the risk. Or he runs into the Drawing office with a hospital note and a gift of flowers and fruit for the sick wife of a draughtsman. Or at horn-blow he stands by a ship’s gangway, down which four thousand hungry men, with a ninety feet drop below them, are rushing for home and supper, and with voice and eye controls them ... a guard rope breaks ... another instant and there may be grim panic on the gangway ... but his great voice rings out, “Stand back, men,” and he holds them as in a leash until the rope is made good again.

All in the day’s work, those and a thousand other incidents which men treasure to-day in the Island, and, if you are tactful, will reveal to you in their slow laconic Northern way. He has been in the Yard perhaps since four or five o’clock—since six for a certainty. At seven or so he will trudge home, or ride in a tramcar with the other workers, to sit over his plans or his books well into the night.

One recalls a day, not long ago, spent most of it in tramping over the Island Works, guided by two men who had worked for many years with Andrews and who, like others we saw and thousands we did not see, held his memory almost in reverence. In and out, up and down we went, through heat and rain, over cobble stones and tram lines; now stepping on planks right down the double bottom, three hundred yards long, from which was soon to rise the Titanic’s successor; now crouching amongst the shores sustaining the huge bulk of another half-plated giant; now passing in silent wonder along the huge cradles and ways above which another monster stood ready for launching. Then into shop after shop in endless succession, each needing a day’s journey to traverse, each wonderfully clean and ordered, and all full of wonders. Boilers as tall as houses, shafts a boy’s height in diameter, enormous propellers hanging like some monstrous sea animal in chains, turbine motors on which workmen clambered as upon a cliff, huge lathes, pneumatic hammers, and quiet slow-moving machines that dealt with cold steel, shearing it, punching it, planing it, as if it had been so much dinner cheese. Then up into the Moulding Loft, large enough for a football ground, and its floor a beautiful maze of frame lines; on through the Joiners’ shops, with their tools that can do everything but speak; through the Smiths’ shops, with their long rows of helmet-capped hearths, and on into the great airy building, so full of interest that one could linger in it for a week, where an army of Cabinetmakers are fashioning all kinds of ship’s furniture. Then across into the Central power station, daily generating enough electricity to light Belfast. On through the fine arched Drawing hall, where the spirit of Tom Andrews seemed still to linger, and into his office where often he sat drafting those reports, so exhaustively minute, so methodical and neatly penned, which now have such pathetic and revealing interest. Lastly, after such long journeying, out to a wharf and over a great ship, full of stir and clamour, and as thronged with workmen as soon it would be with passengers.

THE TURNING SHOP

And often, as one went, hour after hour, one kept asking, “Had Mr. Andrews knowledge of this, and this, and that?”

“Yes, of everything—he knew everything,” would be the patient answer.

“And could he do this, and this, and this?” one kept on.

“He could do anything,” would be the answer.

“Even how to drive an engine?”

“Surely.”

“And how to rivet a plate?”

“He could have built a ship himself, and fitted her—yes, and sailed her too”—was the answer we got; and then as one dragged wearily towards the gateway (outside which, you will remember, young Tom waited one bitter morning, disappointed but staunch) the guide, noting one’s plight, said, “You will sleep well to-night?”

Why, yes, one felt like sleeping for a week!

“Ah, well,” was the quiet comment, “Mr. Andrews would do all that and more three times maybe every day.”

All in the day’s work, you see. And when it was done, then home in a tramcar, to have his dinner, a talk with his mother over the telephone, and so to work again until eleven.

In 1901 Andrews became a Member of the Institution of Naval Architects, and in the year following a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He was also a Member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (New York), and an Honorary Member of the Belfast Association of Engineers.

In 1908 he made a home for himself at Dunallan, Windsor Avenue, Belfast, marrying, on June 24th, Helen Reilly, younger daughter of the late John Doherty Barbour, of Conway, Dunmurry, County Antrim, D.L.—worthiest and most loyal of helpmates.

Concerning his married life, so woefully restricted in point of years as it was rich in bounty of happiness, it is perhaps sufficient to say here that, just before he sailed from Southampton, in April last, on that final tragic voyage, he made occasion, one evening whilst talking with a friend, to contrast his own lot with the lot of some husbands he knew; saying, amongst other things, that in the whole time since his marriage, no matter how often he had been away or how late he had stayed at the Yard, never had Mrs. Andrews made a complaint.

She would not. With Jane Eyre she could say, “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.”

In 1910 a child was born to them and named Elizabeth Law Barbour.

IV.

All this is important, vital a great deal of it; but after all what concerns us chiefly, in this brief record, is the kind of man Thomas Andrews was—that and the fine end he made. Everything, one supposes, in this workaday world, must eventually be expressed in terms of character. Though a man build the Atlantic fleet, himself with superhuman vigour of hand and brain, and have not character, what profiteth it him, and how much the less profiteth it the fleets maybe, at last?

Perhaps of all the manual professions that of shipbuilding is the one demanding from those engaged in it, masters and men, the sternest rectitude. Good enough in the shipyard is never enough. Think what scamped work, a flawed shaft, a badly laid plate, an error in calculation, may mean some wild night out in the Atlantic; and when next you are in Belfast go to Queen’s Island and see there, in the shops, on the slips, how everyone is striving, or being made to strive, on your behalf and that of all who voyage, for the absolute best—everything to a hair’s breadth, all as strong and sound as hands can achieve, each rivet of all the millions in a liner (perhaps the most impressive thing one saw) tested separately and certified with its own chalk mark.

Well, Andrews, to the extent of his powers and position, was responsible for that absolute best, and the fact that he was proves his character—but does not of itself establish his claim to a place high and apart. Many others assuredly have succeeded as speedily and notably as he, taking success at its material valuation, and their names are written, or one day will be written in the sand; but irrespective of the great work he did and the great success he achieved, Andrews was a man, in the opinion of all who knew him, whose name deserves to be graven in enduring