THE CAPTAIN AND THE SHIP.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 114, 6 July 1911, Page 5

THE CAPTAIN AND THE SHIP.

“The mistakes that doctors make are buried in the ground. Those made by lawyers arc paid for by their clients. But the mistakes of sea-cap-tains are paid for by themselves, and bitter is the price!" This is a quotation from an article in “Muusey’s” on the hard fate of a commander who survives the loss of his ship. That such a calamity means the end of his career is so well recognised that lie probably cuts the situation short bj, committing suicide. When the Oder struck on the island of Socrotra, though the passengers were all rescued. the ship was lost, and Captain Pfeiffer shot himself. When the Kingston earthquake destroyed the lighthouse, a Hamburg-American liner thronged with tourists, drove hard upon the coral beach at Port Royal. Unaware of the lighthouse _ disaster, the captain blamed himself for not picking up the light, and having safely landed his passengers in a Cain: sea, ho went to his state-room and put a bullet through his brain. The death of Captain Mclntosh, in the Wairarapa wreck, is another instance given hero of the man who feels bound to die; and Vice-Admiral Tryon, after giving the unlucky order that sank the battleship Victoria and her chew, in June, 1893, went down with the vessel, saying at the last moment: “It is all ray fault.” But, whether in fault or not, the captain who is saved from a wreck has little chance to sail a ship again, and usually, at the best, retires to die a landsman”s death on shore. A veteran commander, approached by a journalist for matter towards a special article on shipwrecks, exploded in wrath, “What in thunder do I know of shipwrecks: His distinction was , his long service in that old Canard line which “carried no napkins, but never lost a life”; and he pertinently remarked that a man who know anything about shopwrecks “would not be here.” The nappy captain lias no history. If adventures befall him, the ■ most sympathetic company must send him ashore, or the insurance rates rise so high on any ship he commands that they can’t afford to pay for him. And passengers arc ungrateful people. When the Norse King was cruising amongst the lonian Islands, the tw o hundred and fifty tourists on board begged the captain to stand closer in shore off Zanto. that they might better realise that Byronic region. He obligingly complied, and ran_ his ves-f/-l hard aground on a jutting reox. The passengers got safely to land, and promptly hold an indignation meeting, denouncing the captain as unlit to command a ship. /