Storm

Man has conquered the sea. Complex steel engines, 900 ft. in length, 54,000 tons in capacity, plow across it, 600 miles a day or more, over the same spots where, on the ancient maps, great monsters with fluctuating tails engulfed the early mariner, across the same areas where great storm gods with puffing cheeks emerging from the cloud in bas relief blew the chill blast of sudden death upon lost adventurers. The mystery is gone. And the danger?

Hardly a full day out from Cherbourg, churning her white wake westward into the seas of the leviathans, steamed the only Leviathan remaining. Her skipper, Captain Hartley, leaning into the wind upon the bridge, had had his last night's sleep within his bunk for he did not know how long. Into a towering gale, momentarily increasing, swept the vessel. Great seas pounded her. Within her thin steel walls reposed a freight of notables. David Warfield, the actor, returning from sojourn abroad; Julius Fleischmann, the yeast millionaire, turned racehorse breeder in his postmarital retirement; two baseball teams, the White Sox and the Giants, homing from winter play abroad; Charalambous Simopoulos, the new Greek Ambassador to the U. S., and his Secretary C. Diamantopoulos; a Manhattan cloak and suit dealer with two diamonds set in his teeth; and many souls humbler, but equally divine, from steerage to first cabin.

Against these all the great storm broke. A wave slapped the tall ship's side, burst in a thick glass port, flooded a cabin and swept a man reclining in security out of his berth, wrenching his shoulder out of place. The gale increased. At times it blew 100 miles an hour. More ports were driven in-- eleven ports in all. On three successive days, green water rolled over the boat deck, 90 ft. above the keel. Two stewards were thrown down a companionway and broke their arms. The expansive panes of the windows protecting the promenades and staterooms were shattered. The roll of injuries rose to 32. In one day, the Leviathan progressed a bare 200 miles. Captain Hartley never took off his clothes Beneath the buffeting, the ship heeled over 20DEG to port.

But, in the end, the man-made Leviathan steamed into Quarantine, 6 days and 14 hours out from Cherbourg. The timorous passengers smiled and rolled across the solid earth upon their sea legs. The timid questioned whether ever again they would go to sea, questioned whether the sea were conquerable, asked in their hearts whether some day or other some such man-made Leviathan might not succumb to the demons of the ancient deep. Indeed, it would be a serious question for the Shipping Board, or any other shipping agency, if one of its great ships should ever sink before the onslaught of the storm.

What is the chance of such a sinking? Is it impossible? The grizzled mariner would shake his head. Nothing is impossible. In two ways may a ship be sunk--by being crushed, by being capsized. Naval architects are not hired to design ships that a storm could crush. Such a feat would yield neither profit nor honor. But capsize ? Everything that floats, or nearly everything, can be capsized. A ship that rolls easily is best, for she knows how to right herself. Of course, she is less comfortable for passengers than one who keeps an even keel in ordinary weathers; but by and large, she is the more seaworthy. The temptation to build ships that would not roll--in order to gain passengers at the expense of safety--is old, however. The Germans followed that line a while before the War. But the old temptation has fewer followers nowadays. With steam vessels, the foremost part of seamanship is to keep them headed into a storm. What danger then? Very little, unless the captain be drunk--or unless her driving force go bad, her propeller shaft be broken, her engines stop in their ceaseless grind. In these days of several screws and several turbines, even that danger is minimized. The leviathans may flout the sea until some day--who can tell?--the unpredictable, the improbable, may turn itself into a fact.