Read Looking for a Ship Online
Authors: John McPhee
Looking for a Ship (21 page)
W
e brought very little cargo to Buenaventura, but we did bring the crew. We had eighteen thousand pounds of powdered graphite, twenty tons of used auto parts, ninety-one tons of polypropylene for making plastic furniture, ten tons of tiremaking-machinery parts, and two Ford trucks, but scarcely was the first of it in the air and dangling from cables over the dock when the gangway rattled with springy feet and the streets were full of sailors and mates. Everyone was looking his bestâclean clothes, scrubbed bodies, hair in place for the school prom. Buenaventura calls itself the Pearl of the Pacific. The crew were in a nacreous mood. An A.B. waved a happy hand. In it was a fistful of condoms.
e brought very little cargo to Buenaventura, but we did bring the crew. We had eighteen thousand pounds of powdered graphite, twenty tons of used auto parts, ninety-one tons of polypropylene for making plastic furniture, ten tons of tiremaking-machinery parts, and two Ford trucks, but scarcely was the first of it in the air and dangling from cables over the dock when the gangway rattled with springy feet and the streets were full of sailors and mates. Everyone was looking his bestâclean clothes, scrubbed bodies, hair in place for the school prom. Buenaventura calls itself the Pearl of the Pacific. The crew were in a nacreous mood. An A.B. waved a happy hand. In it was a fistful of condoms.
Through the narrow streets, past tables of fruit, they homed in quickly on the Bamboo Bar, where the drinks were on them, the noise hung heavy, and attractive strangers took them away. Some came back to the ship with names and addresses. From North America they would send presents.
Some came back with a passionate desire to learn Spanish. In New York they would buy Berlitz cassettes.
Some came back with a passionate desire to learn Spanish. In New York they would buy Berlitz cassettes.
While the ship was berthed in Buenaventura, a woman appeared in the thwartships passage with glancing dark eyes that would melt wax. She was a slender mestiza in a green jumpsuit. She was so disconcerting that Andy later described her as tall, and the captain called her “petite.” The captain also remarked in praise of her, “Her jumpsuit wasn't sprayed on:” Aided by the cargo boss, a port official, she had walked up the gangway past the deck watch and past Colombian guards. The smile she threw at Andy left his shadow on the deck. She had on her mind something like Eurodollars. She spoke through an interpreter (the cargo boss), and the cargo boss said to the captain, “I am here to service your every need.”
The captain said, “I guess you've never seen it all.”
The cargo boss said, “I am offering my services for the duration of your stay.”
The captain threw her off the ship.
The log shows that one of the sailors returned to the ship in Buenaventura “in a state of utter intoxication, unable to walk or stand.” The captain threw him off the ship, too. Second offense. Sent him home by air. “Give anyone a break once,” said the chief mate. “After that, he's going to get what he's got coming to him.”
When the sailor had returned to the ship, he sat on a chair near the top of the gangway and would not budge. Covered, as he was, with tattoos, he looked like a melting
stained-glass window. The mate asked him what his trouble was, and he said, “My toe.”
stained-glass window. The mate asked him what his trouble was, and he said, “My toe.”
The mate said, “Let's go below and have a look at it.”
The sailor refused, and kept on refusing until the mate gave him the choice of seeing a doctor or going to his cabin. The sailor chose the doctor but refused to move. He was carried down the gangway in a Stokes litter. An ambulance took him to a hospital, where he tried unsuccessfully to bribe a doctor to say that he wasn't drunk and to recommend that he not work for two days. Discharging himself from the hospital, the sailor walked the streets barefoot and shirtless, and eventually found the ship. He was “repatriated medically” by the captain, who thereby gave him a second break. People ashore seem to fall into two principal categories with respect to their awareness of the United States Merchant Marine: those who have no idea what it is, and those who look upon it as the main chapter of alcoholics anadromous. On the Stella Lykes, in the many weeks of the voyage, the story of the sailor in the Stokes litter was the only story of its kind. By Coast Guard rules, alcoholic drinks are “strictly forbidden on any ship of the United States Merchant Marine.” It is probable that beer and booze are on every ship of the U.S. Merchant Marine, as the world would infer in months to follow after the ship of a drinking skipper was wrecked in Alaska. Who is drinking and when are separate and significant questions. On the bridge of the Stella Lykes nothing ever suggested that anyone there had been drinking, with a single exception: after a night's sleep
after Lima, one of the eight-to-twelve helmsmen remarked that he had “the big head.” Captain Washburn drinks fruit juice. He swills black coffee and is totally abstinent, afloat and ashore. When he loses his sense of direction in his own driveway, he is, among other things, sober.
after Lima, one of the eight-to-twelve helmsmen remarked that he had “the big head.” Captain Washburn drinks fruit juice. He swills black coffee and is totally abstinent, afloat and ashore. When he loses his sense of direction in his own driveway, he is, among other things, sober.
