day no definite news; and when their offices in New York were
besieged by newspaper men and relatives of the passengers demanding
information, the pathetic belief in the _Titanic's_ strength was allowed
to overshadow anxieties concerning the greater disaster. Mr. Franklin,
the vice-president of the American Trust to which the White Star Company
belongs, issued the following statement from New York on Monday:

"We have nothing direct from the _Titanic_, but are perfectly
satisfied that the vessel is unsinkable. The fact that the
Marconi messages have ceased means nothing; it may be due to
atmospheric conditions or the coming up of the ships, or
something of that sort.

"We are not worried over the possible loss of the ship, as she
will not go down, but we are sorry for the inconvenience
caused to the travelling public. We are absolutely certain
that the _Titanic_ is able to withstand any damage. She may be
down by the head, but would float indefinitely in that
condition."

Still that same word, "unsinkable," which had now indeed for the first
time become a true one: for it is only when she lies at the bottom of
the sea that any ship can be called unsinkable. On Tuesday morning when
the dreadful news was first certainly known, those proud words had to be
taken back. Again Mr. Franklin had to face the reporters, and this time
he could only say:

"I must take upon myself the whole blame for that statement. I
made it, and I believed it when I made it. The accident to the
_Olympic_, when she collided with the cruiser _Hawke_,
convinced me that these ships, the _Olympic_ and _Titanic_,
were built like battleships, able to resist almost any kind of
accident, particularly a collision. I made the statement in
good faith, and upon me must rest the responsibility for
error, since the fact has proved that it was not a correct
description of the unfortunate _Titanic_."

And for three days while the _Carpathia_ was ploughing her way, now
slowly through ice-strewn seas, and now at full speed through open
water, and while England lay under the cloud of an unprecedented
disaster, New York was in a ferment of grief, excitement, and
indignation. Crowds thronged the streets outside the offices of the
White Star Line, while gradually, in lists of thirty or forty at a time,
the names of the survivors began to come through from the _Carpat