Among the famous captains in the forties were C. H. E. Judkins, James Stone, William Harrison, Ed. G. Lott, Theodore Cook, Captain Moodie, and James (afterwards Sir James) Anderson who commanded the _Great Eastern_ on some of her cable-laying expeditions. Captain Harrison was the first commander of the _Great Eastern_, and was drowned in the Solent when going ashore from his ship in a dingy. Captain Judkins was born at Chester in 1811; he entered the Cunard service in 1840 as chief officer of the SS. _Acadia_: was appointed commander of the _Britannia_ that same year, and was successively master of the _Hibernia_, _Canada_, _Persia_ and _Scotia_. He lived to be Commodore of the fleet and retired from the sea in 1871, after having made more than five hundred voyages across the Atlantic without any serious accident, and being able to say that the Cunard Company at that date had lost neither a life nor a letter. Captain Judkins died in 1876. He was a typical British sailor. He could be exceedingly gracious, and when the mood struck him he could be gruff. I remember making a voyage with him on the _Hibernia_ in 1843, on which occasion he ran across from Halifax to Liverpool under a cloud of canvas, with studding sails set low and aloft most of the time, a dense fog all the way, but he picked up his pilot off Cape Clear, just where he expected to find him, and went snoring up the Channel, growling like a bear at the captain of a Dublin steamer who would not get out of his way, and whom in his wrath he threatened to send to “Davie Jones’ locker.” The voyage was made in nine days and a half, I think, which was accounted a marvellous run in those days. Captain Lott was one of the most genial of men and very popular. He, too, was banqueted on the completion of his five hundredth trip. It has been said of him that his good nature was occasionally ruffled when liberties, unconsciously or otherwise, were taken with his name; as, for example, when a worthy minister officiating on board took for his text, “Remember Lot’s wife”; and again, when a rough sailor complained in his hearing that his pork was “as salt as Lot’s wife.” Sailors, as a rule, are not given to talk shop, and are quick to resent idle talk in others. The story is told of Captain Theodore Cook that one day when taking his noon observation, a cloud interrupted his vision. Just then a passenger coming along said with a patronizing air, “Captain Cook, I’m afraid that cloud prevented you from making your observation.” “Yes, sir,” replied the potentate of the sea, “but it did not prevent you making yours.”[14]