I have read the reports of
the _Times_ and the _Daily Telegraph_, and no others. What stands in the
columns of these papers is responsible for my conclusion--or perhaps for
the state of my feelings when I wrote the _Illustrated London News_
article.
From these sober and unsensational reports, I derived the impression that
this collision was a collision of the slowest sort. I take it, of
course, that both the men in charge speak the strictest truth as to
preliminary facts. We know that the _Empress of Ireland_ was for a time
lying motionless. And if the captain of the _Storstad_ stopped his
engines directly the fog came on (as he says he did), then taking into
account the adverse current of the river, the _Storstad_, by the time the
two ships sighted each other again, must have been barely moving _over
the ground_. The "over the ground" speed is the only one that matters in
this discussion. In fact, I represented her to myself as just creeping
on ahead--no more. This, I contend, is an imaginative view (and we can
form no other) not utterly absurd for a seaman to adopt.
So much for the imaginative view of the sad occurrence which caused me to
speak of the fender, and be chided for it in unmeasured terms.
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