was a marvel of size and luxury. Her length was 882-1/2
feet—far exceeding the height of the tallest buildings in the
world—her breadth of beam was 92 feet, and her depth from topmost deck
to keel was 94 feet. She was of 45,000 tons register and 66,000 tons
displacement. Her structure was the last word in size, speed, and
luxury at sea. Her interior was like that of some huge hotel, with wide
stairways and heavy balustrades, with elevators running up and down the
height of nine decks out of her twelve; with swimming-pools, Turkish
baths, saloons, and music-rooms, and a little golf-course on the
highest deck. Her master was Capt. E. J. Smith, a veteran of more than
thirty years' able and faithful service in the company's ships, whose
only mishap had occurred when the giant Olympic, under his command,
collided with the British cruiser Hawke in the Solent last September.
He was exonerated because the great suction exerted by the Olympic in
a narrow channel inevitably drew the two vessels together.
There were over 2,200 people aboard the Titanic
when she left
Southampton on Wednesday for her maiden voyage—325 first-cabin
passengers, 285 second-cabin, 710 steerage, and a crew of 899. Among
that ship's company were many men and women of prominence in the arts,
the professions, and in business. Colonel John Jacob Astor and his
bride, who was Miss Madeleine Force, were among them; also Major
Archibald Butt, military aide to President Taft; Charles M. Hays,
president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, with his family; William
T. Stead, of the London Review of Reviews; Benjamin Guggenheim, of
the celebrated mining family; G. D. Widener, of Philadelphia; F. D.
Millet, the noted artist; Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus; 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 in wait for their prey.
