All these defects have been remedied in later models; but the knowledge did not help us any that day aboard the slowly settling Coldwater, with an angry sea roaring beneath, a tempest raging out of the west, and 30° only a few knots astern.
To cross thirty or one hundred seventy-five has been, as you know, the direst calamity that could befall a naval commander. Court-martial and degradation follow swiftly, unless as is often the case, the unfortunate man takes his own life before this unjust and heartless regulation can hold him up to public scorn.
There has been in the past no excuse, no circumstance, that could palliate the offense.
“ He was in command, and he took his ship across thirty!” That was sufficient. It might not have been in any way his fault, as, in the case of the Coldw
