SHIPS AND THE SEA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVII, Issue XLVII, 1 March 1912, Page 7

SHIPS AND THE SEA.

PENALTY OF THE CAPTAIN. Doctors' mistakes, many of them at any rate, are buried in the ground. Those made by lawyers ar ut pa id for bv their clients. But the mistakes made bv sea captains, no matter what they mav cost others, are in the end'settled by the captains themselves. The ioinr roll of stii-j cides tells the story (says a writer in a London paper). There is never a. voyage without its sudden emergency, demanding presence j of mind, cool judgment, and skill. Let these qualities fail the master mariner I in his time of need. and. no matter j what might have been the strain on bodv, and brain, his profesisonal career is at an end. j There was Captain Frederick Watkins, who commanded the C'ity of Paris when the old Ininan liner came staggering to port, with the Atlantic waves washing about her holds and .surging against her bulkheads, the result of a fog shrouded impact with an iceberg. Tho liner was thronged with passengers ; rno unforeseen danger curie near to sendiffg her and her thousand souls to the bottom: hut the energy, resourcefulness, and skill of her commander brought her safe to port, a deed to be long remembered. It was remembered no to a few years ago. when a slight- miscalculation on the part of Captain Watkins sent his vessel upon the Manacle rocks on the Cornish coast. Now you may search all of the obscure places of the earth, and you may not locate him. There was the Prinzess Victoria T.uise. of the Hamburg-American -tine. , ;\ymch drove hard upon the coral beach at, Port Koyai, in the Island of Jamaica. ; The vessel was thronged with tourists making a tiip to the West Indies. Fortunately the --ea was calm, and there was no difficulty in getting pa.-sengers ashore. When the iast had been safely landed the captain went- to his stateroom a-n<J pu; a bullet through his brain. The pitiable part of it all was that " he had no need to. It was not- the brain he shattered that was at fault, but the Kingston earthquake, which had destroyed the lighthouse. Groping for the same iigbthouse some days later camo another vessel of the same line, the Prinz Waldemar. Her wreck lies a few hundred feet from that of her consort! Mute tcotimouy to the skill of the navigators. Had the lighthouse been there they would have found the passage ; failing it they found destruction. Captain Griffith of the Mohegan. stood on the bridge of .his fast sinking ship until the waters engulfed him. Dtloncle. of the French liner sunk in mid-Atlantic by collision with the British steamship Cromartyshire, wa?last seen on the bridge with hand on the whistle cord, as his vessel took the long dive. Von Goessel of the Elbe stood with folded arms upon the bridge as the vessel slowly sank. I,i the disaster of the steamship Republic no blame was attached to Captain Inman Sealb.v, her commander. Yet he was dropped from the service, and now. at trie age <>f £O, is studying admiralty law at the University of Michigan. Ail his sea career had been with the White line, and for 16 years he had been commanding its vessels. There was one case in which a captain lost- his ship because of too great ■deference to the wishes of his passengers. The vessel was the Nore King. At the time of her undoing she was making a cruise anionjr tile lonian Islanus, carrying 250 tourists. The ship was keeping a course about seven miles olf the picturesque coast- of Zante, when a deputation of? passengers came to Captain Wright and urged him to stand closer inshore that they might better see the region which byron had immortalised. He obligingly complied. A few hours later the Nore King was hard aground on a jutting reef. The passengers were got safely ashore, where they promptly held an indignation meeting and signed a paper denouncing the captain, who had wrecked his ship and his reputation in an effort to oblige them, 'liie vessel became a total loss. and the master's certificate was suspended. One inexcusable case of the loss of the vessel was the spectacular stranding ot the big China of the Peninsular an ( ] Oriental service l , which was run ashore on an island in the Red Sea in 1897. Among the numerous passengers was Ladv Brassey. It was her birthday, and there was a specinl dinner in honour of the occasion. Tho vessel was the commodore ship, and her captain was the commodore of the line. Lady Brassey sat at the light hand of the captain. As was subsequently shown in the enquiry, he was so engrossed in his fair neighbour's conversation that lie paid no attention to three notes which were sent to him from the bridge. Tile notes warned the captain that the vessel was rapidly nearing n certain point, and that the course should b" altered. Conceiving that he had done all that was required of him. the officer of the watch did nothing more, and before tho dinner was over the vessel struck. That ended th ( > captain's sea career. It also ended any further chance of mishap through the conversation of captains with passf-np-ers. as the line issued an order that in future the commanders of-its vessels would not be allowed to come into social intercourse with voyagers.