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It is the trusting to mere pulling, sir, that makes our life-boats useless. The rowers in a life-boat should study the sea as well as their oars. They should consider that they save life by watching the wave that breaks over the vessel, as well as by straining every nerve to reach her.
Lightoller said he understood the maximum speed of the Titanic, as shown by its trial tests, to have been twenty-two and a half to twenty-three knots. Senator Smith asked if the rule requiring life-saving apparatus to be in each room for each passenger was complied with. "Everything was complete," said Lightoller. "Sixteen life-boats, of which four were collapsible, were on the Titanic," he added.
Of course, it's a little too much to expect that any one of the life-boats will be left whole, but they're bulkheaded, too, you know, so that we can be sure of finding something able to navigate providing we can make our get-away. Believe me, ace, I'm sure glad we're aboard the old Arcturus right now, with all her safety-devices, instead of on one of the modern liners. We'd be sunk right."
Life-boats range from twenty-four to thirty feet in length and carry from thirty to sixty persons. The rafts carry from twenty to forty persons. The old-fashioned round bar davits can be got for $100 to $150 a set. The new style davits, quick launchers in type, come as low as $400 a set.
"We did not know that the ship was in danger until a comparatively short time before she sank. Then we were called on deck and the life-boats were filled and lowered. "The behavior of the ship's officers at this time was wonderful. There was no panic, no scramble for places in the boats."
There was a sudden startled outcry as the Nebraska struck for a second time that night. She rose slightly, rolled and bumped, grated briefly, then came to rest. Captain Brennan shouted from the bridge: "Fill your life-boats, Mr. James, and lower away carefully." A cheer rose from the huddled passengers.
"As for the Roland," he said, "I would rather be, let us say, in the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. Your four-master has no greater charms for me than a cabin on the Roland." Hans Füllenberg came lounging in and told them a wave had swept away one of the life-boats on the after quarter. At the very same instant an arched mass of water came flying slantwise over the port bow. "Oh!" everybody cried.
And while these doughty, desperate spirits fought the fire and smoke with every means at their command, down in the suffocating depths of the ship, braving not only the peril visible and at hand, but the prospect of annihilation in the event that a belated bomb projected its hideous force into the nest of high explosives, while these men fought, the smiling, placid sea was alive with small white craft that bobbed in the gleaming sunlight, life-boats crowded to the gunwales with shuddering, bleak-eyed men, women and children waiting to pick up those who stayed behind, and who inevitably would be driven overboard by the resistless, conquering flames.
Also the daily events in the news dispatches the sinking of hospital-ships filled with wounded, the shelling of life-boats, the dragging away into slavery in coal-mines of Belgian children thirteen and fourteen years old! How could any man fail to hate and to fear a government which committed such atrocities?
Somerville joined you here, and we held off such of the madmen as tried to seize the jolly-boat. They managed to lower two life-boats, but, between murder and panic, not half of the crew escaped in that way. Four men, who were left behind, promised obedience, and Malcolm, the steward, was placed in charge, with Mr. Gray as second in command.
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