Read Looking for a Ship Online
Authors: John McPhee
Looking for a Ship (13 page)
M
cLaughlin in the evening as he steers the rolling ship: “There is a story in the Cayman Islands about a man who sailed downwind to fish. When the wind unexpectedly shifted, he sailed right back. People asked him, âDid you catch any fish?' He said, âFair winds are better than fish.'”
cLaughlin in the evening as he steers the rolling ship: “There is a story in the Cayman Islands about a man who sailed downwind to fish. When the wind unexpectedly shifted, he sailed right back. People asked him, âDid you catch any fish?' He said, âFair winds are better than fish.'”
Captain Washburn, whose belt buckle, like the sun, has shifted during the day from one hip to the other, mentions a Chilean freighter that went down not long ago with thirty-seven crewmen here in the winter swells. “But I'eve never been in a bad storm on this coast,” he reaffirms. “They do happen, but it's like Hawaii, which has never been hit by a hurricane. In any kind of weather system, a thirty-degree roll is not uncommon. The biggest roll I've been in on any shipâthat we measuredâwas fifty-three degrees. It tore things loose on that ship that had never been moved before. It tore out washbasins, desks were pulled loose from bulkheads. Everything on the ship was moving.”
“Do you get seasick?” I ask.
“No.”
“Have you ever been seasick?”
“Never a hint of it.”
“Suppose Columbus had worked for Lykes Brothers. How would he have made out?”
“He probably wouldn't have operated all that well in a fleet situation. He did not produce. He was a maverick; he was an adventurer. Before he sailed, he knew the land was there. He knew of a place with a forty-foot tide. That could be only one piaceâthe Bay of Fundy. I think he expected to discover a continent. He was not surprised at all that he did not find Chinaâyet. He
thought
there was something else first. But this was meant to be not so much a voyage of exploration as a commercial venture. This was not Henry the Navigator just out to discover things. Hey, the people backing Columbus were after a new road to the riches of the Indies without this three-year trip all the way around Africa. They were after money. He tried to pacify them by taking a few Indians back, but he was continually in trouble with the backers, because he didn't show up with a ship full of riches. He was trying to tell them that anything will grow in the soils of the New World. He was trying to tell them, âHey, you can
colonize
this.' They weren't interested in colonizing anything. They weren't interested in growing coconuts and bananas and sending them back. They wanted spice, diamonds, jewels, furs, and goldâand he didn't produce. Columbus didn't produce, which is why
he wound up in chains. He did not produce, and that was the bottom line. He was a maverick, an adventurer; he was not a follower of the party line. Come to think of itânot to compare myself with Columbusâsome of those adjectives kind of fit me. But I did all right.”
thought
there was something else first. But this was meant to be not so much a voyage of exploration as a commercial venture. This was not Henry the Navigator just out to discover things. Hey, the people backing Columbus were after a new road to the riches of the Indies without this three-year trip all the way around Africa. They were after money. He tried to pacify them by taking a few Indians back, but he was continually in trouble with the backers, because he didn't show up with a ship full of riches. He was trying to tell them that anything will grow in the soils of the New World. He was trying to tell them, âHey, you can
colonize
this.' They weren't interested in colonizing anything. They weren't interested in growing coconuts and bananas and sending them back. They wanted spice, diamonds, jewels, furs, and goldâand he didn't produce. Columbus didn't produce, which is why
he wound up in chains. He did not produce, and that was the bottom line. He was a maverick, an adventurer; he was not a follower of the party line. Come to think of itânot to compare myself with Columbusâsome of those adjectives kind of fit me. But I did all right.”
He has told me that he grew up near Walter Reed Hospital, in the Takoma Park section of the District of Columbia. His father, Daniel Webster Washburn, went off each day to the Veterans Administration, where he worked on the legal staff. Young Paul, in an impromptu manner, now and again took off for months at a time. Certain schools he attended were chosen not by him but for him: Fishburn Military School, Briarley Military Academy, the Y.M.C.A. Day School. For a few months, he also went to Roosevelt High School, and, for a few more months, to Central High School.
“My parents were probably requested to remove me from every school I went to as a youth. I didn't fit in.”
Before Paul was born, his mother had lost a child.
“When I came along, and lived, she defended me against all comers. With a smirk and a smile, I walked away. Later in life, I gave that up hard.”
He says he could make A in anything. If he wasn't interested, though, he didn't pass.
“I would start for school some mornings and not get there.”
Aged thirteen, fourteen, and upward, he rode freights as a hobo. This was in the nineteen-thirties. Sometimes he
took to the highways and hitchhiked, but he saw hitchhiking as a form of begging.
took to the highways and hitchhiked, but he saw hitchhiking as a form of begging.
