The good ship that is gone (I remember
reading of her launch something like eight years ago) had not been
ushered in with beat of drum as the chief wonder of the world of waters.
The company who owned her had no agents, authorised or unauthorised,
giving boastful interviews about her unsinkability to newspaper reporters
ready to swallow any sort of trade statement if only sensational enough
for their readers--readers as ignorant as themselves of the nature of all
things outside the commonest experience of the man in the street.
No; there was nothing of that in her case. The company was content to
have as fine, staunch, seaworthy a ship as the technical knowledge of
that time could make her. In fact, she was as safe a ship as nine
hundred and ninety-nine ships out of any thousand now afloat upon the
sea. No; whatever sorrow one can feel, one does not feel indignation.
This was not an accident of a very boastful marine transportation; this
was a real casualty of the sea. The indignation of the New South Wales
Premier flashed telegraphically to Canada is perfectly uncalled-for. That
statesman, whose sympathy for poor mates and seamen is so suspect to me
that I wouldn't take it at fifty per cent.
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