Suicide
On 4 August 1919, Martha Washington departed New York City bound for Brest, France, on the first leg of a voyage that was ultimately to take her to Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire. On the evening of 10 August 1919, when Castle did not arrive at the scheduled time for dinner, his orderly and cabin steward found the door to the bathroom in his cabin locked. When repeated calls and knocking failed to arouse a response from within his cabin, the orderly and cabin steward summoned the ship's senior surgeon and a captain's mate, who forced the door. They found Castle dead on the floor of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had placed his wife's photograph inside his shirt over his heart and a picture of his two sons on the shelf in the bathroom opposite the mirror.
"During the voyage," Martha Washington's chronicler has written, "no unusual actions of the Commanding Officer caused anyone to suspect that he contemplated such an action and his death was a great shock to both his officers and men...Captain Castle was held in the highest esteem by the officers and men of this vessel, who sincerely mourn his death, with his bereaved family."
Read more about this topic: Guy W. S. Castle
Famous quotes containing the word suicide:
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: “I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.””
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth ... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.”
—Julie Burchill (b. 1960)