ess rockets until I left the ship, to try to attract the
attention of a ship directly ahead. I had seen her lights. She seemed to
be meeting us and was not far away. She got close enough, so she seemed
to me, to read our Morse electric signals."

"Suppose you had a powerful search light on the Titanic, could you not
have thrown a beam on the vessel and have compelled her attention?"

"We might."

H. J. Pitman, the third officer of the ship, was the first witness on
April 23d. By a series of searching questions Senator Fletcher brought
out the fact that when the collision occurred the Titanic was going at
the greatest speed attained during the trip, even though the ship was
entering the Grand Banks and had been advised of the presence of ice.

Frederick Fleet, a sailor and lookout man on the Titanic, followed
Pitman on the stand. Fleet said he had had five or six years' experience
at sea and was lookout on the Oceanic prior to going on the Titanic. He
was in the crow's nest at the time of the collision.

Fleet stated that he had kept a sharp lookout for ice, and testified to
seeing the iceberg and signaling the bridge.

Fleet acknowledged that if he had been aided in his observations by a
good glass he probably could have spied the berg into which the ship
crashed in time to have warned the bridge to avoid it. Major Arthur
Peuchen, of Toronto, a passenger who followed Fleet on the stand, also
testified to the much greater sweep of vision afforded by binoculars
and, as a yachtsman, said he believed the presence of the iceberg might
have been detected in time to escape the collision had the lookout men
been so equipped.

HAD ASKED FOR BINOCULARS

It was made to appear that the blame for being without glasses did
not rest with the lookout men. Fleet said they had asked for them at
Southampton and were told there were none for them. One glass, in a
pinch, would have served in the crow's nest.

The testimony before the committee on April 24th showed that the big
steamship was on the verge of a field of ice twenty or thirty miles
long, if she had not actually entered it, when the accident occurred.

The committee tried to discover whether it would add to human safety if
the ships were fitted with search lights so that at night objects could
be seen at a greater distance. The testimony so far along this line had
been conflicting. Some of the witnesses thought it would be no harm to
try it, but they were all skeptic