits that
refuse to do three times as much work as they were meant to do. Oh! The
wickedness of these davits!

One of the great discoveries of this admirable Inquiry is the fascination
of the davits. All these people positively can't get away from them.
They shuffle about and groan around their davits. Whereas the obvious
thing to do is to eliminate the man-handled davits altogether. Don't you
think that with all the mechanical contrivances, with all the generated
power on board these ships, it is about time to get rid of the hundred-
years-old, man-power appliances? Cranes are what is wanted; low, compact
cranes with adjustable heads, one to each set of six or nine boats. And
if people tell you of insuperable difficulties, if they tell you of the
swing and spin of spanned boats, don't you believe them. The heads of
the cranes need not be any higher than the heads of the davits. The lift
required would be only a couple of inches. As to the spin, there is a
way to prevent that if you have in each boat two men who know what they
are about. I have taken up on board a heavy ship's boat, in the open sea
(the ship rolling heavily), with a common cargo derrick. And a cargo
derrick is very much like a crane; but a crane devised _ad hoc_ would be
infinitely easier to work. We must remember that the loss of this ship
has altered the moral atmosphere. As long as the _Titanic_ is
remembered, an ugly rush for the boats may be feared in case of some
accident. You can't hope to drill into perfect discipline a casual mob
of six hundred firemen and waiters, but in a ship like the _Titanic_ you
can keep on a permanent trustworthy crew of one hundred intelligent
seamen and mechanics who would know their stations for abandoning ship
and would do the work efficiently. The boats could be lowered with
sufficient dispatch. One does not want to let rip one's boats by the run
all at the same time. With six boat-cranes, six boats would be
simultaneously swung, filled,