David Carter and I hailed a taxi in downtown Buenaventura and took a four-hour ride into the mountains, where we were stopped at gunpoint, told to leanâpalms flatâagainst the taxi, and frisked from ankles to armpits with no politesse at the crotch. Between Buenaventura and the high country, there are two roads, and one is an unpaved single track. We wanted to see the jungle rising to the Cordillera Occidental, and we chose the single track. It went up the Valley of the Anchicayá, crossing and recrossing the stream until the gorge walls became so high that we followed an edge of the canyon rim. We passed isolated houses surrounded with bananas. We passed a half-built dugout canoe. We did not see another car for an hour at a time. David said that we were riding in a Japanese vehicle made in Colombia and called a Chevrolet. Whatever it was, it did not have a lot of clearance. It kept pounding on rock in the middle of the road. David might have preferred his bicycle, which accompanies him on ships wherever he goes. He keeps it in the shelter deck and carries it down the gangway into seaports, where it masks his identity and creates a protective effect: “Any person on a bicycle is automatically a native.” In Guayaquil, he bought brake pads and a Chinese bell.
With altitude, the country opened out into long Andean
vistas, across the deeply dissected vegetal terrain. We went around promontories and into reentrants, around more promontories, more reentrants, and suddenly came to three soldiersâor men who were dressed as soldiersâwaving us to a stop with Israeli-made automatic weapons. David recognized the guns as Galils. He recognized them from an eight-hundred-page catalogue he had picked up at Uncle Sal's gun shop in Miami and carries with him on the ship. When David was a student at Tulane University, in New Orleans, he drove to Auburn, Alabama, to see his girlfriend Betty There. (In New Orleans he had a girlfriend, of the same name, whom he called Betty Here.) On the way to Auburn, he experienced trouble with his car and stopped to correct it. A car drew up. Four men got out. David thought, This is nice of them to stop to help me. They were carrying tire irons, however, and they demanded his money. Obligingly, he pulled out from under his shirt a Colt .41 revolver, which his fatherâan electrical contractor with fifteen trucksâhad given him with just such an emergency in mind. He pointed the Colt between the eyes of the man closest to him and said, “I'll give you ten seconds to get out of here before I start shooting. One ⦠two ⦠three ⦔ As he counted, the robbers got into their car. When he reached ten, however, the car had not moved. As a way of starting it up, he shot out the rear window. The wheels screeched, leaving rubber on the road. David emptied the revolver.
vistas, across the deeply dissected vegetal terrain. We went around promontories and into reentrants, around more promontories, more reentrants, and suddenly came to three soldiersâor men who were dressed as soldiersâwaving us to a stop with Israeli-made automatic weapons. David recognized the guns as Galils. He recognized them from an eight-hundred-page catalogue he had picked up at Uncle Sal's gun shop in Miami and carries with him on the ship. When David was a student at Tulane University, in New Orleans, he drove to Auburn, Alabama, to see his girlfriend Betty There. (In New Orleans he had a girlfriend, of the same name, whom he called Betty Here.) On the way to Auburn, he experienced trouble with his car and stopped to correct it. A car drew up. Four men got out. David thought, This is nice of them to stop to help me. They were carrying tire irons, however, and they demanded his money. Obligingly, he pulled out from under his shirt a Colt .41 revolver, which his fatherâan electrical contractor with fifteen trucksâhad given him with just such an emergency in mind. He pointed the Colt between the eyes of the man closest to him and said, “I'll give you ten seconds to get out of here before I start shooting. One ⦠two ⦠three ⦔ As he counted, the robbers got into their car. When he reached ten, however, the car had not moved. As a way of starting it up, he shot out the rear window. The wheels screeched, leaving rubber on the road. David emptied the revolver.
“By now they were all on the floor,” he said, telling the story. “I think they got the message.”
Fortunately, the soldiers in the mountains were real. They were guarding a hydroelectric station that was out of sight below us. The mountains were full of guerrillas, attacking somewhere every day. Just as the guerrillas (or, for that matter, common bandits) could dress as soldiers, they could also travel as tourists in a Japanese Chevrolet.
After the incident, when I expressed annoyance at having been frisked by armed soldiers, David said quickly, “It's no different in Florida. If the police see a Mercedes or BMW moving under the speed limit with a black or Hispanic face in it, they call that a âprofile' and they pull it over.”
The young Buenaventuran who was driving us was unfamiliar with the mountain valleys, and as more dirt roads began to converge in tracts of chocolate and coffee he became essentially lost. At that moment, the top of the gangway on the Stella Lykesâwhere the sailing board gave notice of an evening departureâseemed a thousand miles away, while in fact it was less than a hundred. We drove almost aimlessly for thirty minutes more and finally came to a sign:
AFRODISIACOS 50 M
We had found civilization.
