3 of the WORST Ships' Captains of All Time

in history a ship's Captain had the final word on all decisions and he was trusted with the safety of his vessel and the people on board but sometimes captains got it wrong through negligence or dereliction of Duty to malice and tyranny here are some of the worst captains of all time and one who was falsely accused of being so [Music] Joseph Lucas Clark the SS Jeddah was a British steamship built in 1872 specifically to carry Muslim Pilgrims from Southeast Asia on their journeys to Mecca the Jetta left Singapore for Penang under the command of Joseph Clark on the 17th of July 1880 where she took on 953 passengers and Clark it would turn out had been quite LAX with the maintenance of his ship allowing the boilers to go without the necessary oversight and repair a mistake that would cost him greatly on top of this the ship was overloaded with passengers and they had taken on a far greater number than ever should have been allowed for a ship of jetta's size and in the conditions it was to sail through the Jetta set sail from Penang into Stormy Weather and by the 3rd of August the wind had reached hurricane speeds the weather increased in severity until the 6th of August when at around 9 30 PM Machinery in the Boiler Room started to break free and the ship began to leak all hands and passengers were mobilized to work the pumps and Bale the water out of the engine rooms but it wasn't enough the leak increased enough to put out the fires in the boilers and in desperation with the ship completely out of control Captain Clark ordered that the sails be set but these were blown to shreds in the winds at this point it would appear that Captain Clark had given up any hope of saving his vessel while pumping continued in the engine room the crew was ordered to man their lifeboats around midnight the passengers at this time became understandably concerned at the idea of the crew abandoning ship and they stopped following the orders of the captain the senior officers swung the starboard Lifeboat out and waited until Clark and the chief engineer arrived once the captain got into the boat he ordered it to be lowered into the ocean when the passengers saw that their Captain was abandoning them they threw pots pans and boxes into the Lifeboat and pulled the first officer away from the rails but it was too late the captain had fled the ship the first officer managed to jump overboard when he escaped the mob and was pulled into the Lifeboat before it managed to make a getaway on the 8th the Lifeboat with its compliment was discovered by the steamship skindia they were rescued and brought to Arden these men lived another day but now they had another problem they had abandoned almost a thousand passengers aboard a sinking vessel without even trying to rescue them Clark lied and reported that the Jedi had found it with all on board and reported that the Second Officer and second engineer had been murdered by the passengers he claimed that fearing Mutiny he'd fled the ship there was just one problem though the ship hadn't sunk she survived and arrived in Arden the next day the passengers had taken it upon themselves to keep the second engineer hostage until he agreed to resume pumping and he had organized the passengers into teams that would keep the pumps going until the ship was discovered on August 8th the ship and tenor sailed by and saw the Jedi's distressed Flags the crew of antenna was able to tow the Jetta to Arden where the passengers would disempark safely and much to the surprise of the crew that had fled the ship the vast majority of the passengers had survived the jetta's foundering and Clark's story fell apart less than a day after he had told it due to his humiliating and cowardly abandonment of the ship not to mention that they went so far as to lie about what had happened aboard the Jetta the crew immediately became reviled outcasts the court of inquiry that came up as a result of the disaster condemned the actions of the captain and Joseph Conrad the famous author of the book Heart of Darkness was so shocked by the actions of the sailors that he even used the Jeddah as the inspiration for his book lord Jim the official report writes that Captain Clark has shown a painful want of nerve as well as the most ordinary judgment and has allowed his feelings to master his sense of Duty he has been guilty of gross misconduct and in abandoning his disabled ship with nearly a thousand Souls on board to their fate given that he had broken the cardinal rule of the sea his punishment seems fairly light as he was only given a three-year suspended license to operate ships the Damage Done to Clark's reputation however lasted far longer and he's gone down in history as one of the worst captains of all time Charles Butler McVeigh III the USS Indianapolis was an American Heavy Cruiser launched in 1931 that would have a distinguished career throughout the second world war including transporting the materials used to build the nuclear weapons that would end it after moving the parts for the atomic weapon to the island of tinian the ship set sail