Appendix B
Reading Journal
Your name
林思婷 Anny
Student No. 4A0C0069
Date
2014.05.12
Title
Abandon ship? In recent maritime disasters, captains don't hang around
Source
CNN News
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/21/world/asia/ship-captain-role/index.ht
ml?iid=article_sidebar
Summarize
the journal
news
On April 15th, 2014, a large ferry named the Sewol sank off the
coast of South Korea. This disaster lets people recall the memories
about the sinking of Titanic. The captain of the Titanic, Edward J.
Smith, finally chose to go down with Titanic. However, the case in
South Korea was totally different. Instead of allowing women and
children to board the lifeboats first, the captain and crew members
abandoned the ship and jumped into a lifeboat first when passengers
were still on board. Now, the captain is facing criminal charges,
including abandoning his ship, negligence, causing bodily injury, and
not seeking rescue from other ships. Besides, he is criticized by delayed
evacuation. Nevertheless, he has defended his actions. He indicated that
it was a fairly fast current area, and the water temperature was cold.
Also, there were no fishing boats or supporting ships around to help at
that time.
Your
response to
the news
In my opinion, I think that the captain of the South Korean ferry
really did wrong because he abandoned the ship and jumped into a
lifeboat to flee the ship while there were hundreds of lives on the ferry.
If I were him, I would not leave my passengers alone. I think that a
good captain should have abilities to deal with urgent situations. In
addition, he or she needs to be very brave while facing any kind of
difficulty. With many passengers’ lives in his hand, the captain should
have stayed on board until the last passenger got off the ship. However,
I also think that the captain was a little pitiful when he told the public
the reasons why he did not evacuate passengers in time. Although the
captain will be punished for the big mistakes, the lives of the
passengers will not come back.