At a newsstand in Buenaventura, on our way back to the ship, we bought a copy of the Cali
El PaÃs.
The headline of the lead story said: “GUERRILLA ASALTÃ 89 VEHICU-LOS.” Guerrillas dressed as soldiers had attacked and robbed
eighty-nine cars and buses in the mountains. But that was the day before.
El PaÃs.
The headline of the lead story said: “GUERRILLA ASALTÃ 89 VEHICU-LOS.” Guerrillas dressed as soldiers had attacked and robbed
eighty-nine cars and buses in the mountains. But that was the day before.
In Buenaventura, we picked up one million one hundred thousand pounds of coffee, fifteen hundred cartons of lollipops, twenty tons of edible gelatin, and Andy's father, Epes (Dick) Chase, who had never gone through the Panama Canal and joined the ship to do so. We picked up four thousand cartons of Quaker Oats, four hundred and thirty-six cartons of glass Nativity scenes, eleven hundred and ninety-six bookcases for “tridimensional books,” and a twenty-foot container “said to contain 13,770 pounds (net) of carded cotton yarn put up on cones knitting twist waxed with transfer tails.” While all this was being loaded and stowed, a tall thin man in gray flannel slacks moved authoritatively among the longshoremen. He would be remembered as the man with the red plastic jug. No one in the crew quite knew who he was, but no one is tracking names or numbers when the ship is aswarm with longshoremen. No one saw the man with the red plastic jug lead three young men up the gangway and under the containers swinging high from cranes. It was just assumed, retrospectively, that that's what he did. The three young men went into an open hatch, and slid into spaces about a foot high on top of the flume tanks (where water is transferred back and forth as an anti-rolling device). When the last of the lollipops had been stowed and lashed, the hatch coverâa huge rectangular steel lidâwas secured and the ship was searched, as it always is, for contraband and stowaways. Hatch by hatch, Andy and the chief mate spent thirty
minutes searching the hold. Then eight Colombian police-academy cadets, each with a flashlight, went over the same space, searching the ship from bow to stern. Every searcher went past the flume tanks. The police cadets left the ship. The booby hatches (something like manhole covers, and meant for human access to the hold) were dogged and padlocked. The mate wrote in the log: “2200: search conducted in all holds, compartments, lockers, living areas and about the decks for: stowaways, contraband and narcotics; none found.” Stella sailed to Panama.
minutes searching the hold. Then eight Colombian police-academy cadets, each with a flashlight, went over the same space, searching the ship from bow to stern. Every searcher went past the flume tanks. The police cadets left the ship. The booby hatches (something like manhole covers, and meant for human access to the hold) were dogged and padlocked. The mate wrote in the log: “2200: search conducted in all holds, compartments, lockers, living areas and about the decks for: stowaways, contraband and narcotics; none found.” Stella sailed to Panama.
At the dock in Balboa, Peewee and Pope and Victor Belmosa walked up the deck to run a cable to the jumbo crane. They thought they heard a noise of pounding, thumping, somewhere in Port Hatch No. 4. “What's that?” Belmosa said.
Pope said, “The second mate.”
Andy was nearby, checking lashings. Belmosa asked him if he had done anything that would cause such a noise.
Andy said he had.
The sailors were about to continue with the cable when the sound came again. Belmosa said, “Did you hear that?”
Andy said he had heard not only a banging sound but also a yell. Andy opened the booby hatch. The three Colombians were just inside it, at the top of a ladder. The temperature in Balboa was not exceptional. It was eighty-seven degrees at the time. The relative humidity was only sixty-four per cent. But the air that came out of the booby hatch could have been rising from a geothermal spring. As
the stowaways came out, one of them doubled over with cramps and fell to the deck.
the stowaways came out, one of them doubled over with cramps and fell to the deck.
On a transceiver the chief mate called the captain and reported the discovery.
The captain said, “Where are they now, and where were they?”
“They
were
in No. 4.”
were
in No. 4.”
“Where are they now?”
“They're standing out on deck.”
That disquieted the captain. He would have left them in the hatch. From the deck they could jump overboard and swim. He said, “Make sure that they do not get away.”
The mate said, “Look, they're dehydrated. They can hardly walk.”
The captain said, “That don't make any difference. You put them where they can't get away. If they look like they want to run, I'll be down there with the handcuffs and the gun. They aren't going anywhere.”
The stowaways were put in the checker's room, a small space near the top of the gangway where stevedores administer the work of longshoremen. The door, left open a crack, was chained and padlocked. (When the ship is in Port Newark, the checker's room is often filled with longshoremen chattering in Spanish.)
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