ild
grandeur of the sea."

When he was in command of the Adriatic, which was built before the
Olympic, Captain Smith said he did not believe a disaster with loss of
life could happen to the Adriatic.

"I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to the Adriatic," he
said. "Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that. There will be bigger
boats. The depth of harbors seems to be the great drawback at present. I
cannot say, of course, just what the limit will be, but the larger
boat will surely come. But speed will not develop with size, so far as
merchantmen are concerned.

"The traveling public prefers the large comfortable boat of average
speed, and anyway that is the boat that pays. High speed eats up money
mile by mile, and extreme high speed is suicidal. There will be high
speed boats for use as transports and a wise government will assist
steamship companies in paying for them, as the English Government is
now doing in the cases of the Lusitania and Mauretania, twenty-five knot
boats; but no steamship company will put them out merely as a commercial
venture."

Captain Smith believed the Titanic to be unsinkable.

BRAVE TO THE LAST

And though the ship turned out to be sinkable, the captain, by many acts
of bravery in the face of death, proved that his courage was equal to
any test.

Captain Inman Sealby, commander of the steamer Republic, which was the
first vessel to use the wireless telegraph to save her passengers in a
collision, spoke highly of the commander of the wrecked Titanic, calling
him one of the ablest seamen in the world.

"I am sure that Captain Smith did everything in his power to save
his passengers. The disaster is one about which he could have had no
warning. Things may happen at sea that give no warning to ships' crews
and commanders until the harm comes. I believe from what I read that
the Titanic hit an iceberg and glanced off, but that the berg struck her
from the bottom and tore a great hole."

Many survivors have mentioned the captain's name and narrated some
incident to bring out his courage and helpfulness in the emergency; but
it was left to a fireman on board the Titanic to tell the story of his
death and to record his last message. This man had gone down with the
White Star giantess and was clinging to a piece of wreckage for about
half an hour before he finally joined several members of the Titanic's
company on the bottom of a boat which was floating about among other