. Here was not the wild excitement of battle
to sustain him; death had to be faced calmly in order that others--to
whom he must not even bid farewell--might live. And so in his last hour
we see this brave, strong, capable and lovable man displaying, not only
heroism, but every quality which had exalted him in the regard of his
fellows and endeared him to all who had worked and lived with him. This
is the verdict of his countrymen now that the facts of that terrible
disaster are fully known.

Yet it was far from our purpose to have the tragedy of the _Titanic_
written with Thomas Andrews as the hero. We deemed it better to place
the bare facts before some writer of repute, not one of his personal
friends, and ask him to tell in simple language the plain tale of his
life so far as it could be gleaned from printed and written records,
from his family, friends, and employers; above all, from those
fellow-workers--his "pals" as he liked to call them--to whom this book is
most fittingly dedicated. The story thus pieced together would be
chiefly concerned with his work, for his work was his life.

To Thomas Andrews the hero, then, we did not propose to raise a
monument. To his memory a fine memorial hall is to be built and endowed
in his native Comber by the inhabitants of the town and district and his
friends, while he will be associated in memorials elsewhere with those
who died nobly in the wreck.[1] These tributes will serve to remind us
how he died, but will not tell us how he lived. It is the purpose of
this short memoir to give a fairly complete record of his life--his
parentage, his home, his education, his pleasures, his tastes and his
thoughts, so far as they are known, upon things which count in the lives
of peoples. The family, and all from whom information was sought,
responded most cordially to our wishes. There remained the difficulty of
finding a writer who could tell the story of Thomas Andrews the man, as
we wished it to be told.

[1] In Belfast a memorial to Thomas Andrews and the other
Belfast men who died in the wreck has been generously
subscribed to by the citizens, and by the Queen's Island
workers. He is also included amongst those to whom a similar
memorial is to be erected in Southampton. The Reform Club in
Belfast is honouring his memory with a tablet.

For such a task it was decided that, if he could be induced to undertake
it, the right man was Shan Bullock. He is an Ul