United States Merchant Marine Academy - Midships Yearbook (Kings Point, NY)

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of tlie Sea. liiSS 8gg§ v ' ■■ ■ Ul i'hiial The sea has always had its omens and portents of ill which have frightened mariners and caused them to take precautions that seem at best, odd, to people who do not understand them. Perhaps the most ex- plicit warning of ill-fate on record came to the Cap- tain of the USK in early 1 864. Captain Richard Brown was doing his usual tour of the deck aboard his vessel, which was bound for a small port in Peru. The wind was picking up, and it seemed that he was about to make up some of the time he had lost with ill winds and storms in the tropics. He was three-and-a-half months out of Eng- land and was still four hundred miles from Cape Horn. As he pondered his sorry schedule, a beautiful woman clad in pure white veils appeared in the rigging and beckoned to him. “Go back to the port from which you come; waste no time, but turn back toward Cardiff before you lose your ship and yourself as well.” As the vision faded from the quarter-deck, a thick fog enveloped the ship. Captain Brown, a seafarer all his life, accepted the warning and ordered his First Mate to shift the course to the North East. The bewildered Mate argued and refused. After putting him in irons, the Captain him- self gave the order; the vessel returned to England. Immediately upon return, the Captain was tried for his actions, and, with the testimony of the First Mate, Edwards, was found guilty. He lost his Master's papers and was declared unfit for the command of a ship. The ship was rapidly outfitted again, and de- parted. After the vessel had been out for some months, a dispatch was received from Cosquimbo, Chile; the USK had burned at sea with almost total loss of life. Explanations were offered, but no one ever convinced the seamen of Cardiff that the cause was any other than the disregard of the warning of the beautiful phantom and the punishment metered out to the man who had heeded her dictum.