The Space Shuttle Enterprise took damage one the deck of the Intrepid in NYC as well, and she's no replica. Although Enterprise never went to orbit, she is an Orbiter, complete with an Orbiter hull number, OV-101.

The motivation is pretty obvious, isn't it? They were trying to move the ship out of the area affected by the storm. As was mentioned, if they had not had an engine failure, the ship would have had no problems with the conditions.

I can't find exact details at the moment, so rather than posting incorrect data, I'll just say that Captain Walbridge was an experienced and respected captain, with many years at the helm of the Bounty. During those many years he's obviously been in a lot of storms before.

The ship was 200 miles off the coast, heading in a direction that was out of the worst part of the storm. Had the engines not failed, it is quite likely the ship would have been a very minor footnote in the storm, reading something like "The Bounty sailed south to Florida to avoid the storm..."

Had the ship remained at dock and been damaged or destroyed, the captain would have been criticized for that as well. It's very common practice for ships to head out to sea in the face of an advancing storm, typically they can ride the storm out better away from land. But it's always a gamble, and you don't always win.

He made a choice to take a voyage that should have been well within the ship's capabilities. He had no way to know the engines would fail. He chose to abandon ship when the situation deteriorated and he nearly made it into the life raft. Three crewmembers were swept overboard as they tried to abandon ship. One was pulled into a raft, one was later found dead, and the captains fate is unknown at this time, though it certainly doesn't look promising for him.

There are plenty of "what if's" and "why didn't he?" in this story. It's easy to criticize his decision after the fact, hindsight is always 20/20. But we don't know all of the details yet, and we may well never know them.

It is likely that his decisions and the engine failure cost him his life. That happens from time to time at sea. He's not the first captain to go down with his ship, nor will he be the last. It's a dangerous profession, and there's little margin for error.

Of course the ships would be safer if they stayed at the docks. But then they wouldn't be ships, would they?

The Maritime Museum of San Diego owns and operates the bark [i]STAR OF INDIA[[i], built in 1863 (are there any locomotives around that are older than that?). She is the oldest operating merchant ship in the world. But, you do need to define operating. They normally take her out to sea both days of one weekend per year, weather permitting. However, the weather factor usually isn't a problem here. Some years she doesn't sail, due to various extensive restoration work that needs doing.

She has an iron hull, with wood decks, so a lot of the work has involved replacing rotten wood, especially where water gets in between the wood and the iron frame supporting it. Recently, they also have had to do work on the iron that has rusted around where the wood is.

But, because of its age and value as an artifact, she is primarily a display piece, but she is kept in sailing condition, and is sailed on a limited basis. She is pretty spectacular just tied up at the dock, but watching her actually under sail is something that can't be beat.

Similarly, extremely rare railroad artifacts, are great when cosmetically restored and displayed. But the experience of seeing such artifacts actually operating, even if only infrequently, is much better.

For the public,to experience operating sailing or rail artifacts, is an opportunity that should not be missed.

I must agree.

As a mariner though, lots of changes are going to come from this, which isn't always a good thing.

With a ship like the Star of India, how do you maintain crew skills and training when the ship only operates two days a year?

I read all eight parts of the article, and what I conclude is that there was a culture of incompetence among the crew. Emergency backup systems were not tested and used because the captain did not want to "wear them out"; the chief engineer had insufficient knowledge of the ship's systems; the bosuns weren't fully versed on maintaining the hull. Aside from the captain there were no experienced hands on board. Also, because the vessel was not engaged in commercial activities it fell through the cracks of regulations designed to address these issues.

We can learn much from this incident. The lack of proper training, allowing safety systems to degrade and become unusable and taking shortcuts in maintenance are all things that can happen on railroads too. The one thing in our favor is that if one of our engine's fail the train doesn't sink!