Quote:
Originally Posted by bigjantailor
Sea King,
I totally agree with you about the Captain thing. I've not been in the Navy or commercial shipping but I've sailed a lot of boat and the Captain is the Captain even if the Captain decision is crap. Sure you can go against the Captain but you'll never be on that boat again and shouldn't. I remember having one of my friends beak off about how he could not take a Captain telling him to swab the deck or something in reply to a TV show where some crew on a tall ship were yell at for not doing their boring job. I was going to argue but he would never get everyone on the boat is the Captain's responsibility. That is the way it has to be.
Have fun, Jan
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In all literature, one of my most favorite (probably not very literate of me) expressions is
"Ships of wood, men of iron!"
That speaks to the discipline that mariners, especially early mariners had to adhere to and of course it started with the Captain.
Pardon me if I carry on a bit. I will excerpt a bit from "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." You have to listen to the song to really get it all with a night on a ship in a stormy sea to get the full effect.
"The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev'ry man knew, as the captain did too
'twas the witch of November come stealin'."
And my most favorite line of all in the song:
"Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
Here is a Youtube version of the story of the Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald. Footage from the news at that time with Gordon Lightfoot singing.
Edmund Fitzgerald
I had joined the Navy just a few years before this happened, at the tail end of Vietnam.