outer life of the Shipping and Commercial world, and in a hundred other respects helped towards his development as a shipbuilder and a man. Now he had opportunity to apply his knowledge and experience, to express in tangible form his genius. The great ship rising there below the gantries to the accompaniment of such clang and turmoil—she was his, part of him. To the task, one of the noblest surely done by men, he gave himself unsparingly, every bit of him, might and main: and his success, great as it was, had the greater acclaim because in achieving it he worked not for personal success but for success in his work. That was the man’s way. His job, first and last and always.

The names alone of all the ships in whose building Andrews had a hand, more or less, as Designer, Constructor, Supervisor and Adviser, would fill this page. The Cedric, the Baltic, the Adriatic, the Oceanic, the Amerika, the President Lincoln and President Grant, the Nieuw Amsterdam, the Rotterdam, the Lapland (of which recently we have heard so much): those are a few of them. The Olympic and the Titanic: those are two more. Their names are as familiar to us as those of our friends. We have, some of us, seen the great ships on whose bows they are inscribed, perhaps sailed in them, or watched anxiously for their arrival at some port of the world; well, wherever they sail now, or lie, they have upon them the impress of Tom Andrews’ hand and brain, and with one of them, the last and finest of all, he himself gloriously perished.

There are many others, less known perhaps, but carrying the flag no less proudly upon the Seven seas, for whose design and construction Andrews was in some measure, often in great measure responsible: the Aragon, the Amazon, the Avon, the Asturias, the Arlanza, the Herefordshire, the Leicestershire, the Gloucestershire, the Oxfordshire, the Pericles, the Themistocles, the Demosthenes, the Laurentic, the Megantic, and the rest. It is a splendid record. Lord Pirrie may well be proud of it, and Ulster too: both we know are proud of the man who so devotedly helped to make it.

The work of building all those ships, and so many more, from the Celtic to the Titanic, covered a period of some thirteen years, 1899-1912, and in that period Andrews gained such advancement as his services to the Firm deserved. In 1904 he became Assistant Chief Designer, and in the year following was promoted to be Head of the Designing department under Lord Pirrie. His age then was thirty-two, an age at which most men are beginning their career; but he already had behind him what may seem the work and experience of a strenuous lifetime.

“When first I knew Mr. Andrews,” writes one who knew him intimately, and later was closely associated with him in his work, “he was a young man, but young as he was to him were entrusted the most important and responsible duties—the direct supervision of constructing the largest ships built in the Yard from the laying of their keels until their sailing from Belfast. Such a training eminently fitted him for the important position to which he succeeded in 1905, that of Chief of the Designing department. For one so young the position involved duties that taxed him to the full. To superintend the construction of ships like the Baltic and Oceanic was a great achievement, but at the age of thirty-two to be Chief of a department designing leviathans like the Olympic was a greater one still. How well he rose to the call everyone knows. No task was too heavy, and none too light, for him to grapple with successfully. He seemed endowed with boundless energy, and his interest in his work was unceasing.”

Others who knew him well during this important period of his career testify in the like manner.

“Diligent to the point of strenuousness,” wrote one of them, “thinking whilst others slept, reading while others played, through sheer toil and ability he made for himself a position that few of his years attain”; and then the writer, whose ideal of life is character, notes approvingly and justly that Andrews worked not as a hireling, but in the spirit of an artist whose work must satisfy his own exacting conscience.

Those boundless energies soon were given wider scope. Early in 1907 the Adriatic was finished, and in March of that same year he was made a Managing Director of the Firm, the Right Hon. A. M. Carlisle being at this time Chairman of the Board. Everyone knows, or can judge for himself, what were the duties of this new position—this additional position, rather, for he still remained Chief of the Designing department—and what, in such a huge and complicated concern as the Island works, the duties involved. Briefly we may summarise them.

A knowledge of its fifty-three branches equal to that of any of the fifty-three men in charge of them; the supervising these, combining and managing them so that all might, smoothly and efficiently, work to the one great end assigned, the keeping abreast with the latest devices in labour-saving appliances, with the newest means of securing economical fitness, with the most modern discoveries in electrical, mechanical and marine engineering—in short, everything relative to the construction and equipment of modern steamships; and in addition all the numerous and delicate duties devolving upon him as Lord Pirrie’s Assistant. Furthermore, the many voyages of discovery, so to speak, which he made as representative of the Firm, thereby, we are told by one with whom he sailed often, “gaining a knowledge of sea life and the art of working a ship unequalled in my experience by anyone not by profession a seafarer”; and, lastly, his many inspections of, and elaborate reports upon, ships and business works, together with his survey, at Lord Pirrie’s instance, of the Harbours of Ireland, Canada, Germany, and elsewhere.

It seems a giant’s task. Even to us poor humdrum mortals, toiling meanly on office stools at our twopenny enterprises, it seems more than a giant’s task. Yet Andrews shouldered it, unweariedly, cheerily, joyfully, for pure love of the task.

One sees him, big and strong, a paint-smeared bowler hat on his crown, grease on his boots and the pockets of his blue jacket stuffed with plans, making his daily round of the Yards, now consulting his Chief, now conferring with a foreman, now interviewing an owner, now poring over intricate calculations in the Drawing office, now in company with his warm friend, old schoolfellow, and co-director, Mr. George Cumming of the Engineering department, superintending the hoisting of a boiler by the two hundred ton crane into some newly launched ship by a wharf. Or he runs amok through a gang—to their admiration, be it said—found heating their tea-cans before horn-blow; or comes unawares upon a party enjoying a stolen smoke below a tunnel-shaft, and, having spoken his mind forcibly, accepts with a smile the dismayed sentinel’s excuse that “’twasn’t fair to catch him by coming like that into the tunnel instead of by the way he was expected.” Or he kicks a red hot rivet, which has fallen fifty feet from an upper deck, missing his head by inches, and strides on laughing at his escape. Or he calls some laggard to stern account, promising him the gate double quick without any talk next time. Or he lends a ready hand to one in difficulties; or just in time saves another from falling down a hold; or saying that married men’s lives are precious, orders back a third from some dangerous place and himself takes