"
I confess that this notion of the Board of Trade as an entity having a
brain which could be overcome by the fumes of strong liquor charmed me
exceedingly. For then it would have been unlike the limited companies of
which some exasperated wit has once said that they had no souls to be
saved and no bodies to be kicked, and thus were free in this world and
the next from all the effective sanctions of conscientious conduct. But,
unfortunately, the picturesque pronouncement overheard by me was only a
characteristic sally of an annoyed sailor. The Board of Trade is
composed of bloodless departments. It has no limbs and no physiognomy,
or else at the forthcoming inquiry it might have paid to the victims of
the _Titanic_ disaster the small tribute of a blush. I ask myself
whether the Marine Department of the Board of Trade did really believe,
when they decided to shelve the report on equipment for a time, that a
ship of 45,000 tons, that _any_ ship, could be made practically
indestructible by means of water-tight bulkheads? It seems incredible to
anybody who had ever reflected upon the properties of material, such as
wood or steel.
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