Captain Ahab drowned, he reminded himself; it was the trimmer, Ishmael, who survived.

Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.

Almost a hundred years earlier, to the day, Samuel Smiles had written the final pages of his book <i>Self-Help.</i> It included this moving tale of heroism as an example for the Victorian Englishman to follow. For the fate of my great-grandfather, Walter, it was poignant in the extreme.

The vessel was steaming along the African coast with 472 men and 166 women and children on board.
The men consisted principally of recruits who had been only a short time in the service.
At two o’clock in the morning, while all were asleep below, the ship struck with violence upon a hidden rock, which penetrated her bottom; and it was at once felt that she would go down.
The roll of the drums called the soldiers to arms on the upper deck, and the men mustered as if on parade.
The word was passed to “save the women and children”; and the helpless creatures were brought from below, mostly undressed, and handed silently into the boats.
When they had all left the ship’s side, the commander of the vessel thoughtlessly called out, “All those that can swim, jump overboard and make for the boats.”
But Captain Wright, of the 91st Highlanders, said, “No! If you do that, the boats with the women will be swamped.” So the brave men stood motionless. Not a heart quailed; no one flinched from his duty.
“There was not a murmur, nor a cry among them,” said Captain Wright, a survivor, “until the vessel made her final plunge.”
Down went the ship, and down went the heroic band, firing a volley shot of joy as they sank beneath the waves.
Glory and honor to the gentle and the brave!
The examples of such men never die, but, like their memories, they are immortal.

As a young man, Walter undoubtedly would have read and known those words from his grandfather’s book.
Poignant in the extreme.
Indeed, the examples of such men never die, but, like their memories, they are immortal.

Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain: But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history.*

Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

Castaway… Cliff Notes version, a guy gets shipwrecked on a desert island for four years. I watched the video with a girlfriend. Afterward, she described it as a nightmare. I was surprised, because I’d been thinking of it as a fantasy.

"How The Whale Got His Throat

By Rudyard Kipling

When the cabin port-holes are dark and green
Because of the seas outside
When the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between)
And steward falls into the soup-tureen,
And trunks begin to slide;
When Nursey lies on the floor in a heap,
And Mummy tells you to let her sleep,
And you aren't waked or washed or dressed,
Why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed)
You're "Fifty North and Forty West!

Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it — thus!

There is some pleasure in being on board a ship battered by storms when one is certain of not perishing.

Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any.

I am a shipwrecked man who fears every sea.

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw benieath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg.

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a sweetness as this - I struck my first whale - a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty - forty - forty years ago! - ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! - when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before - and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare - fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul - when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts - away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow - wife? wife? - rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey - more a demon than a man! - aye, aye! what a forty years' fool - fool - old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did neve

There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly — not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice. As all the sentimental themes the sea inspires passed through our conversation, the lights of Antofagasta began to shine in the distance, to the northeast. It was the end of our adventure as stowaways, or at least the end of this adventure now that our boat was returning to Valparaíso. ESTA VEZ, FRACASO this time, disaster I can see him now clearly, the drunk captain, like all his officers and the owner of the vessel alongside with his great big mustache, their crude gestures the results of bad wine. And the wild laughter as they recounted our odyssey. “Hey listen, they’re tigers, they’re on your boat now for sure, you’ll find out when you’re out to sea.” The captain must have let slip to his friend and colleague this or some similar phrase.