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so the Loss Book was a chronicle of the SHADOWS OF THE PAST - the breath of History.
I had been reading about the history of the TITANIC: She was commissioned at the time by White Star Lines as an answer to the challenges put up by Cunard with "Mauritania" and "Lusitania" and the fast steamers of the German lines Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft and Norddeutscher Lloyd were planning three fast and enormous steamers of the Imperator class, SS Imperator, SS Bismarck and SS Vaterland, which later took the "Blue Riband" - the trophy for the fastest transatlantic crossing - from Cunard after 26 consecutive years, reaching an average speed of 23,5 knots and taking 5 days and 11 hours from Cherbourg to Sand Hook. It was a rat race by steam vessels of up to 250 meters of length and with designs providing for 50.000 horsepowers - an expression of the unbounded hubris of the human mind and only 2.224 death later reflection started to kick in - "was it really necessary"?
Over the whole multi-story building that is bordered by a gallery from which clerks in red livery call out the names of brokers who are wanted on the telephone, there hangs a muffled bell of sound of quietly babbling voices of hundreds of persons simultaneously and studiously presenting their issues.
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