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
PERSONAL ANXIETY
Although Germany's and Berlin's direct interest in the
passengers aboard the Titanic was less than that of London,
New York or Paris, there was the utmost concern for their
fate.
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