The best
record up to October, 1891, was that of the Teutonic,
of five days, sixteen hours, and thirty minutes. Triple-screw
propellers have since then been introduced in some of the
greater ships, and the record speed has been cut down to the
four days and ten hours of the Lusitania in 1908 and the
four days, six hours and forty-one minutes of the Mauretania
in 1910.
The Titanic was not built especially for speed, but in every
other way she was the master product of the shipbuilders' art.
Progress through the centuries has been steady, and perhaps
the twentieth century will prepare a vessel that will be unsinkable
as well as magnificent. Until the fatal accident the
Titanic and Olympic were considered the last words on ship-
building; but much may still remain to be spoken.
CHAPTER XXVII
SAFETY AND LIFE-SAVING DEVICES
WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY--WATER-TIGHT BULKHEADS--SUBMARINE
SIGNALS--LIFE-BOATS AND RAFTS--NIXON'S PONTOON
--LIFE-PRESERVERS AND BUOYS--ROCKETS
THE fact that there are any survivors of the Titanic
left to tell the story of the terrible catastrophe is
only another of the hundreds of instances on record
of the value of wireless telegraphy in saving life on shipboard.
Without Marconi's invention it is altogether probable that
the world would never have known of the nature of the
Titanic's fate, for it is only barely within the realm of
possibility that any of the Titanic's passengers' poorly clad,
without proper provisions of food and water, and exposed
in the open boats to the frigid weather, would have survived
long enough to have been picked up by a transatlantic liner
in ignorance of the accident to the Titanic.
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