ide.

And now, apart from all problems of manoeuvring, of rules of the road, of
the judgment of the men in command, away from their possible errors and
from the points the Court will have to decide, if we ask ourselves what
it was that was needed to avert this disaster costing so many lives,
spreading so much sorrow, and to a certain point shocking the public
conscience--if we ask that question, what is the answer to be?

I hardly dare set it down. Yes; what was it that was needed, what
ingenious combinations of ship-building, what transverse bulkheads, what
skill, what genius--how much expense in money and trained thinking, what
learned contriving, to avert that disaster?

To save that ship, all these lives, so much anguish for the dying, and so
much grief for the bereaved, all that was needed in this particular case
in the way of science, money, ingenuity, and seamanship was a man, and a
cork-fender.

Yes; a man, a quartermaster, an able seaman that would know how to jump
to an order and was not an excitable fool. In my time at sea there was
no lack of men in British ships who could jump to an order and were not
excitable fools. As to the so-called cork-fender, it is a sort of soft
balloon made from a net of thick rope rather more than a foot in
diameter. It is such a long time since I have indented for cork-fenders
that I don't remember how much these things cost apiece. One of them,
hung judiciously over the side at the end of its lanyard by a man who
knew what he was about, might perhaps have saved from destruction the
ship and upwards of a thousand lives.

Two men with a heavy rope-fender would have been better, but even the
other one might have made all the difference between a very damaging
accident and downright disaster. By the time the cork-fender had been
squeezed between the liner's side and the bluff of the _Storstad's_ bow,
the effect of the latter's reversed propeller would have been produced,
and the ships would have come apart with no more damage than bulged and
started plates. Wasn't there lying about on that liner's bridge, fitted
with all sorts of scientific contrivances, a couple of simple and
effective cork-fenders--or on board of that Norwegian either? There must
have been, since one ship was just out of a dock or harbour and the other
just arriving. That is the time, if ever, when cork-fenders are lying
about a ship's decks. And there was plenty of time to use them, and
exactly in