How should Jack have handled Hollom?

Honestly, Hollom was beyond saving. He just wasn't officer material and mentally not strong enough.
In Jack's place, I would have had him replaced after the patrol.

It was an interesting character defect of Aubrey that he bought into the Jonah BS on some level, and it didn’t help that the wind picked up immediately after Hollom went overboard.

But Aubrey was also compassionate and didn’t want to see things get ugly, and perhaps if this aspect of his personality was stronger he might have sought a solution.

I would have sat down with Stephen and talked feasible options, then brought in Hollom and asked him what he wanted to do. Either he could shape up and deal with it, or be relieved of duty and sent back at the first opportunity (like when they gave crew letters to someone who was to take or send them to England - Hollom could effectively join the letters). In the meantime Hollom would be separated from the crew and treated as mentally ill or suchlike by Stephen.

Or Hollom could be treated as an enemy captive, again kept away from the crew but fed and watered at least until the mission was complete and England was within reach.

He was not a solvable problem.

When one is a manager, one does one's best to mentor and grow the person.

Sometimes, it cannot be done. You let them go.

They go to the crows and the wind. Sometimes, they find the right place. Likely they won't. Best to mentor those that can be saved.

These are just hard truths that one has to live with the rest of their lives. You can't let the deaths worry you. You do your best and sometimes some people are beyond saving. You keep trying, but, in the end, people make their own decisions. That's on them, not you. You tried.

Basically workplace bullying in the early nineteenth century. The guy killed himself but hey at least we've got good weather now.

Basically workplace bullying in the early nineteenth century. The guy killed himself but hey at least we've got good weather now.

It was pretty clear that Jack did not buy into the curse idea, but he knew that the crew did. Trying to intervene would only risk poisoning the crew against himself, and there was no hope of achieving anything constructive by so doing. He did, however, berate the crew as much as he reasonably could in his eulogy.

There was wasn't much that Aubrey *could* do, because on a voyage that lasted for months or years, they couldn't re-assign the guy or get rid of him legally, they were all stuck together with no escape. That's why tensions could run so insanely high if feelings turned really bad, people were trapped together in a small, crowded space, with no escape other than death. There were several instances of things going sour in the books, due to this extended proximity and there being no way to relieve feelings.

FYI in the book Hollom was presumed to have been murdered. His story was a little more complicated in the book, the ship's gunner brought his wife on board and she and Hollom developed feelings, and when the three of them went ashore and only the gunner came back, and no bodies were ever found, the gunner was presumed to have murdered his wife and her lover but there was no proof... and the gunner becamse the ship's "Jonah", the one who was cursed and who brought dangerous back luck on board. He vanished one night and was presumed to have been "helped over the side" by unknown crew members, and nothing was done because there was no proof, and it may have been just. And because after that, the ship became happy again.