But if there be in Liverpool anybody not too angry to listen, I want to assure him or them that my exclamatory line, “Was there no one on board either of these ships to think of dropping a fender—­etc.,” was not uttered in the spirit of blame for anyone.  I would not dream of blaming a seaman for doing or omitting to do anything a person sitting in a perfectly safe and unsinkable study may think of.  All my sympathy goes to the two captains; much the greater share of it to Captain Kendall, who has lost his ship and whose load of responsibility was so much heavier!  I may not know a great deal, but I know how anxious and perplexing are those nearly end-on approaches, so infinitely more trying to the men in charge than a frank right-angle crossing.

I may begin by reminding Captain Littlehales that I, as well as himself, have had to form my opinion, or rather my vision, of the accident, from printed statements, of which many must have been loose and inexact and none could have been minutely circumstantial.  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.  Not by Captain Littlehales, however, and I wish to reply to what he says with all possible deference.  His illustration borrowed from boxing is very apt, and in a certain sense makes for my contention.  Yes.  A blow delivered with a boxing-glove will draw blood or knock a man out; but it would not crush in his nose flat or break his jaw for him—­at least, not always.  And this is exactly my point.

Twice in my sea life I have had occasion to be impressed by the preserving effect of a fender.  Once I was myself the man who dropped it over.  Not because I was so very clever or smart, but simply because I happened to be at hand.  And I agree with Captain Littlehales that to see a steamer’s stern coming at you at the rate of only two knots is a staggering experience.  The thing seems to have power enough behind it to cut half through the terrestrial globe.