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A number of the names in the list did not check up with the Titanic's passenger list, which led to the belief that a number of the bodies recovered were members of the Titanic's crew. At noon, April 23d, there was posted on the bulletin in the White Star office this message from the Mackay-Bennett dated Sunday, April 21st: "Latitude, 41.58; longitude, 49.21.
Had Murdock, according to the account of the tragedy given by two of the Titanic's seamen, known how imperative was that call from the lookout man, the men at the wheel of the liner might have swerved the great ship sufficiently to avoid the berg altogether. At the worst the vessel would probably have struck the mass of ice with her stern.
An old traveller told me on the Carpathia that he has often grumbled to the officers for what he called absurd precautions in lying to and wasting his time, which he regarded as very valuable; but after hearing of the Titanic's loss he recognized that he was to some extent responsible for the speed at which she had travelled, and would never be so again.
The Titanic disaster was discussed by Robert H. Kirk, who installed the compartment doors in the ships of the United States Navy. Mr. Kirk's opinion follows: "The Titanic's disaster will cause endless speculation as to how similar disasters may be avoided in the future.
It had been learned that some of the passengers, in fact all of the women passengers of the Titanic who were rescued, refer to "Lady Margaret," as they called Mrs. Brown as the strength of them all. Officers of the Carpathia report that when they reached the scene of the Titanic's wreck there were fifty bodies or more floating in the sea.
It was not until nearly a week later that the fact was discovered that this message had been wrongly received in the confusion of messages flashing through the air, and that in reality the message should have read: "Are all Titanic's passengers safe?" With the dawning of Tuesday morning came the awful news of the true fate of the Titanic.
And yet the Olympic was, after all, the farthest away of them all; eight other ships lay within three hundred miles of us. How thankful we should have been to know how near help was, and how many ships had heard our message and were rushing to the Titanic's aid. I think nothing has surprised us more than to learn so many ships were near enough to rescue us in a few hours.
All this time the passengers remained to use his own expression "as quiet as if in church." To man and supervise the loading of six boats must have taken him nearly up to the time of the Titanic's sinking, taking an average of some twenty minutes to a boat. Still at work to the end, he remained on the ship till she sank and went down with her.
The "Scientific American," in an excellent article on the comparative safety of the Titanic's and other types of water-tight compartments, draws attention to the following weaknesses in the former from the point of view of possible collision with an iceberg.
Twenty boat-loads of the Titanic's passengers were said to have been transferred to the Carpathia then, and allowing forty to sixty persons as the capacity of each life-boat, some 800 or 1200 persons had already been transferred from the damaged liner to the Carpathia. They were reported as being taken to Halifax, whence they would be sent by train to New York.
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