h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The first paragraph after that bold text names the RMS Titanic as the "Royal Merchant Ship Titanic." This is wrong. Along with ferrying passengers, Titanic used her copious hold space to transport mail, and had to seek royal permission to do so. This certification made her the Royal Mail Ship Titanic.

Ta for that, GargleB! I must admit I had no idea what 'RMS' actually meant...!

Righto, GB, I think Anna's fixed that up, now...!

Thank you very much. And in case I gave you the wrong impression earlier, I was not offended by the introduction at all. My only issue with it regarded its appearance in bold text, which has been changed. In this particular case, I found myself with more information than I could fit into a text box in Netscape, and so the program wouldn't allow me to add any more text. The intro was to be the last step. Your intro will do as well as anything I might have thrown in.

And while I have your attention, I did have two nits to pick concerning footnotes, but the Towers have already reverted one of them, so I'm down to one. Footnote number 7 seems to me to be too important to relegate to a footnote. It's part of a cause-and-effect sequence that has been building up throughout the analysis part of the article, and that bit about Britannic is the culmination. Cause: BOT regulations lagging... Titanic disaster... Olympic crew refuses to serve... BOT revises regulations... Titanic's sister ship sinks much faster than her with minimal loss of life. Anyway, that's what I think.

And now that I've given it a more thorough reading, I have found another error of fact. In the prominent passengers section, for Mr. Guggenheim, I found this sentence: "He was returning to New York with his wife after an extended stay in Paris, and was accompanied on board by his Parisian mistress." He was not returning *with* his wife, he was returning *to* her. She was still in New York. And, if you read on a bit further, I discuss how Guggenheim wrote a letter to her and gave it to a man to deliver to her, after he decides to "go down like gentlemen." That man survives to see the letter delivered. It's a clever irony, that he traveled with his mistress, which was quite a scandal, and yet he wrote a very heartfelt letter to his wife in his last moments.

But, of course, if the reader thinks his wife is on board, the whole story is a confusion.