THE TITANIC DISASTER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 203, 7 May 1912, Page 5

THE TITANIC DISASTER

HONORING DEAD HEROES. ly Cable—Pw» Aatoemtitn—Copyright. Received 6, 5.25 p.m. London, May 5. Lord Derby, with an influential Liverpool committee, has inaugurated a fund for a national statue to the thirty-two engineers who went down with, the Titanic. TRAGEDIES OF THE BRIDGE. " The mistakes that doctors make are buried in the ground. Those made by lawyers are paid by their clients. But the mistakes of sea captains are paid for by themselves, and bitter is the price." So says the writer of an article in Munsey's on tragedies of the bridge. He deals with the impulse that operates in many cases compelling a captain to go down with his ship, without attempting to save himself, and sometimes even takes his own life. There was the case of the Prinzessin Victoria Luise, of the Hamburg-American line, which drove on a coral reef in Jamaica. There was no difficulty in getting the passengers ashore, but when that had been done, the captain went into his cabin and ehot himself. And the pity of it was that he was not to blame. The earthquake had destroyed the lighthouse guarding this particular spot. The captain of the North German-Lloyd steamer Ode, after losing his vessel on the island of Socotra, took the same path out of life after he had seen every soul safely aahore. Captain Griffith, of the Mohegan, stood on the bridge of his fast sinking ship until the waters engulfed him. Captain Deloncle, of the French liner Burgoyne, sunk in mid-Atlantic by collision wth the Cromartyshire, was last teen on the bridge, with his hand on the , whistle cordj as the vessel went down. Captain von Gossel, of the Elbe, went down with his ship, standing with folded, arms upon the bridge as the vessel slowly sank. Happy is the captain who has had no history. The writer tells how, years ago, when a novice in journalism, he approached an old trans-Atlantic captain for some information about shipwrecks. The old man looked as if he might explode. "Shipwrecks," he roared. "What in thunder do I know about shipwrecks?" It was certainly a tactless question. He could tell of no experience of shipwrecks, for if he had been able to do so be would not have been in command of a ship. There are men who can tell, but as a rule they are not to be found on the bridge of liners. "Many of those who have had histories you may now find ending their lives in obscure employment, or in cottages on Long Island, or in Bremen, Glasgow or Liverpool—victims of the mistake of a moment or of an hour, which the record of years of skill and devotion could not avail to overcome." Those cases are perhaps more tragic than those of men who obey the tradition that a captain who loses his ship must not survive.