 Albatrosses have been described as "the most legendary of all birds". An albatross is a central emblem in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; a captive albatross is also a metaphor for the poète maudit in a poem by Charles Baudelaire. It is from the Coleridge poem that the albatross metaphor is derived; someone bearing a burden or facing an obstacle is said to have "an albatross around his neck", the punishment given in the poem to the mariner who killed the albatross. There is a widespread myth that sailors believe it disastrous to shoot or harm an albatross, due in part to the poem; in truth, sailors regularly killed and ate them, as reported by James Cook in 1772. On the other hand, it has been reported that sailors caught the birds but let them free again; the possible reason is that albatrosses were often regarded as the souls of lost sailors, so killing them was supposed to bring bad luck. The head of an albatross being caught with a hook is used as the emblem of the Cape Horners, i.e. sailors who have rounded Cape Horn on freighters under sail; captains of such ships even received themselves the title "albatrosses" in the Cape Horners' organisation.
