aus; J. Thayer,
vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; J. Bruce Ismay, chairman
of the White Star Line's board of directors; Henry B. Harris,
theatrical manager; Colonel Washington Roebling, the engineer; Jacques
Futrelle, the novelist; and Henry Sleeper Harper, a grandson of Joseph
Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the house of Harper & Brothers.

As the _Titanic_ was leaving her pier at Southampton there came a sound
like the booming of artillery. The passengers thronging to the rail saw
the steamship _New York_ slowly drawing near. The movement of the
_Titanic's_ gigantic body had sucked the water away from the quay so
violently that the seven stout hawsers mooring the _New York_ to her
pier snapped like rotten twine, and she bore down on the giant ship
stern first and helpless. The _Titanic_ reversed her engines, and tugs
plucked the _New York_ away barely in time to avoid a bad smash. If any
old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little
reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the
great floating hotel. As the ship passed the time of day by wireless
with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean
lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working smoothly, all going
well.

For some reason the great fleet of icebergs which drifts south of Cape
Race every summer moved down unusually early this year. The _Carmania_,
three days in advance of the _Titanic_, ran into the ice-field on
Thursday. The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous
bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the
shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains.
Passengers photographed the brilliant monsters. The steamship
_Niagara_, many leagues astern, reported a slight collision, with no
great harm done. That was enough. Captain Dow retraced his course to
the northeast and, after an hour's steaming, laid a new course for Fire
Island buoy. The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of
field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual.

Into this desolate waste of sea came the _Titanic_ on Sunday evening.
She encountered fog, for the region is almost continuously swathed in
the mists raised by the contact of the Arctic current with the warm
waters of the Gulf Stream. Scattered far and wide in every direction
were many icebergs, shrouded in gray, invisible to the eyes of the
sharpest lookouts, lying