“When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about. …… I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. You see, I am not very good material for a story”
Fast forward 5 years to 1912.
Captain Smith seems fabulous material for a story, and a least a discussion. Is there a sweet-spot for mistakes (and learning from them)? Or do we just have to accept that big unpredictable icebergs come along every now and then? (It seems that George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Conan Doyle had very different viewpoints on this at the time). If we do just have to accept it, then it seems that it is at least as important to learn how to cope with the icebergs as to steer the ship.