Looking for a Ship (20 page)
Read Looking for a Ship Online
Authors: John McPhee
A day or so ago, I heard John Shephard, the sailor who makes the officers' and passengers' beds, chatting up the
Enghs about death aboard ship. Gretchen cheerfully recalled a thirty-year-old woman who had a cerebral hemorrhage during a trip they made to the east coast of Africa (“They said she was all right, but they carried her off dead”), and John enumerated many fatalities, including a four-hundred-pound seaman who proved to be a difficult fit in the ship's freezer. Shephard, who is half belly and all tact, would weigh four hundred pounds himself if he were much more than five feet tall. Even his belly has a chip on it, but who could blame him? His listed next of kin is Billy Sweat, “a friend.” Shephard's home is wherever Shephard happens to be. (“Georgia, Louisianaâwherever I'm atâI use a post-office box. I don't have no address.”) He says he has slept on the streets and eaten out of garbage cans and dumpsters. He says, “It's a rough life. Rough life. Go ashore, you spend your money, get kicked in the tail. Plenty of friends till the money runs out. A seaman smells like a rose when he's got money, but when he has no money they say, âMotherfucker, get another ship.' Friends goneâGeorge Washington, Lincoln, all them other good buddiesâyou go to the union hall and sit and sit and sit. Might take a year. Five more years, there won't be no more Merchant Marine. It's going down the guts. You find yourself something else to do. I'm a mortician, I'm an embalmer. I don't have a license, but I do the job. And I drive am-bew-lance. And I go second engineer on a porgy boat. Snapper boats. Out of work. No ship.” More than once, he has remarked that he finds things even less pleasant on shipboard. “Out chea, it's a rough life.” He told me with irritation that on three separate occasions
he had saved someone's life at sea but since he did not get his name in the union paper he doubted if he would ever save anybody else. He looked over my shoulder at maps I have of the ocean floor. He said, “I didn't know that was all that feet deep.” He asked if I had taken the pictures from an airplane.
Enghs about death aboard ship. Gretchen cheerfully recalled a thirty-year-old woman who had a cerebral hemorrhage during a trip they made to the east coast of Africa (“They said she was all right, but they carried her off dead”), and John enumerated many fatalities, including a four-hundred-pound seaman who proved to be a difficult fit in the ship's freezer. Shephard, who is half belly and all tact, would weigh four hundred pounds himself if he were much more than five feet tall. Even his belly has a chip on it, but who could blame him? His listed next of kin is Billy Sweat, “a friend.” Shephard's home is wherever Shephard happens to be. (“Georgia, Louisianaâwherever I'm atâI use a post-office box. I don't have no address.”) He says he has slept on the streets and eaten out of garbage cans and dumpsters. He says, “It's a rough life. Rough life. Go ashore, you spend your money, get kicked in the tail. Plenty of friends till the money runs out. A seaman smells like a rose when he's got money, but when he has no money they say, âMotherfucker, get another ship.' Friends goneâGeorge Washington, Lincoln, all them other good buddiesâyou go to the union hall and sit and sit and sit. Might take a year. Five more years, there won't be no more Merchant Marine. It's going down the guts. You find yourself something else to do. I'm a mortician, I'm an embalmer. I don't have a license, but I do the job. And I drive am-bew-lance. And I go second engineer on a porgy boat. Snapper boats. Out of work. No ship.” More than once, he has remarked that he finds things even less pleasant on shipboard. “Out chea, it's a rough life.” He told me with irritation that on three separate occasions
he had saved someone's life at sea but since he did not get his name in the union paper he doubted if he would ever save anybody else. He looked over my shoulder at maps I have of the ocean floor. He said, “I didn't know that was all that feet deep.” He asked if I had taken the pictures from an airplane.
The remarks about shipboard deaths gave me a little shiver in the bones. When I worked for W. R. Grace & Company, in the nineteen-fifties, I was sent off on a Grace ship with a party of stockholders, one of whom was destined for the freezer. I was one of several precursive yuppies who, obeying orders, made an appearance as red Indians on the rolling deck of the Santa Rosa. With our skins painted bronze, with tomahawks in our hands, and dressed only in loincloths, we hopped in a circle, chanting, “Grow with Grace. Grow with Grace.” The stockholder who died had had a choice locationâa sort of crossroads cabin, close to the purser and much in the center of the fun. After her sudden death, it was thought that her cabin should be reoccupied at once, in order to dispel the pall it was casting. Two of us flipped a coin to see who would sleep in her bed.
