Famous Ship Captain Quotes

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.*

It would appear to a quoting dilettante—i.e., one of those writers and scholars who fill up their texts with phrases from some dead authority—that, as phrased by Hobbes, “from like antecedents flow like consequents.” 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.

Anna Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, in Volgograd, formally Stalingrad, Russia, an important Russian industrial city. During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, the city became famous for its resistance against the German Army. As a matter of personal history, I had an uncle, by marriage that was killed in this battle. Many historians consider the battle of Stalingrad the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Anna earned her master's degree in economics in Moscow. Her father at the time was employed by the Soviet embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he allegedly was a senior KGB agent. After her marriage to Alex Chapman, Anna became a British subject and held a British passport. For a time Alex and Anna lived in London where among other places, she worked for Barclays Bank. In 2009 Anna Chapman left her husband and London, and moved to New York City, living at 20 Exchange Place, in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. In 2009, after a slow start, she enlarged her real-estate business, having as many as 50 employees. Chapman, using her real name worked in the Russian “Illegals Program,” a group of sleeper agents, when an undercover FBI agent, in a New York coffee shop, offered to get her a fake passport, which she accepted. On her father’s advice she handed the passport over to the NYPD, however it still led to her arrest. Ten Russian agents including Anna Chapman were arrested, after having been observed for years, on charges which included money laundering and suspicion of spying for Russia. This led to the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since 1986. On July 8, 2010 the swap was completed at the Vienna International Airport. Five days later the British Home Office revoked Anna’s citizenship preventing her return to England. In December of 2010 Anna Chapman reappeared when she was appointed to the public council of the Young Guard of United Russia, where she was involved in the education of young people. The following month Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World and in June of 2011 she was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine. In 2012, the FBI released information that Anna Chapman attempted to snare a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, in what was termed a “Honey Trap.” After the 2008 financial meltdown, sources suggest that Anna may have targeted the dapper Peter Orzag, who was divorced in 2006 and served as Special Assistant to the President, for Economic Policy. Between 2007 and 2010 he was involved in the drafting of the federal budget for the Obama Administration and may have been an appealing target to the FSB, the Russian Intelligence Agency. During Orzag’s time as a federal employee, he frequently came to New York City, where associating with Anna could have been a natural fit, considering her financial and economics background. Coincidently, Orzag resigned from his federal position the same month that Chapman was arrested. Following this, Orzag took a job at Citigroup as Vice President of Global Banking. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, the daughter of Greek shipping executive, Spiros Milonas, chairman and President of Ionian Management Inc. In September of 2010, Orzag married Bianna Golodryga, the popular news and finance anchor at Yahoo and a contributor to MSNBC's Morning Joe. She also had co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's Good Morning America. Not surprisingly Bianna was born in in Moldova, Soviet Union, and in 1980, her family moved to Houston, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a degree in Russian/East European & Eurasian studies and has a minor in economics. They have two children. Yes, she is fluent in Russian! Presently Orszag is a banker and economist, and a Vice Chairman of investment banking and Managing Director at Lazard.

Life aboard ship was like living in paradise for my agile friend and he could have continued this way forever if he hadn't discovered a splendid new game. When the stevedores were loading or discharging the ship, Peanut would hop onto the edge of the hatch and urinate down on them. Oh what great fun he had, never thinking that they would object to what he was doing. At first they would try to catch him but he was far too agile for them. Not that I understood what they were saying but I knew enough to know that the stevedores were shouting Bassa swearwords at him. Frustrated they would flip him the bird as they climbed down into the hold, foiled again. What a wonderful time Peanut had! His safest refuge was on top of the Wheel House, where the stevedores couldn’t go. Sometimes as a place of last resort he would dive through the open porthole into my state room. He didn’t like the Engine Room, as an alternate route to safety, since it was too hot and noisy. Besides the engineers didn’t much like a monkey messing with their things and who knows what trouble he could get into down there? Peanut, was wonderful entertainment when visitors came aboard. The Pan American flight attendants, they were called stewardesses back then, thought him adorable. I always had roasted peanuts for them to feed him, which he would pick and chew apart, littering the deck. The stewardess’s that came for my famous pizza parties always tried to pick him up and cuddle with him. Monkeys are unpredictable so I cautioned them to be careful but being such a cute little guy they seldom were. Ear rings were a favorite piece of jewelry to tug on, causing the ladies to scream. Most often he would let go but the wings above their pockets was another matter. Peanut would yank and pull on the insignia until it was his. I knew where he usually hid his loot and so could return their stuff but some of the stewardesses flew home without their wings.