“Hitchhiking was asking someone for something, riding the rails was taking it. I would rather ride in a freight car than in the comfort of someone's automobile.”
He would get on a moving freight even if he didn't know where it was going. He worked in a sheet-metal shop in Albuquerque for a few weeks, and moved on.
“It was time for me to goâwhy I don't know. I rode a friendly freightâa side-door sleeping carâto El Paso. In El Paso, you could sit on a park bench and, when you were ready to leave, get on the Southern Pacific. It ran through the park.”
He remained on land but was not unmindful of the sea.
“Whenever I got close to water, I would sit there and watch anything that was floating.”
For two months, he swung a sledgehammer as part of a Southern Pacific Railroad gang between Tucson and Yuma. Temperatures reached a hundred and ten degrees. The foreman died, and four others.
“I always asked for work, not food. Poor whites and blacks who had almost nothing were the first to share, and even offer. Affluent white neighborhoods called the police.”
He stayed in some hobo jungles, but only briefly. His ideal home was an empty boxcar that had hauled hay or straw. He took coal from the tender and built a fire on the boxcar's wooden floor. He would wake up beside a hole in
the floor with a smoking rim. To start fires, some hoboes used the lubricating dope from a train's axles. Captain Washburn never did that. If he couldn't find an empty boxcar, he would settle for the jaw head of a gondola. He rode in ice compartments at the ends of refrigerator cars when no ice was there. Sometimes he blinded a passenger train. Blinding a passenger train meant riding in the vestibule of the first car after the coal car. The site was far from ideal: there were stinging cinders in the wind, and if the train took on water he got soaked. He tied himself to tank cars with his belt to avoid being shaken off. The last resort was the top of a boxcar.
the floor with a smoking rim. To start fires, some hoboes used the lubricating dope from a train's axles. Captain Washburn never did that. If he couldn't find an empty boxcar, he would settle for the jaw head of a gondola. He rode in ice compartments at the ends of refrigerator cars when no ice was there. Sometimes he blinded a passenger train. Blinding a passenger train meant riding in the vestibule of the first car after the coal car. The site was far from ideal: there were stinging cinders in the wind, and if the train took on water he got soaked. He tied himself to tank cars with his belt to avoid being shaken off. The last resort was the top of a boxcar.
One night, when he was riding the Mobile, Montgomery & Western between Montgomery and Mobile, he saw a hotbox flaming. In rain and darkness, he crawled back over forty or fifty cars to reach the caboose, where he told two conductors about the hotbox. They stopped the train, separated the hotbox car, and put it on a siding. At this point in Captain Washburn's narrative, I expected him to tell me that the conductors called Bull Connor, who arrived with his Dobermans and took Washburn to the slammer. Actually, he spent the rest of that trip beside the stove in the caboose eating sandwiches. He was seventeen years old.
All over the United States, where the freights stopped he would go into city libraries and read books. Primarily, he read history.
“I was enveloped right into it.”
He read biographies of Christopher Columbus. And
his favorite period was the century that followed. As he paces back and forth on the bridge, one can hear him speaking to himself of Raleigh, of Mary Queen of Scots, of, by his description, “the occupation of France, the early ship movements, the beginning of commerce, the establishment of the coloniesâthe Drakes, the Hawkinses, the Frobishers, the Davises.” He tells it to the ship.
his favorite period was the century that followed. As he paces back and forth on the bridge, one can hear him speaking to himself of Raleigh, of Mary Queen of Scots, of, by his description, “the occupation of France, the early ship movements, the beginning of commerce, the establishment of the coloniesâthe Drakes, the Hawkinses, the Frobishers, the Davises.” He tells it to the ship.
Away for as much as eight months at a time, Washburn would eventually return home, resume life in Takoma Park, try another school, and then, one day, head out again. During that era, Siebrand Brothers Great Three Ring Piccadilly Circus & Carnival Combined had a sideshow freak who walked barefoot over broken glass and could accommodate with impunity any amount of current from an electric chair. This was Paul Washburn. Siebrand Brothers Great Three Ring Piccadilly Circus & Carnival Combined was a truck show that made long stands in Southwestern cities. After a crowd had been collected in the sideshow, the barker introduced Washburn, saying, “And here we have a boy from Asia. He believes in a strange religion: he believes the more you torture the body, the quicker you go to Heaven. Sometimes he punctures his body with nails, needles, and knives. Tonight he walks on glass.” When Washburn sat in the electric chair, his upper arms were strapped, and he held a light bulb in one hand. The switch was thrown. The bulb lighted. Any unbeliever who stepped up and touched Washburn received a terrific shock. He also did an “iron-tongue act.” A weight was connected by a cord
to a hook that appeared to pass through his tongue. He raised his head and lifted the weight.
to a hook that appeared to pass through his tongue. He raised his head and lifted the weight.
