 |
CHAPTER XIX
HOW THE WORLD RECEIVED THE NEWS
NATIONS PROSTRATE WITH GRIEF—MESSAGES FROM KINGS
AND CARDINALS—DISASTER STIRS WORLD TO NECESSITY
OF STRICTER REGULATIONS
Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters |  |
GERMAN LAWS ALSO INADEQUATE
The German laws, governing the safety appliances on board trans-oceanic vessels, seem to be as archaic and inadequate as those of the British Board of Trade. The maximum provision contained in the German statutes refers to vessels with the capacity of 50,000 cubic metres, which must carry sixteen life-boats. The law also says that if this number of life-boats be insufficient to accommodate all the persons on board, including the crew, there shall be carried elsewhere in the vessel a correspondingly additional number of collapsible life-boats, suitable rafts, floating deck-chairs and life-buoys, as well as a generous supply of life-belts.
A vessel of 10,000 tons was a "leviathan" in the days when the German law was passed, and it appears to have undergone no change to meet the conditions, imposed by the construction of vessels twice or three times 10,000 tons, like the Hamburg-American Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, or the North German Lloyd George Washington, to say nothing of the 50,000-ton Imperator, which is to be added to the Hamburg fleet next year.
The German lines seem, like the White Star Company, to have reckoned simply with the practical impossibility of a ship like the Titanic succumbing to the elements.
|
CHAPTER XIX
HOW THE WORLD RECEIVED THE NEWS
NATIONS PROSTRATE WITH GRIEF—MESSAGES FROM KINGS
AND CARDINALS—DISASTER STIRS WORLD TO NECESSITY
OF STRICTER REGULATIONS
Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters | |