"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Why look'st thou so?" "With my cross-bow

I shot the albatross...

And the good south wind still blew behind

But no sweet bird did follow, 

Nor any day for food or play

Came to the mariners' hollo!

And I had done a hellish thing, 

And it would work 'em woe;

For all averred, I had killed the bird

That made the breeze to blow. 

Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, 

That made the breeze to blow!"

Apparently there was a ship returning from Antarctica in 1959 with an Albatross on board. The ship housed it caged to deliver the bird to a German zoo. 

The Albatross died shortly after the ship left. 

According to an account in Seafaring Lore and Legend, "The rest of the voyage to Europe was such a litany of storms, engine trouble, and other disasters that the crew went on strike."

Once the vessel arrived at Liverpool, The captian finally declared what the crew had known all along: "it had been a very bad thing indeed to catch an albatross, let alone imprison it in a cage."