Season: 5, Episodes: 2, Faction: DHARMA Initiative
Overview
Captain Bird was a member of the DHARMA Initiative, and Captain of the Galaga.
 Ferryman |
 Death |
 Underworld |
 Fertility (Water) |
1977
5×15 – Follow the Leader
Captain Bird was at the helm of the Galaga during the evacuation of the DHARMA Initiative from the Island.
After striking a deal with Radzinsky; Sawyer, Juliet and Kate were exiled from the Island and brought upon the submarine. Sawyer remarks that they will be free in the “real world”. (“Follow the Leader”)
5×16 – The Incident, Part 1
On their way off the island, Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet persuade him to surface the sub in order for them to leave it. When he asks what to say to Horace if he calls, Sawyer shoots the radio. The Captain then provides them with a zodiac raft and surfaces. He then proceeds on course to Ann Arbor. (“The Incident, Part 1”)
Related Character Images
Associated LOST Themes & DHARMA Stations
Decoded Season 1 Characters
 James Sawyer |
 Kate Austen |
Decoded Season 3 Characters
 Juliet Burke |
 Casey |
 Horace Goodspeed |
Decoded Season 4 Characters
 Miles Straume |
 Charlotte Lewis |
Decoded Season 1 Characters
 Mitch |
 Lara Chang |
 Jeanette Lewis |
 Rosie |
 Phil |
 Long-Haired Guard |
 Short-Haired Guard |
Key Episode(s) to Decoding the Character
 5x15 "Follow the Leader"  5x16 "The Incident, Part 1"
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The ‘Galaga’ Submarine
The Galaga was a DHARMA Initiative submarine that was appropriated by the Others after the Purge and used as a means of transporting recruited personnel from the outside world. (“Enter 77”) (“The Man Behind the Curtain”) In 2004, Locke destroyed it using C-4 explosives he acquired from the Flame. (“The Man from Tallahassee”)
History
DHARMA Initiative service
The Galaga was originally part of the DHARMA Initiative infrastructure on the Island. There were docking facilities around the Island, including those near the Barracks, the Processing Center, at Hydra Island, and at the Looking Glass station underwater. It was used to travel between destinations on the Island and from the Island to the outside world. An underwater beacon helped the submarine locate the Island. During the 1970s, the Galaga was commanded by Captain Bird.
3×20 – The Man Behind the Curtain
In 1973, an eight-year-old Ben and his father arrived at the Island in the Galaga along with several others to join the DHARMA Initiative. (“The Man Behind the Curtain”)
5×08 – LaFleur
When Sawyer’s group became stranded in 1974 at the conclusion of the time flashes, Horace Goodspeed said only DHARMA Initiative personnel were allowed to stay on the Island and offered to return them to Tahiti by the submarine. After saving the DHARMA Initiative from Richard and the Hostiles, Horace allowed the five to stay two more weeks until the sub’s next departure. Juliet sat at the dock beside the Galaga, telling of her intention to leave anyway, until Sawyer convinced her to stay. (“LaFleur”)
5×15 – Follow the Leader
In 1977, following Daniel’s warning of the impending Incident, Pierre Chang evacuated all non-essential DHARMA Initiative personnel, including all the women and children, aboard the Galaga. Among the evacuees were his wife and infant son, as well as young Charlotte Lewis and her mother.
