Crudest Mistress

How a ship's captain may dislike vessel, ocean and passengers was comically demonstrated by Cinemactor Walter Connolly in The Captain Hates the Sea. Last week a real captain of a real ship was heard on the subject. Near Westport, Wash., a bottled note cast overboard in mid-Pacific last July was washed ashore. It was written by Captain W. J. Fowler, then first officer of Oceanic & Oriental Navigation Co.'s Golden Horn which had just been through 18 days of rough weather.

"This vessel is bound from San Francisco to Yokohama and Oriental ports with general cargo and one passenger. In all, there are 41 souls aboard, that is if those damn fools who go to sea can have souls. . . . Should this be picked up by a boy contemplating a sea career, let him ... go into the purser's department of an American company. After a surprising short time, by tattling on the ships' officers for breaches of decorum ... he will be moved into the main office as an assistant something or other to one of the 978 vice presidents. . . . Bless those others on these seas and give them better, faster ships, and in the generations to come give us honest shipowners who will give a thought to the man. ... I cast the bottle containing this into the bosom of the cruelest of mistresses, the sea."

By last week when the note was found, Captain Fowler was selling automobile tires in San Francisco.

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