You can’t just abduct me and hold me for hostage! And hostage for what? Who do you think you are? My brother is one of the most powerful men in England! When he catches up to you, he’ll slit your belly and strangle you with your own entrails! Do you know what you’ve done?” The Irishman just shrugged, unconcerned, and shoved his other arm into his coat sleeve. “Does your sister Mrs. Lord know that I’m here? Does your brother-in-law, Captain Lord? The admiral, Sir Elliott?” “Don’t be stupid, of course not.” “Does anyone know?” “Not yet.” “Who are you? In actuality?” “Ruaidri O’ Devir, ma’m, just as ye thought.” He picked up a tricorne hat and headed for the door. “I wish to know why I am here!” He stopped then, his patience exhausted, and looked her straight in the eye. “Your brother developed an explosive which he’s about to sell to your country. My country needs it so we can win this miserable struggle with yours. Since I doubt England or your brother are going to just hand it over to us, ye’re my payment for it. A ransom, if ye will. Understand?” “What do you mean your country? Ireland is not at war with England… you are mad.” “No, Sunshine. I’m not mad. I’m a commissioned captain in America’s Continental Navy if ye must know, and because John Adams decided there’s nobody in the Navy as audacious, reckless or downright foolish as I am, he chose me to come and get that explosive. Ye’re my ransom. If yer family wants ye back, they’ll hand it over as well as the formula on how t’ create it. Now are ye finished? I’ve a ship to see to.” She stared at him, aghast. “Your sister is married to a captain in the Royal Navy… her brother-in-law is a famous admiral… you would dare do this right under all their noses?” He smiled then, his long lashes throwing shadow against his cheekbones in the dim orange glow of the lantern and in that moment, he looked almost handsome. Almost. “Indeed, I would.” The smile spread. “Indeed, I have.

It was during the early summer of 1952 that I found myself in the small community park next to Stevens Institute of Technology. Although I had a job, I had only worked as a “soda jerk” for a little over a week before I started looking for something else. The Hoboken waterfront was still familiar to me from earlier years when I walked this way to catch the trolley or the electrified Public Service bus home from the Lackawanna Ferry Terminal. Remembering the gray-hulled Liberty Ships being fitted out for the war at these dilapidated piers, was still very much embedded in my memory. Things had not changed all that much, except that the ships that were once here were now at the bottom of the ocean, sold, or nested at one of the “National Defense Reserve Fleets.” The iconic movie On the Waterfront had not yet been filmed, and it would take another two years before Marlon Brando would stand on the same pier I was now looking down upon, from the higher level of Stevens Park. Labor problems were common during this era, but it was all new to me. I was only 17 years old, but would later remember how Marlon Brando got the stuffing kicked out of him for being a union malcontent. When they filmed the famous fight scene in On the Waterfront, it took place on a barge, tied up in the very same location that I was looking upon.

In fact, the “women and children first” protocol for abandoning ship was not a particularly ancient one. It began with the HMS Birkenhead, a British troopship that was wrecked off Cape Town, South Africa, on February 26, 1852. The soldiers famously stood in formation on deck while the women and children boarded the boats, and only 193 of the 643 people on board survived. Hymned as the “Birkenhead drill” in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, it became a familiar touchstone of Britain’s imperial greatness and AS BRAVE AS THE BIRKENHEAD was a much-used heading in UK Titanic press coverage. A story that Captain Smith had exhorted his men to “Be British!” further burnished the oft-cited claim that Anglo-Saxon men had not forgotten how to die.