for the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Japan under the command of Charles Butler McVay III this would be the last Voyage of the Indianapolis and destroy the career of her captain McVay believed that his ship was sailing through safe Waters so he took no precautions when traveling just after midnight on the 30th of July 1945 the Indianapolis was ambushed by a Japanese submarine and was sunk by two torpedoes first blew the bow off the ship while the second struck her magazines the resulting explosion split the ship in half knocked out her power and sunk her an SOS was sent out but there was no response the ship went down in only 12 minutes with nearly 300 of her crew still aboard the remaining 900 were left adrift in the Pacific there are only a few lifeboats that have been successfully launched and many of the survivors didn't even have life jackets on these men were left in the ocean without food or water for four days when a naval Patrol plane finally discovered them there were only a third left the rest having died of exposure dehydration or constant shark attack McVeigh was one of the survivors but he was immediately blamed by the Navy for not having taken proper precautions when sailing through enemy Waters if all the American ships sunk during the war McVay was the only Captain to be court-martialed for the loss of his vessel despite eventually reaching the rank of rear Admiral before retirement he became known as a failed Captain and the families of many of the men who had died on board the ship sent him letters expressing their disgust though McVeigh did indeed lead his ship into danger there is evidence to suggest that the Navy had knowingly ordered him to do so while also failing to inform him of the Japanese that were present in the area the Indianapolis had not been given a Destroyer Escort either despite another American ship having been sunk by a submarine in the same area with hindsight it would appear that the sinking of the Indianapolis May well not have been truly his fault also when the SOS first went out three separate Naval stations received it but no one responded one captain on a ship was asleep another was drunk and the third simply assumed it was a Japanese trap between the embarrassment of the Navy and Admiral King's personal dislike of Captain McVay it's probable that the court martial was politically motivated to distract attention from the disaster the Indianapolis survivors organization spent years trying to clear the captain's name with Paul Murphy the president stating that Captain mcveigh's Court martial was simply an attempt to divert attention from the terrible loss of life caused by procedural mistakes which never alerted anyone that we were missing even the Japanese commander of the submarine the sank Indianapolis much itsura Hashimoto testified at court martial that McVeigh had acted correctly and that zigzagging would have made no difference he was finally exonerated in 2000 by an act of Congress as further investigations had revealed that zigzagging wouldn't have saved the ship that the Navy had failed to warn him of Japanese submarines operating in the area some of these investigations had unusually been sparked by a 12 year old boy who was researching the project for school the eventual Congressional exoneration was partially motivated by a letter sent to Congress from Hashimoto in 1999 in which he again expressed his opinion that his old enemy had actually acted correctly he said our peoples have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its consequences Perhaps it is time that your people forgave Captain McVeigh for the humiliation of his unjust conviction McVeigh had died in 1968 and though Captain McVeigh was widely considered a terrible Captain for decades it would appear that he was more of a scapegoat for Naval incompetence than a truly guilty figure Captain William Van shaik the general Slocum was a side wheel steamship that operated in New York's East River in the early 20th century a fire on board the ship in 1904 led to the greatest loss of life in a disaster in New York until 9 11 almost a century later more than a thousand people died as a result of the actions of her Captain William Van shaik after being built in 1891 the general Slocum was a common side on the New York's Rivers but quickly became renowned not for efficiency but rather for the accidents that she was frequently involved in between being built in 1891 and then destroyed in 1904 she ran around four times collided with other ships twice and once had a riot on board with passengers trying to seize the ship on the 15th of June 1904 she experienced her final fatal disaster as the general slogan was hired by the Sunday School of Saint Mark's German Lutheran Church of New York for an Excursion to Long Island overall there were nearly 1400 passengers on board mostly made up of women and children but shortly before 10 AM The Vessel departed up the East River things almost immediately went wrong for the general Slocum because off 97th Street the deckhands noticed wisps of smoke coming from the forward part of the ship