Why does “the captain go down with the ship”?
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He doesn’t have to go down with the ship.
He **should,** if at all possible, be the last person off. The ship is his responsibility. The safety of every person on it – crew and passengers – is his responsibility. If he cracks and rushes to leave the ship without
* making sure that the people he’s responsible for are also okay
* doing everything possible to protect the ship and keep it functional for as long as possible
then everything that happens after he’s gone is going to be his fault.
Do you remember a ship called the Costa Concordia? It got into trouble in January 2012 when it struck a rock, and it started to sink. The captain, Francesco Schettino, decided that saving himself was more important than anything else he could possibly be doing…
Because he wasn’t there, the chain of command broke down. The evacuation was confused (ultimately I think the **musicians** on board took command and organised it!) and took hours longer than it should have. People were injured. People died.
Even afterwards, when the salvage team came to get it and float it back up they found the ship in much worse condition than they’d expected, because after Schettino ran away without telling anyone evacuation had been so chaotic than none of the usual safety procedures had been followed.
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