Yes, I thought the same thing. Pressure in general but also the way Frump tells Davidson’s story makes it easier to see how he’d lean towards taking more risk on that voyage. It was several factors, in particular the dysfunctional selection process for the new ships but in general the ethos or culture that had developed with regards to risk taking. Not at the company but on the ships.
One detail I thought was interesting was this Charles Perrow quote:
Yale Professor Charles Perrow applied it specifically to maritime captains:
…we construct an expected world because we can’t handle the complexity of the present one, and then process the information that fits the expected world, and find reasons to exclude the information that might contradict it.
I have only come across the term “expected world” one other time, I recall that phrase was used on page one of the BRM course material in a class I took. The instructions were both former ship pilots and they said that they had discussed the term between themselves but had reached no conclusion and neither was sure as to what the term meant. In fact it is a key term to understanding the Achilles heel of the command structure used by Davidson and on many ships