That the captain should be the last man to leave a sinking ship is probably the strongest and most honourable tradition of the sea, and every maritime nation can tell of captains, both naval and mercantile, who stayed with their ships until the last moment, and very often beyond. While a final salute is not necessarily part of the abandon ship drill, it would hardly be an inappropriate gesture and doubtless many captains bade a last farewell in this way.

This heroic tradition is lightly satirised in the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, when Sir Alec Guinness, playing Admiral D'Ascoyne as a pompous and stupid Victorian naval officer, stands saluting on the bridge until his cap floats off, while his ship, brought into collision through his own fault, sinks beneath his feet. This particular episode was based on a real event, the collision between the battleships HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown in 1893, when Admiral Sir George Tryon – in actual fact an outstandingly gifted officer – was last seen on the bridge of his flagship, HMS Victoria, as she sank with the loss of over 350 men. His last words were reputedly, 'It is entirely my fault', a statement disputed even today.