A story in the news today says the captain of a Princess cruise line allegedly failed to investigate a report of a nearby ship in distress recently, contributing to the death of two young men.
The small fishing ship was spotted by some bird watchers armed with high-powered binoculars and telescopes on the Princess ship. The bird watchers saw two men waving a shirt and a jacket, obviously trying to flag the passing ship, and they reported the incident to a deck hand, who allegedly called the deck. When the ship failed to stop or check on the problem, one of the determined bird watchers sent an email to the US Coast Guard, even though the ship wasn't in US waters.
But it didn't help. The small vessel, which had already been at sea for more than two weeks, wasn't rescued until many days later, leading to the death of two of the three young men aboard. All three had been alive when the Princess ship passed by without doing anything.
I've got to wonder what that captain was thinking. Obviously, he wanted to get all his happy vacationers to their destination on time, but ignoring a vessel in distress is illegal under maritime law and immoral under any standard. Moreover, this happened at the height of the frenzy over the 100-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
As Titanic aficionados know, many lives on that ship could have been save if the nearest ship, the Californian, had responded to the Titanic's distress call and signals. The Californian was only a few nautical miles from the Titanic and had already shut off its radio for the night (a practice that became illegal after the sinking of the Titanic), but the ship was close enough that crew members saw the flares the Titanic launched into the air to signal their distress. But the ship did not respond. Instead, the RMS Carpathia, which was nearly 60 nautical miles away, got the radio call and headed full-speed to her aid. The ship's captain, Arthur Henry Rostron, reportedly posted extra scouts to watch for ice, ordered the ship's heating and hot water shut off to provide extra steam to the engines, and pushed the ship beyond her speed rating. Legend has it that when the gauge in the engine room went into the danger zone, the chief engineer simply hung his hat over it so they wouldn't have to look at it. It took a few hours for the RMS Carpathia to reach the Titanic, but the captain's actions saved the lives of hundreds of people. Many more would have died without his heroic efforts. For his actions, he was knighted by King George V and received the Congressional Medal of Honor. The other captain, Stanly Lord, was investigated for wrongdoing, censured, fired and died in disgrace.
I can't imagine there's any cruise ship captain in the world who isn't aware of the differences between the actions of the captain of the Californian and the Carpathia. And I can't imagine that any captain would choose to behave more like Captain Lord than Captain Rostron. Yet that seems to have been the choice of the captain aboard the Princess line.
No vacation is worth the life of two people.
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