sary disaster.

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS {8}--1914

The loss of the _Empress of Ireland_ awakens feelings somewhat different
from those the sinking of the _Titanic_ had called up on two continents.
The grief for the lost and the sympathy for the survivors and the
bereaved are the same; but there is not, and there cannot be, the same
undercurrent of indignation. The good ship that is gone (I remember
reading of her launch something like eight years ago) had not been
ushered in with beat of drum as the chief wonder of the world of waters.
The company who owned her had no agents, authorised or unauthorised,
giving boastful interviews about her unsinkability to newspaper reporters
ready to swallow any sort of trade statement if only sensational enough
for their readers--readers as ignorant as themselves of the nature of all
things outside the commonest experience of the man in the street.

No; there was nothing of that in her case. The company was content to
have as fine, staunch, seaworthy a ship as the technical knowledge of
that time could make her. In fact, she was as safe a ship as nine
hundred and ninety-nine ships out of any thousand now afloat upon the
sea. No; whatever sorrow one can feel, one does not feel indignation.
This was not an accident of a very boastful marine transportation; this
was a real casualty of the sea. The indignation of the New South Wales
Premier flashed telegraphically to Canada is perfectly uncalled-for. That
statesman, whose sympathy for poor mates and seamen is so suspect to me
that I wouldn't take it at fifty per cent. discount, does not seem to
know that a British Court of Marine Inquiry, ordinary or extraordinary,
is not a contrivance for catching scapegoats. I, who have been seaman,
mate and master for twenty years, holding my certificate under the Board
of Trade, may safely say that none of us ever felt in danger of unfair
treatment from a Court of Inquiry. It is a perfectly impartial tribunal
which has never punished seamen for the faults of shipowners--as, indeed,
it could not do even if it wanted to. And there is another thing the
angry Premier of New South Wales does not know. It is this: that for a
ship to float for fifteen minutes after receiving such a blow by a bare
stem on her bare side is not so bad.

She took a tremendous list which made the minutes of grace vouchsafed her
of not much use for the saving of lives. But for that neither her owners
nor her