I’d wondered …
The Financial Times had an article on July 1 that scratched an itch. And scratched it in a way that made me more or less smile.
I grew up on the Severn River. (The Naval Academy anchors the Severn’s wide end, at the junction with the Chesapeake Bay.) Though I didn’t go to “the academy,” I went on to spend 4 years as a regular officer (USN, not USNR … Big Deal), in Vietnam and the Pentagon. In my own mind I … Bleed Blue, as us watery types call it.
The FT article: “Lost or Hurt at Sea? Phew!” In short the author, Victor Mallett, who writes about sailing, contrasts the sometimes shabby record of mountain climbers (shabby = leave other climbers to die) with the extraordinary lengths, with major risk of life and limb, and at routine cost of a likely racing victory, that sailors go to to rescue those who are stranded and or wounded at sea. Mallett: “I cannot imagine any sailor knowingly leaving another to die if there was the slightest chance of effecting a rescue—regardless of hardship and difficulty, let alone one’s personal ambitions or position in a race. Those climbers who passed [David] Sharp [who died], remember, were not on their way down from the summit, but on their way up with reserves of oxygen and personal energy.”
Etc. Etc.
“Eternal Father, strong to save …”