SMITH VOUCHED FOR BRAVERY OF CREW

Told Shipbuilder His Men Would Die Like Those on Birkenhead
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LONDON, April 22---Manager Director Kemster, of the shipbuilding firm which constructed the Titanic, while speaking to a meeting at Belfast today, said that just before the Titanic left Belfast on her maiden voyage he asked Captain Smith if the old-time seamen’s courage and fearlessness in the face of death still existed. Captain Smith replied with emphasis:

"If a disaster like that to the Birkenhead happened they would go down as those men went down.”

The British troopship Birkenhead, while taking detachments of Lancers and Rifles from Queenstown to Capetown, struck a rock off Simon’s Bay, South Africa, February 26, 1853. Of the 638 persons on board, 454 of the crew and soldiers perished.