Scorned Cruise Ship Captain Not Alone in History

The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia allegedly abandoned ship -- like many captains before him.

What will likely never be forgotten about the Italian cruise liner disaster is the quickness with which the captain of the Costa Concordia abandoned the sinking ship.

Considered one of the most infamous crimes in maritime law, Schettino's act of cowardice has many precedents in history.

Schettino may be a scorned captain today, but one of the most ignominious captains in history is Hugues de Chaumareys, captain of the French frigate Medusa.

On July 2, 1816, the Senegal-bound ship slammed into a reef. De Chaumareys, whose incompetence doomed the voyage, fled for the Medusa's lifeboats along with some upper class passengers and crew, while 147 people set afloat on a makeshift raft.

Initially towed behind the convoy of lifeboats, the raft was ordered cut free by de Chaumareys, who abandoned the passengers to a gruesome fate of murder and cannibalism.

When the raft floated to shore 13 days later, only 15 of the 147 were alive. The story shocked Europe and was immortalized in Theodore Gericault's painting, "Raft of the Medusa," on display at the Louvre.

Another 19th century infamous episode, involving the steamship  S.S. Jeddah, became the inspiration for Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim."

In 1880, just like the fictional seaman Jim, captain Joseph Clark and crew abandoned the Jeddah, convinced that the leaking ship would have sunk. Nearly 1,000 passengers -- Muslim pilgrims on the way to Mecca -- were left to their fate in the middle of the Bay of Bengal.

Captain Clark reported his ship as lost, to then hear that she had reached port with all passengers alive, towed by another vessel.

On the other side of these tales of shame are numerous stories of nautical chivalry. One, involving the sinking of the troopship the HMS Birkenhead off the coast of South Africa in 1852, inspired the tradition of "women and children first."

The story goes that the soldiers' commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton, ordered his men to help get the women and children on board the three lifeboats as the Birkenhead began sinking in shark-infested waters. Not a single woman or child lost their life, thanks to the soldiers who stoically stood on deck as the ship went down. Their sacrifice has gone down in maritime history as the Birkenhead Drill -- women and children first.


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