He worked his way east with Cole Brothers Circus as a wagon hitcher. And when he happened to be in New Orleans he wasâquite by accidentâtaken up by Ringling Brothers. He got into a dispute with the owner of what he remembers as “a greasy spoon on Canal Street,” and the man threw him out the door. Washburn, describing himself, says, “I thought the kid was tough. I tried to fight backâa little fancy footwork, a sticking move.” The man hit him so hard on the forehead that his nose bled for three weeks. A policeman intervened, and said to Washburn, “I know you. You're one of those rowdies from the circus.” He dragged Washburn to the Ringling Brothers big top at the foot of Canal Street, and said to him, “Get back in there and stay there.” Ringling Brothers gave him a job, and he stayed with the circus as it moved to Mobile and then Montgomery and Atlanta and Jacksonville. From Jacksonville, for the first time, he shipped out.
“I was down at the waterfront, and there was a banana boat going to the Dominican Republicâan old ex-flush-decker from World War I, eight dollars a month and all the bananas you could eat. I heard that there were jobs. I asked for oneâin the clothes I was standing in. They were getting ready to go, and that was under the Honduran flag.”
“You went?”
“I went.”
“What about your toothbrush?”
“I didn't have any.”
“Extra clothes?”
“I didn't have any. We went down to the Dominican Republic and brought some bananas back. Hard, green, tasteless bananas.”
“And tarantulas.”
“Tarantulas, small snakes.”
In Jacksonville, he hung around with seamen and with prizefighters. In an out-of-the-way place like Jacksonville, there was no regular fight cardâno formal schedule of preliminary bouts.
“A bunch of us would go down to the arena, and the promoter, Jimmy Murdock, would make up five or six fights out of the ones who were there. You'd get four or five or six dollars, but it was eating money. You could eat three or four days. You could eat a week. You gave somebody a dollar for being in your corner and giving you the bandages and the tape.”
He was looking for a ship, but this was before the Second World War, and ships were hard to get. He worked on a tugboat, a towboat, a homemade fishing boat, a paddle-wheel streamer called Gulf Mist. And he went on fighting. He had been on boxing teams and had fought in Golden Glove competitions during his brief days in private schools. While he rode the rails and read in libraries, he fought at night for money. He fought both “simon-pure” and semipro. If he won semipro, he was paid as much as ten dollars.
“Amateur, they gave you a watch and bought it back for five dollars. You could live for a week on five dollars. A hamburger steak was fifteen cents.”
He fought in El Paso, Los Angeles, West Palm Beach. For five dollars, he fought in the Punch Bowl in El Paso. In Los Angeles, he had a trainer named Speedy Dado, and his manager was Joe Kellyâat Willy Orner's Main Street Gym.
“I sparred briefly with Henry Armstrong. The thing that convinced me that I wasn't going to be a fighter: I was knocked out three times in one week. I figured twice would have been enough for most folks. I carried it one more dimension.”
In Brunswick, Georgia, he fought in a tent for fifty-three cents: the promoter ran off with the money, and the fighters divided what was left in the till.
In 1941, aged eighteen, he obtained his ordinary seaman's papers, and joined the oceangoing ranks of the Merchant Marine. He got a ship in Savannah. He got a ship in Charleston. He also shipped out of Port Arthur.
“I got a tanker out of there, coastwise.”
He had no thought of a career at sea. Riding ships was like riding the rails.
“It was just something to do, some place to go, something that was moving.”
One time, between ships, he went to West Palm Beach with a heavyweight friend who was fighting main event. The prelims were fought by servicemen picking up extra
bucks, and that night all the prelim fighters' leaves were cancelled. The promoterâ“Al Caroli, out of Boston”âwas desperate to fill the card. Washburn and the heavyweight arrived at the National Guard Armory five minutes before the first prelim was supposed to begin. Caroli said to Washburn, “Give me a break. You fight a Mexican amateur, no big deal.” Ten minutes later, the captain was on the canvas and his eyelids resembled coins.
bucks, and that night all the prelim fighters' leaves were cancelled. The promoterâ“Al Caroli, out of Boston”âwas desperate to fill the card. Washburn and the heavyweight arrived at the National Guard Armory five minutes before the first prelim was supposed to begin. Caroli said to Washburn, “Give me a break. You fight a Mexican amateur, no big deal.” Ten minutes later, the captain was on the canvas and his eyelids resembled coins.
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