When Sawyer and Juliet were discovered by Radzinsky, they agreed to reveal the location of the Hostiles in exchange for letting them leave on the sub. After returning from the Others’ camp, Kate was also forced to leave with them. (“Follow the Leader”)
5×16 – The Incident, Part 1
However, the three overcame their DHARMA Initiative captors and ordered the captain at gunpoint to release them on a life raft, and then to carry on with his evacuation mission. (“The Incident, Part 1”)
Service under the Others
5×12 – Dead Is Dead
Sometime after the Purge, Charles Widmore was exiled from the Island for breaking the rules and left via the Galaga. Ben came out to the dock to see him off, and Widmore was escorted onto the sub in restraints by armed guards. (“Dead Is Dead”)
Mikhail would later claim that he arrived on the Island by submarine to join the DHARMA Initiative. (“Enter 77”)
3×16 – One of Us
Juliet arrived on the Island in 2001 aboard the Galaga. The exact circumstances of her journey are unknown, as she was kept unconscious from the time she met Ethan and Richard Alpert at an airport (presumably outside of Miami) until after the submarine had docked at the Island. When she woke up, she found herself strapped to a bunk in the submarine. Ethan claimed that the straps and the tranquilizer were necessary because of the roughness of the travel experience to the Island. (“One of Us”)
3×13 – The Man from Tallahassee
Ben claimed the submarine was the Others’ only way of reaching the outside world. When the Swan imploded, the underwater beacon stopped functioning along with the rest of the former DHARMA Initiative communications equipment. This meant that if the submarine left, it would not be able to return. John Locke infiltrated the Barracks and held both Ben and Alex hostage, demanding to be taken to the submarine. Ben later explained that since communications with the outside world were lost the submarine was only capable of leaving the Island, but never returning, and that Jack would be leaving the Island by submarine in a few hours. The result would be the same whether Locke destroyed the submarine or not. All he would accomplish by destroying the submarine would be to keep Jack on the Island. Locke was later taken to the submarine by Alex and planted a C4 explosive. As he left the dock, he surrendered to the Others, but the submarine appeared to explode moments later. (“The Man from Tallahassee”)
In the aftermath, Juliet (who would have left together with Jack) questioned if Locke acted on his own or under Ben’s influence when blowing up the sub, and whether he blew up the Galaga at all. (“Operation: Sleeper”)
A snorkel was visible in the pictures of the surfaced submarine, which suggests that the Galaga was powered by conventional rather than nuclear propulsion.
Wiki Info
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is the Ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. In the catabasis mytheme, heroes — such as Heracles, Orpheus, Aeneas, Dionysus and Psyche — journey to the underworld and return, still alive, conveyed by the boat of Charon.
Etymology of name
The name Charon is most often explained as a proper noun from χάρων (charon), a poetic form of χαρωπός (charopós), “of keen gaze”, referring either to fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes, or to eyes of a bluish-gray color. The word may be a euphemism for death. Flashing eyes may indicate the anger or irascibility of Charon as he is often characterized in literature, but the etymology is not certain. The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus thought that the ferryman and his name had been imported from Egypt.
Appearance and Demeanor
Charon is depicted frequently in the art of ancient Greece. Attic funerary vases of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. are often decorated with scenes of the dead boarding Charon’s boat. On the earlier such vases, he looks like a rough, unkempt Athenian seaman dressed in reddish-brown, holding his ferryman’s pole in his right hand and using his left hand to receive the deceased. Hermes sometimes stands by in his role as psychopomp. On later vases, Charon is given a more “kindly and refined” demeanor.
Further Info
KHARON (or Charon) was the son of Erebus & Nyx and ferryman of the dead. He was an underworld daimon (spirit) in the service of King Hades. He received the shades of the dead from Hermes, who gathered them from the upper world and guided them to the shores of the Akherousian mere. From there Kharon transported them in his skiff to a final resting place in Hades, the land of the dead, on the other side. The fee for his service was a single obolos coin which was placed in the mouth of a corpse at burial. Those who had not received due burial and were unable to pay his fee, would be left to wander the earthly side of the Akheron, haunting the upper world as ghosts.
Kharon was portrayed in Greek vase painting as an ugly, bearded man with a crooked nose, wearing a conical hat and tunic. He was shown standing in his skiff holding a pole, about to receive a shade from the psychopompian Hermes.
The Etruscans of central Italy identified him with one of their own underworld daimones who was named Charun after the Greek figure. He was depicted as an even more repulsive creature with blue-grey skin, a tusked mouth, hooked nose and sometimes serpent-draped arms. His attribute was a large, double-headed mallet.
Mythological Family Members & Associated Deities
 EREBUS (Father) |
 NYX (Mother) |
 HADES |
HERACLES |
 DIONYSUS |
HERMES |
>: 4-8-15-16-23-42 [EXECUTE] - LOST Solved 
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