The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-08-10
THE SEA CAPTAIN:
 HIS HEAVY TASK
Responsible Duty of Sea Commanders Not Real
 ized by Passengers

Doctors mistakes many of them at any rate, are buried in the ground Those made by lawyers are paid for by their clients. But the mistakes made by sea captains, no matter what they may cost others, are in the end settled by the captains themselves. The long roll of suicides tells the story.
 There is never voyage without its sudden emergency, demanding pres ence of mind, cool Judgment and skill. Let those qualities fail the mas ter mariner in time of need and no matter what might have been the strain on body and brain his profes- Sional career is at an end.
 ]. There was Captain Frederick Wat kins, who commanded the City of Paris when the old inman liner came staggering to port with the Atlantic waves swashing about her holds and Surgingk against her bulkheads, the result of a fog-shrouded impact with an iceberg. The liner was throng- danger came near to sending her and her thousand souls to the bottom, but the energy, resourcefulness and skill of her commander brought her safe to port, a deed to be long re- membered.
 It was remembered up to a few years ago when a slight miscalcula- ton on the part of Captain Watkins sent his vessel upon the Manacle rocks on the Corsica coast. Now you may search all of the obscure places of the earth and you may not locate him.
 There was the Princess Victoria Luise of the Hamburg-American line, which drove hard upon the coral beach at. Port Royal in the Island of Jamaica. The vessel was thronged with tourists making jaunt to the was calm and there was no difficulty in getting passengers ashore. When the last had been safely landed the captain went to his stateroom and put 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. Cropping g for this same lighthouse a few days later came another vessel of the same line, the Prinz Waldemar. Her wreck lies a few hundred feet distant from that of her consort, mute testi- moAy to the skill of the navigators. Had the lighthouse been there they would have found the passage; failing it they found destruction.
 There will be many to recall the tragedy of the Oder, a North Ger man Lloyd steamer, which was on
  when she struck on the Island of So- cOtra at the entrance to the Red sea. It was with extreme difficulty that the passengers were rescued. Af- ter all had been got ashore Captain Pfieffer shot himself The ship was lost. @
 Captain Griffith of the Hohegan stood on the bridge of his fast sink ing ship until the waters engulfed him. Deloncle Of the French liner Bourgone, sunk in mid-Atlantic by collision with the, British steamship Cromartyshire, was last seen on the bridge, with hand on whistle cord as his vessel took the long dive. Won Goessel of the Elbe went down with his ship standing with folded arms upon the bridge as the vessel slowly sank.
 In the disaster to the steamship Re public mo- blame was attached to Cap tain Inman Sealby. her commander. Yet he was dropped from the service, and now at the age of fifty, is study ing admiralty jaw at the University of Michigan. All his sea career had been with the White Star line and for sixteen years he had commanded its vessels.
 There was one case in which cap tain lost his ship because of too great deference to the wishes of his passengers. The vessel was the Morse
 
 she was making cruise among the Ionian islands, carrying 250 tourists. The ship was keeping a course about seven miles off the picturesque coast of Zante, when a deputation of pas sengers came to Captain Wright and urged him to stand closer inshore that they might better see the region which Byron had immortalized.
 He obligingly complied. A few hours later the Morse King was hard aground on a jutting reef. The pas sengers were gotten safely ashore, where they promptly held an indig- nation meeting and signed a paper denouncing the captain, who had wrecked his ship and his reputation in an effort to oblige them. The ves- sel became a total loss and the mas terS certificate was suspended.
 Of different stuff was a captain of coastwise craft which a few sums mers ago carried a large number of excursionists out from Halifax. On the return trip a dense fog suddenly hid the coast. With all the thought lessness of inexperience party of the excursionists gathered forward of the pilot house and sought to enliven the rather dismal homeward journey by singing hymns. They had hardly be- gun before the captain appeared.
 You people stop that noise," he