There is one aspect of drinking at sea which none of you have addressed and that is the effect such behaviour has on ones shipmates.
It is not the first time that a crew has pettioned the captain concerning removal of a drunken bully.
On board a merchant ship, there is one job for every man and every man's work is connected to the work of the next man.
If some 'plonker' is incapapble or less than efficient at performing his duty, then the slack has to be taken-up by others.
When the work is hard, tiring and repetative, tempers get short. When everyone is closeted together in cramped, claustraphopic, warm, damp accommodation, things like personal hygene, surliness and in particular, alcoholic excess are very high profile. It does not fit and most certainly does not last.
The minute a Quartermaster stepped on the bridge of a ship, he was not alone. His 'little drink' would be public knowledge. The man he relieved would smell his breath. The Junior Officer would smell it as would the senior officer. If the captain made one of his frequent visits passing through the wheelhouse, the place would smell like a pub on a Saturday night. In a few words: Hitchens's feet would not have touched the deck. He would have been sent below immediately and that would have been his last trip on Titanic, even if she hadn't gone down.
Additionally: 'It takes one to know one' as they say.
Unless our friend the galloping Major was a T-totaller, he too would have had a glass or two at dinner that night. Consequently if he had been confronted by someone who also had been imbibing, that person would need to have been A over T before he.. Peuchin.. was able to recognise the effect of drink.. the clue is SMELL!
I look forward to the coming book and I hope that man will be exposed for what I think his actions that night revealed him to be.. an oportunistic, pompus, self opinionated, successful man who had self-preservation uppermost in his thoughts.
I'm not a 'salt of the earth' working man's champion but if ever there were reasons for left-wing politics, that man's actions and attitudes were classic examples for such politics.
As for his marine expertise:
That was the man who laughed at Hitchens's suggestion of a buoy at sea but who said of
Carpathia:
"I do not know whether she came to anchor; I think probably she did"
Really? In 12500 feet of water?
This was the man who professed to be a marine expert and who set off directly north from the port side of a ship which was heading west.
Hitchens had wrung more salt water out of his sock than that man had ever sailed over. (Oh I know he crossed the Atlantic several times... just making a point.)
Jim C.
