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Title: Captain (1858)
Description: Engels’s article for the New American Cyclopaedia on the rank of captain in the army and the navy.
Author: Friedrich Engels
Date: 1858-01-07
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1858%20Captain
---


*Written by Frederick Engels about January 7, 1858, and published unsigned in* The New American Cyclopaedia, *edited by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana (New York, D. Appleton and Co.), vol. IV (1859), p. 411. Text of the Cyclopaedia from the public-domain scans in the Internet Archive (newamericancycl10danagoog), read by OCR and corrected against the page images; collated paragraph by paragraph with the German version in Marx/Engels,* Werke*, vol. 14 (Berlin, 1961), p. 234, and found complete; authorship after the Werke.* [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1858%20Capit%C3%A1n)

CAPTAIN, the rank designating a commander of a company in infantry, or of a squadron or troop in cavalry, or the chief officer of a ship of war. In most continental armies in Europe captains are considered subalterns; in the British army they form an intermediate rank between the field officer and the subaltern, the latter term comprising those commissioned officers only whose rank does not imply a direct and constant command. In the U.S. army the captain is responsible for the arms, ammunition, clothing, &c., of the company under his command. The duties of a captain in the navy are very comprehensive, and his post is one of great responsibility. In the British service he ranks with a lieut.-colonel in the army, until the expiration of 3 years from the date of his commission, when he takes rank with a full colonel. In the old French service he was forbidden to leave his ship under pain of death, and was to blow it up rather than let it fall into the hands of an enemy. The title of captain is also applied to masters of merchant or passenger vessels, and to various petty officers on ships of the line, as captain of the forecastle, of the hold, of the main and fore tops, &c. The word is of Italian origin, meaning a man who is at the head of something, and in this sense it is often used as synonymous with a general-in-chief, especially as regards his qualities for command.