ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes textually eighty accounts of ship captains as heroes or antiheroes. It focuses on news about nineteenth-century ship captains as manifestations of the human need for heroes to light the path and inspire altruism. As Carol S. Pearson notes, the hero within cannot emerge without exemplars. News coverage of villainous ship captains warned readers of the consequences of treachery. In these news reports, dishonorable masters faced punishment and scorn from an outraged public. New York Times's accounts of honorable ship captains and/or ignoble shipmasters between 1850 and 1900 passed on traditional metaphors and universal archetypes essential to maintaining culture. Carol S. Pearson, in Awakening the Heroes Within, listed traits associated with the ruler and warrior paradigms. Newspaper accounts of seafaring disasters defined the archetype of the heroic ship captain as exemplifying steadfastness, leadership, self-sacrifice, and wisdom. Ship captains who betrayed their passengers' trust, in contrast, were portrayed in opposite fashion.
