Southern Lane

The Southern Lane is a transatlantic shipping route used during the spring season, serving as the highway of spring traffic. After the Titan was destroyed by an iceberg, the survivors in Lifeboat No. 24, pulled by sturdy sailors and steered by brass-buttoned officers, made for the Southern Lane, the highway of spring traffic. The boat was making for the Southern Lane, the highway of spring traffic, as Rowland slept on the iceberg, and the boat's officers assured the moaning, praying woman that her child was safe in the care of John Rowland, a brave and trusty sailor who was certainly in the other boat with it, though they did not tell her that Rowland had hailed from the berg as she lay unconscious, and that if he still had the child, it was with him there, deserted.

Contrast with the Northern Lane Route

The Southern Lane stands in implicit contrast to the Northern Lane Route, which the Titan was designed to steam at full speed in fog, storm, and sunshine, winter and summer. The company's rule for the Titan was that she would steam at full speed in fog, storm, and sunshine, and on the Northern Lane Route, winter and summer, for reasons including that if another craft should strike her, the force of the impact would be distributed over a larger area if the Titan had full headway, and the brunt of the damage would be borne by the other; that if the Titan was the aggressor she would certainly destroy the other craft, even at half-speed, and perhaps damage her own bows, while at full speed, she would cut her in two with no more damage to herself than a paintbrush could remedy; that at full speed, she could be more easily steered out of danger; and that in case of an end-on collision with an iceberg, her bows would be crushed in but a few feet further at full than at half speed, and at the most three compartments would be flooded, which would not matter with six more to spare. The Titan was eight hundred feet long, of seventy thousand tons displacement, seventy-five thousand horse-power, and on her trial trip had steamed at a rate of twenty-five knots an hour over the bottom. She was built of steel throughout, and with nine compartments flooded the ship would still float, and so no known accident of the sea could possibly fill this many, the steamship Titan was considered practically unsinkable. The Southern Lane, by contrast, is the route taken by the survivors after the disaster, and Rowland, while delirious on the iceberg, mused that the company would run their boats in the other Lane after this, thinking of the money-grabbing wretches, and cursing them if they had drowned the woman he loved, cursing them with their water-tight compartments, and their logging of the lookouts, twenty-four boats for three thousand people lashed down with tarred gripe-lashings, thirty men to clear them away, and not an axe on the boat-deck or a sheath-knife on a man.

Narrative Significance

The Southern Lane functions as a geographical and symbolic counterpoint to the Northern Lane Route, representing the safer, more prudent path that the Titan's owners and officers rejected in their pursuit of speed records. The Titan had beaten all records on her maiden voyage, but up to the third return trip, had not lowered the time between Sandy Hook and Daunt's Rock to the five-day limit, and it was unofficially rumored among the two thousand passengers who had embarked at New York that an effort would now be made to do so. The Southern Lane is the route of survival and rescue, the destination of the lifeboat that carried Mrs. Selfridge away from the wreck, and the route that Rowland, in his fevered reflections, believes the company will use after the disaster. The Southern Lane is also the route that the survivors of the Titan disaster aim for in their lifeboat, and which Rowland later identifies as the safer alternative to the Northern Lane Route that the Titan had been steaming at full speed through fog. The Southern Lane is the route of survival and rescue, the destination of the lifeboat that carried Mrs. Selfridge away from the wreck, and the route that Rowland, in his fevered reflections, believes the company will use after the disaster.