As the Titanic was leaving her pier at Southampton there came a sound like the booming of artillery.  The passengers thronging to the rail saw the steamship New York slowly drawing near.  The movement of the Titanic’s gigantic body had sucked the water away from the quay so violently that the seven stout hawsers mooring the New York to her pier snapped like rotten twine, and she bore down on the giant ship stern first and helpless.  The Titanic reversed her engines, and tugs plucked the New York away barely in time to avoid a bad smash.  If any old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the great floating hotel.  As the ship passed the time of day by wireless with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working smoothly, all going well.

For some reason the great fleet of icebergs which drifts south of Cape Race every summer moved down unusually early this year.  The Carmania, three days in advance of the Titanic, ran into the ice-field on Thursday.  The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains.  Passengers photographed the brilliant monsters.  The steamship Niagara, many leagues astern, reported a slight collision, with no great harm done.  That was enough.  Captain Dow retraced his course to the northeast and, after an hour’s steaming, laid a new course for Fire Island buoy.  The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual.

Into this desolate waste of sea came the Titanic on Sunday evening.  She encountered fog, for the region is almost continuously swathed in the mists raised by the contact of the Arctic current with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.  Scattered far and wide in every direction were many icebergs, shrouded in gray, invisible to the eyes of the sharpest lookouts, lying in wait for their prey.

Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was uniformly cold.  Moreover, the submarine bell, which gives warning to navigators of the neighborhood of shoal water, does not signify the approach of icebergs.  The newest ocean giant was in deadly peril, though probably few of her passengers guessed it, so reassuring are the huge bulk, the skilful construction, the watertight compartments, the able captain and crew, to the mind of the landsman.  Dinner was long past, and many of the passengers doubtless turned to thoughts of supper after hours of talk or music or cards; for there were not many promenading the cold, foggy decks of the onrushing steamship.