So far as the loss of the ship itself was concerned, it is certain that the stupefaction with which the news of her sinking was received was due to the belief that her vast size was a guarantee against disaster--that the ever-increasing dimensions of length, breadth, and tonnage had conferred upon the modern ocean liner a certain immunity against the dangers of travel by sea. The fetish of mere size seems, indeed, to have affected even the officers in command of these modern leviathans. Surely it must have thrown its spell over the captain of the ill-fated _Titanic_, who, in spite of an oft-repeated warning that there was a large field of ice ahead, followed the usual practice, if the night is clear, and ran his ship at full speed into the zone of danger, as though, forsooth, he expected the _Titanic_ to brush the ice floes aside, and split asunder any iceberg that might stand in her way. [Illustration: Courtesy of _Scientific American_ RIVETTING THE OUTER SKIN ON THE FRAMES OF A 65,000-TON OCEAN LINER] Confidence in the indestructibility of the _Titanic_, moreover, was stimulated by the fact that she was supposed to be the "last word" in first-class steamship construction, the culmination of three-quarters of a century of experience in building safe and stanch vessels. In the official descriptions of the ship, widely distributed at the time of her launching, the safety elements of her construction were freely dwelt upon. This literature rang the changes on stout bulkheads, watertight compartments, automatic, self-closing bulkhead doors, etc.,--and honestly so. There is every reason to believe that the celebrated firm who built the ship, renowned the world over for the high character of their work; the powerful company whose flag she carried; aye, and even her talented designer, who was the first to pronounce the _Titanic_ a doomed vessel and went down with the ship, were united in the belief that the size of the _Titanic_ and her construction were such that she was unsinkable by any of the ordinary accidents to which the transatlantic liner is liable. How comes it, then, that this noble vessel lies to-day at the bottom of the Atlantic in two thousand fathoms of water?