Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1911-09-08
THE SHIP CAPTAIN
His Life Pays the Penalty if His
Vessel Be Wrecked.
SAD TRAGEDIES OF THE SEA.
Brave and SkiIIful Mariners Who Wont
to Death With Heroic Calmnsss
When Disaster Overwhelmed the
Craft Committed to Their Care.

When Disaster Overwhelmed the
Craft Committed to Their Care.
For this Is the law without excuse
For all Of the lords of the sea
That each must hold his ship from harm.
Whatever the odds may be.
There are many tragedies Of the sea
that the world knows very little about,
or, knowing, very soon fOrgets. These
are the tragedies of the men whose
lives have been spent in the hard and
exacting service which the sea de
mands. whose long years of toll and
zeal and skill have brought the high
responsibilities Of command and whose
careers have been cut short by the
fault of an hour-yea, even by the er
ror of a minute.
The old rubric that those who never
make mistakes have had few oppOr-
tunities for making them does not ap-
ply here. There is never q voyage that
does not have its possibility of error.
and in many of them arise the sudden
emergencies which bring the acid test
Of presence of mind. cool judgment.
expert seamanship and skill. Let IL ese
qualities fail the master mariner in his
time Of need. and, no matter what
might have been the stress of body or
brain. or of both. his professional ca
reer Is at an end. if the lapse involves
disaster to his ship.
There is that veteran mariner Cap
tain Frederick Watkins. He it was
who commanded the City Of Paris
when the old Inman liner came stag
gering to port with the Atlantic waves
smashing about her hold and surgtng
against her bulkheads. the result of
fog shrouded impact with an iceberg.
The liner was thronged with passen-
gers. The unforeseen danger came neal
to sending her and her thousand souls
to the bottom. but the energy. re-
sourcefulness and skill of her com
mander brought her safe to port-a
iced to be long remembered
1t was remembered up to a few
years ago. when slight miscalcula-
ton 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 Prinzessin Victoria
Luise of the Hamburg-American line,
which drove hard upon the coral beach
at Port Royal. in the island of ia
maica. The vessel was thronged with
tourists. making a jauHt to the West
Indies. Fortunately the sea 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 bullet
through his brain.
The pitiable part Of it all was that
lie had no need to. It was not the
brain he shattered that was at fault,
but the Kingston earthquake. which
had destroyed the lighthouse.
Captain Griffith Of the Mohegan
stood on the bridge of his fast sinking
ship until the waters engulfed him.
Deloncle Of the French liner Bour-
gOgne, sunk in mid Atlantic by col
|ision with the British steamship Gro
martyshire. 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.
One Of the saddest tragedies of the
sea was the wreck of the British
steamship Waiearapa. which went
ashore ON Great Barrier island while
on a voyage from Sydney to New Tea
land as the vessel neared the en-
trance to the harbor of Auckland a
thick fog shut in. Captain, Mcintosh.
who commanded her, had been many
years in the service of the line and
was reputed to be. very careful and
capable but while the steamer was
cropping her way through the mist it
was noted that he was exceedingly
nervous and depressed.
When night came the fog was 50
thick that the lookouts could not see
hadf ships length ahead. A few min
utes past midnight there was sud
den crash, which laid the steamship
almost ON her team ends. disabling all
Of the boats on the careered side. Cap
tain Mcintosh was on the bridge at
the time. A great wound which had
been torn in the vessels side showed
the extent of the disaster AS soon
as he realized that his ship must be-
come total loss the captain strobe
to the end Of the bridge and. exclaim-
ing This is the last watch!' plunged
overheard to his death.-Walter Scott
Meriwether In Munsey's Magazine.