fire had been lit in one of the cabins possibly as a result of a cigarette or match and the small flame had quickly turned into an inferno due to the loose flammable materials that were scattered around the room thanks to the lack safety protocols enforced by Van Shaikh the deckhands didn't notify the captain after seeing the smoke but instead went off to find the cause in this interlude the fire managed to spread across the lower decks by the time the hands had found where the fire was actually spreading from it had already consumed a cabin when van Shake was finally informed he made the worst possible decision rather than try to fight the fires or land near the shore he ordered Full Speed Ahead in an effort to reach the shallow water around North brother Island unfortunately his ship was headed directly into the wind and the increase of speed only served to Fan the Flames down the ship's length not only did he travel in the worst possible Direction in order to do so he passed up other opportunities to land more safely and soon the fire had spread across the length of his vessel leaving only the stern free of the Flames even if he had ordered the fire to be fought there wasn't much the crew could have done by this point they'd never actually had a fire drill and when the fire hose was finally attached it was so old and frail that it broke naturally then the passengers crowded towards the rear of the ship and finally the ship ran ashore off the island and here van Shaikh made his final mistake but it was only the forward part of the ship the bow that was actually grounded in the shallow water and the stern where the survivors were clinging for safety was still in deeper water and at this point the captain Abandoned Ship by jumping into a tug while the majority of its passengers were forced to jump over the side where they subsequently drowned in the water most of the women and children didn't know how to swim and the heavy clothes of the day pulled them down overall there were 957 deaths and 180 injuries as a result of the fire much of the blame for the disaster can be laid at the feet of the captain but not all there are certain aspects of the general Slocum disaster that are the result of fraud on the count of the corporation's manufacturing safety equipment and a general lack of Regulation the life preservers at the time were filled with cork in order to ensure buoyancy however the non-parai cork works that had provided the life preservers had only filled them with a small amount of it while the centers were filled with iron to make up the rest of the weight yes actual iron blocks and safety equipment designed to float the people in the water who tried to save themselves through the equipment drowned as a result while van shank was inexcusably lacks in his duty and Abandoned Ship in his passengers he did In fairness have reason to believe that the people on board would be able to survive in the water president Theodore Roosevelt himself commented on the sabotage in a letter to the Secretary of Commerce and labor saying that it was a crime of so heinous a character that it is difficult to comment upon it without proper self-restraint it appears that the national legislature has never enacted a law providing in set terms for the punishment of this particular species of infamu doubtless because it never entered the head of any man that so gross and infamy could be perpetrated this was one of the largest disasters in New York history until that point and it was the single deadliest day of the city until September 11 2001. naturally then there was a great public outcry against the man they saw as being responsible for the calamity Captain William Van shaik was investigated by the police and he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment as a result of criminal negligence and failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers aboard his ship he was later pardoned by President Taft not this recovered his reputation at all when he finally died in 1927 there was an article in Time magazine that opened with Shifty and absent-minded death is sold And Timely in his remembrances last week 23 years too late he sought out William Van shaik ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs thank you so much for watching this video If you enjoyed it please leave a comment below don't forget to subscribe to the channel because we get new videos out weekly if you want to support my work and get really cool perks like behind the scenes and Early Access please visit my patreon in the link in the description below or sign up as a YouTube member come and join the crew as always stay safe stay happy I'll see you again next time

Channel: Oceanliner Designs

Views: 254,627

Keywords: great ocean liners, maritime history, ocean liners, famous oceanliners, ships documentary, history of ships, engineering, history, ships, documentary, origins explained, world history project, animated history, open educational resources, titanic, shipwreck, sinking, boats, ocean, disaster, tragedy

Id: RGaaGN_WaTs

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 10 2023