The captain walked the deck at a rapid stride, looked aloft at the sails, and then to windward; the mate stood in the gangway, rubbing his hands, and talking aloud to the ship—“Hurrah, old bucket! the Boston girls have got hold of the tow-rope!” and the like; and we were on the forecastle, looking to see how the spars stood it, and guessing the rate at which she was going,—when the captain called out—“Mr. Brown, get up the topmast studding-sail! What she can’t carry she may drag!” The mate looked a moment; but he would let no one be before him in daring. He sprang forward—“Hurrah, men! rig out the topmast studding-sail boom! Lay aloft, and I’ll send the rigging up to you!”—We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards, as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some indeed, looked as though they thought the “old man” was mad, but no one said a word.

The sound woke up the rest of the watch, who stood looking at one another. “What, in the name of God, is that?” said the second mate, coming slowly forward. The first thought I had was, that it might be a boat, with the crew of some wrecked vessel, or perhaps the boat of some whaleship, out over night, and we had run them down in the darkness. Another scream, but less loud than the first. This started us, and we ran forward, and looked over the bows, and over the sides, to leeward, but nothing was to be seen or heard. What was to be done. Call the captain, and heave the ship aback? Just at this moment, in crossing the forecastle, one of the men saw a light below, and looking down the scuttle, saw the watch all out of their berths, and afoul of one poor fellow, dragging him out of his berth, and shaking him, to wake him out of a nightmare. They had been waked out of their sleep, and as much alarmed at the scream as we were, and were hesitating whether to come on deck, when the second sound, coming directly from one of the berths, revealed the cause of the alarm. The fellow got a good shaking for the trouble he had given. We made a joke of the matter and we could well laugh, for our minds were not a little relieved by its ridiculous termination.

During World War II pets were allowed aboard British war ships and Blackie was the HMS Prince of Wales's ship's pet cat. . In August 1941 he became famous after the ship carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to Canada where he net Franklin D. Roosevelt to agree on the Atlantic Charter. After the declaration of the Charter, as Churchill prepared to depart from the ship, Blackie approached him at the gangway and bid Prime Minister Churchill farewell. In honor of that moment Blackie was renamed Churchill. Later Blackie survived the sinking of Prince of Wales by the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service later that year, and was rescued and taken to Singapore with the other survivors

Cape Town lived up to its name as the tavern of the seas. It was a wonderful fun place and I loved it. The weather was Mediterranean and after two weeks at sea, all the girls were beautiful. The crew was convinced that the constant sunshine, in this part of the world, had something to do with it but whatever the reason, it seemed to be true. Luckily I could get off the ship on a Saturday afternoon, when all of South Africa comes to a halt. For whatever reason South African tradition called for all the shops to close and only restaurants, bars, beer halls and other vital services remained open. For an otherwise stargy place, they got this one right. I headed for Delmonico’s on Riebeeck Street across from the famous Alhambra Theatre where everyone went to have fun. When I got there I found the place packed, but luckily I found a seat at a table, in a corner that was not quite as loud as the rest of the hall. It all started off all right while as we listened to the vivacious brunette playing a huge Hammond Organ. From the marque I knew that her name was Cherry Wainer, a celebrated musical star in South Africa. It didn’t take long for me to introduce myself to her and before I knew it she had the manager find me a seat right up in front. The amplified sound of swing music filling the hall would have been enjoyable if it wasn’t for the crew of another ship that were causing a problem. I never looked for a fight but I also never back away from one and this time was no exception. It all happened very quickly and obviously they didn't take kindly to my intervention. One of them charged and took a wild swing that just missed me. I was lucky that he missed me but I didn't as I rammed him backward, pushing his total weight onto their table. The table collapsed and the libations on it toppled, totally soaking him.