"The traveling public prefers the large comfortable boat of average speed, and anyway that is the boat that pays. High speed eats up money mile by mile, and extreme high speed is suicidal. There will be high speed boats for use as transports and a wise government will assist steamship companies in paying for them, as the English Government is now doing in the cases of the Lusitania and Mauretania, twenty-five knot boats; but no steamship company will put them out merely as a commercial venture." Captain Smith believed the Titanic to be unsinkable. BRAVE TO THE LAST And though the ship turned out to be sinkable, the captain, by many acts of bravery in the face of death, proved that his courage was equal to any test. Captain Inman Sealby, commander of the steamer Republic, which was the first vessel to use the wireless telegraph to save her passengers in a collision, spoke highly of the commander of the wrecked Titanic, calling him one of the ablest seamen in the world. "I am sure that Captain Smith did everything in his power to save his passengers. The disaster is one about which he could have had no warning. Things may happen at sea that give no warning to ships' crews and commanders until the harm comes. I believe from what I read that the Titanic hit an iceberg and glanced off, but that the berg struck her from the bottom and tore a great hole." Many survivors have mentioned the captain's name and narrated some incident to bring out his courage and helpfulness in the emergency; but it was left to a fireman on board the Titanic to tell the story of his death and to record his last message. This man had gone down with the White Star giantess and was clinging to a piece of wreckage for about half an hour before he finally joined several members of the Titanic's company on the bottom of a boat which was floating about among other wreckage near the Titanic. Harry Senior, the fireman, with his eight or nine companions in distress, had just managed to get a firm hold in the upturned boat when they saw the Titanic rearing preparatory to her final plunge. At that moment, according to the fireman's story, Captain Smith jumped into the sea from the promenade deck of the Titanic with a little girl clutched in his arms. It took only a few strokes to bring him to the upturned boat, where a dozen hands were stretched out to take the little child from his arms and drag him to a point of safety. "Captain Smith was dragged onto the upturned boat," said the fireman. "He had a life-buoy and a life-preserver. He clung there for a moment and then he slid off again. For a second time he was dragged from the icy water. Then he took off his life-preserver, tossed the life-buoy on the inky waters, and slipped into the water again with the words: "I will follow the ship." OTHER FAITHFUL MEN