The captain was very experienced (and had sailed that ship for years) and planned to escape the hurricane by going out to sea, waiting it out, and then continuing down the coast after it had passed by. Possibly she could have done it if the engine hadn’t failed.
But I suspect that the answer to the question as to why she sailed is because the owner wanted her to sail in order to meet the schedule for the next docking of the ship. This ship sailed all over the place and had a fairly full schedule of stops, at which they charged visitors about $10 each to board and look around.
The ship stopped here in St Augustine and had a huge crowd of visitors.
So it’s possible that she was under pressure to meet the schedule and decided that this was the quickest and maybe even safest way to get where she was going. The owner was actually the one who reported the ship missing (since the communications system also seems to have failed).
In any case, it’s terrible that two lives were lost in this sinking, and also terrible that the ship was lost. I guess it’s a good reminder that, with all our technology, the sea is still stronger than we are.
In modern times anyone who purposely heads into a hurricane in a wooden boat for a thrill is an idiot.
Sounds like he was a very good captain, very thorough, very concerned for the welfare and safety of his crew, with one flaw, he actually enjoyed flirting with hurricanes, a “fast ride.”
He also believed, and not without reason, that a ship was safer at sea in a hurricane than docked. These biases were further encouraged by pressure from the owner to meet schedule. So, he sailed, but not without giving crew the option to decline before sailing.
He was boxed in, ultimately, with his choice being the shoals of Hatteras on the west and the worst of the storm to his east. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Had the engine not failed and generators not gotten swamped, maybe they would have made it.
Maybe.
If he’d have put into port at Hampton Roads, he’d be alive, Ms. Christian would be as well, and the HMS Bounty wouldn’t have joined so many others there beneath the Atlantic.
Second-guessing doesn’t do anything at this point, though. He did what he thought was best and paid with his life.