'A fresh and awful chapter in the history of the sea'
THE Herald on Friday, April 26, 1912 felt this "fresh and awful chapter in the story of the sea" required local comment and made it the subject of its opinion column. The paper noted that many people had come to question the wisdom of building "lordly pleasure houses full of comfort and luxury" with "too arrogant a disregard for the power of wind and wave."
Only experts could say if the Titanic carried enough lifeboats for everyone on board, said the Herald, but evidence so far suggested it had not.
The Herald praised the self-sacrifice of the men on the Titanic for ensuring that the majority of survivors were women and children.
In what today would be a more sexist observation than any newspaper would care to make the Herald said: "In full face of their self-sacrifice for the weaker, the noise of the unwomanly clamour for equality of the sexes is hushed. The militant suffragette will have to revise her estimate of man."
Careless
The Herald said the ease and comfort of travel in the modern world must not blind people to the need for caution. It concluded by urging its readers: "Let us see to it that our privileges do not make us careless of our own lives or the happiness of those dependent on us."
Elsewhere, in a series of articles headed Notes by the Wayside a Herald writer said how pleasing it was that class and wealth had no bearing on whether a person lived or died, a statement which we all now know to have been wrong.
"A repulsive story has been set abroad that favour was given to wealth. The facts sufficiently contradict that. The only preferences given was to the women and children, and it appears that every woman who wished to leave - some did not - was taken off before any of the men.
"As to choice amongst those who remained, if money had counted, there were monied men on board who could have bought the Titanic out-and-out and over again, but they could not buy their lives, and, as far as can be judged, they made no base endeavour to do so."
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Weather for Milngavie
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: North west
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Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
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