TRANSOCEAN

I thought that an Albatross would have been seen as bad luck ?.

I think if you were to kill an albatross it would bring bad luck on the ship, as an albatross is said to be the souls of past seafarers?
AJ

That's a lubber idea based on a once very well known poem by Coleridge called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Where killing an albatross brings horrendous bad luck. The Cape Horners killed them for fun, making tobacco pouches of their feet, walking stick handles of their beaks. A break in the monotony, something to do, that's all.
(I'm not meaning to start another "whaling debate" here, so I wish to inform New Zealanders and everybody else that I personally have no need to kill those birds, and they are said to taste horrible!) Stein

We were in the South Atlantic on our way to Aussie via the Cape and one of these magnificent birds decided to land on the afterdeck during a real blow. Amid the squawking and flapping, because it couldn't take off, we managed to get a sheet over its head and I managed to get a gloved hand over the beak. It took five of us to launch it into the wind, but it was a most satisfying thing to see this wonderful creature take to the skies again. Something I never forgot.

Brian