Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/24

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC go to the bottom after meeting with an accident, which, in spite of its stupendous results, must be reckoned as merely one among the many risks of transatlantic travel?

So far as the loss of the ship itself was concerned, it is certain that the stupefaction with which the news of her sinking was received was due to the belief that her vast size was a guarantee against disaster—that the ever-increasing dimensions of length, breadth, and tonnage had conferred upon the modern ocean liner a certain immunity against the dangers of travel by sea. The fetish of mere size seems, indeed, to have affected even the officers in command of these modern leviathans. Surely it must have thrown its spell over the captain of the ill-fated Titanic, who, in spite of an oft-repeated warning that there was a large field of ice ahead, followed the usual practice, if the night is clear, and ran his ship at full speed into the zone of danger, as though, forsooth, he expected the Titanic to brush the ice floes aside, and split asunder any iceberg that might stand in her way.

Confidence in the indestructibility of the Titanic, moreover, was stimulated by the fact [ 2 ]