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one of the first Volkswagens in Vermont, but on this trip they drove their powerful French car, a Citroën. The two-lane road crossing the heart of New Hampshire was dark as the car climbed and descended the many hills.
    “Dad being my dad was commenting on the cars, talking about cars,” Lucille Walbridge Jansen said. “As we started going up a hill, we passed a Volkswagen, and Dad was explaining how the Citroën had a twelve-volt battery and the VW only six volts,” and how the power of the two batteries were different and how cars were built to travel at a certain optimal speed. The Citroën passed the Volkswagen going up a hill, and Howard explained that was because the Citroën had so much more power.
    “Then going down the hill, these guys passed us,” said Lucille. “And Dad commented that they were exceeding the safe speed for that VW to be going. We also observed that they were drinking and they were feeling quite victorious in their behavior. I remember seeing a beer can. They certainly were not hiding the fact.
    “In front of us, they rolled that car several times,” Lucille recalled. “It landed right side up, perpendicular to the road. The wheels were still spinning and it went off the road, missed a very solid tree. One of the boys was thrown out.”
    Speaking the whole time in a calm voice, like a teacher in a classroom, Howard observed that an accident like that could cause a fire or an explosion.
    “And you shouldn’t park in front of [the wreck] because you don’t want to obstruct the view” of motorists following you and arriving on the scene.
    It was as if the Walbridge kids—Lucille, the oldest; Robert, four years younger; and Delia Mae, about nineteen months younger still—were watching a movie. Their father’s voice, calm and confident, kept teaching as he drove past the wreck and parked.
    Howard got out and took Lucille with him, approaching the Volkswagen. “You have to know how many people we’re looking for,” he told her as they reached the boy who had been thrown from the car and, now stunned, staggered around.
    “Son, how many people were in that car?” Howard asked the boy. “Three,” the boy answered. Howard told him to sit down. He turned to Lucille and instructed her to stay with the boy and keep him in place while he looked for the others.
    Once the injured boys had been sent to a hospital, Howard explained to his children that you didn’t go by the scene of an accident without helping. At the next pay phone, Howard stopped to call the Palmers and explain that he and the family would be late.
    “I didn’t understand why we would do that,” Lucille recalls. When she asked, Howard patiently explained that you didn’t let people worry about you.
    Lesson taught—and lesson learned.
    In a sense, Robin Walbridge, the ship’s captain, couldn’t help himself. He was a teacher as well.

CHAPTER FIVE
A HAPPY, HAPPY CREW
    This will be a tough voyage for Bounty. Here is Bounty’s current position and the weather front (Hurricane Sandy) that is approaching.
    Bounty is approx 100 miles off shore. Speed 8.6 knots on a course South by west.
    —Bounty Facebook page, Friday, October 26, 9:45 a.m.
    Sandy is generating deep convection near her center . . . but as soon as it’s generated, strong SSW-to-NNE wind-shear strips them away from Sandy’s center, and spreads “debris” clouds (which are not significant), some showers, and lesser-intense squalls throughout areas . . . all the way from FL E Coast . . . to Norfolk VA . . . and E-ward to beyond Bermuda.
    —Chris Parker, email, Friday, October 26, 5:50 p.m.
    Among his fifteen crew members—ten men and five women—aboard Bounty , Walbridge enjoyed unquestioning loyalty.
    Douglas Faunt, the oldest crew member and three years older than Walbridge, would say that the Bounty crew was his family—“closer than my family”—and a group who would risk their lives for one another. Walbridge, Faunt felt, was his