This is more realistic. But it begs the question, why didn't the destroyer out-run it? The freighter was approaching from it's back side, and should have given way, but once you realize it's not going to you have 100,000 horsepower to accelerate away with.

And standing orders were to wake the captain whenever another ship gets within a minimum distance. So the watch had to not only decide to play chicken with the freighter, but not wake the captain when it breached minimum safe distance.

"Unless everyone on both ships was asleep, this statement doesn't have to be true. If anything, it seems eminently plausible the destroyer's crew was playing chicken with the freighter thinking they were playing against a human opponent, when in fact they were dealing with an automated system."

Interesting you should mention this because, IIRC, the book has an aside about ships that (unknowingly) play chicken with lighthouses.

Is that in any way related to the somewhat apocryphal / mostly untrue anecjoke about the aircraft carrier and the lighthouse?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_ur...