F
our P.M., August 20th, sixty miles south of the equator, this is one lovely day: air temperature seventy-four, relative humidity sixty-nine per cent, sea temperature seventy-seven. The air is so brilliant that only Vernon McLaughlin and the radar see the dense piece of apparent sky that solidifies as we pass near itâa dry and silvery pastel island. Across the wheelhouse, the captain paces and fretsâhead down, eyes on the deck, his thoughts so concentrated on the next hazard of the voyage that his mood is unrelieved by the present weather. In part to Andy, in part to the ship, he addresses remarks about the low-draft channel into Buenaventura, where the ship has to maneuver as if it were skywriting and the word it spells is “lawsuit.”
our P.M., August 20th, sixty miles south of the equator, this is one lovely day: air temperature seventy-four, relative humidity sixty-nine per cent, sea temperature seventy-seven. The air is so brilliant that only Vernon McLaughlin and the radar see the dense piece of apparent sky that solidifies as we pass near itâa dry and silvery pastel island. Across the wheelhouse, the captain paces and fretsâhead down, eyes on the deck, his thoughts so concentrated on the next hazard of the voyage that his mood is unrelieved by the present weather. In part to Andy, in part to the ship, he addresses remarks about the low-draft channel into Buenaventura, where the ship has to maneuver as if it were skywriting and the word it spells is “lawsuit.”
It is no place for the inexperienced, he is saying. It is no place for unskilled labor. You wouldn't want to be going in there under a flag of convenience with a novice crew.
You simply could not get in there with novices in the engine room:
You simply could not get in there with novices in the engine room:
“You can't get a demac down there that's cutting these fires in and out and changing tips, and watching the water in the boilers, and watching the air regulator on these high-pressure thingsâthat only comes with time. When something goes wrong, all of a sudden you've lost the water and you have too much air or no air, you've got too much heat here, and that fire's gone out, and you're maneuvering. All of a sudden you're dead in the water. You can run away from more trouble than you can drift away from, you know. You can't drift away from trouble; you drift into trouble. Once you've lost the plant, your maneuverabilityâyour ability to do anything to control the situationâis gone.”
Nor could you get into Buenaventura with novices on the bridge:
“You've got to have somebody up here who can steer or, hey, you're accident-prone. If there's other traffic around, it's usually a good accident. You have plowed into another ship, or another ship has plowed into you. Or if you haven't put her up in the sand you've put her up on a rock. You can pull her off the sand, but if that rock has penetrated your hull you can pull all you want. That one little rock is just like a huge spike that's just got you nailed down there, and you can have
ten
tugboats out there pulling, and you can have your engines go full astern, and you just stay there.”
ten
tugboats out there pulling, and you can have your engines go full astern, and you just stay there.”
Once, on the way in to Buenaventura, Stella shuddered
and abruptly stopped. Captain Washburn remembers that he said at that moment, “Heavens to Murgatroyd, we're aground!” Whereupon the mate at his side went to the logbook, recorded the exact time, and wrote “Aground.” The weight of this memory causes the captain to slap his forehead. He explains, “In this business, you don't write âAground.' You never write âAground'. You say, âWe have touched bottom.' If you hit a dock, you say, âWe touched the dock.' If the side is stove in and the hatches are buckling, you say, âWe touched the dockâI think.'”
and abruptly stopped. Captain Washburn remembers that he said at that moment, “Heavens to Murgatroyd, we're aground!” Whereupon the mate at his side went to the logbook, recorded the exact time, and wrote “Aground.” The weight of this memory causes the captain to slap his forehead. He explains, “In this business, you don't write âAground.' You never write âAground'. You say, âWe have touched bottom.' If you hit a dock, you say, âWe touched the dock.' If the side is stove in and the hatches are buckling, you say, âWe touched the dockâI think.'”
In sequential turns, the mates write the logbook like monastic scribes, filling long columns with precise minutiae. A part of their job is to account for every mile steamed, every minute of the voyage. There are economic reasons for amassing data, such as computerized fuel efficiency. But the principal purpose of the endless ledger seems to be legal. The mates are floating law clerks. Voyage in, voyage out, a great deal of what they do serves no purpose beyond a thorough preparation for an appearance in admiralty court. Nowhere does the ship sail free of chimeric litigation. When we were inching at ten knots over the bar at the mouth of the Guayas, Andy recorded the exact hour, minute, and second that we passed each of many buoys thereâhalf a mile of buoysâin case we ran agr ⦠in case we touched bottom. As the ship maneuvers in every port, he or another mate records many dozens of commands and the exact moment at which each is issued, thus extending the magnitude of the brief. Andy is respectful of these requirements. He has been teaching of late at Maine Maritime Academy;
his course in seamanship and rules of the road deals with this subject. Captain Washburn remembers a second mate who was contemptuous of details. He confided to Washburn that, in effect, logbooks are playthings for Sea Scouts and maritime cadets. He said his last ship had had no logbook. Washburn said to him, “Just because they did it on the S. S. Neversink with the Whodunit Steamship Line, they're not going to do it here. Take your careless laid-back attitude and go wreck someone else.”
his course in seamanship and rules of the road deals with this subject. Captain Washburn remembers a second mate who was contemptuous of details. He confided to Washburn that, in effect, logbooks are playthings for Sea Scouts and maritime cadets. He said his last ship had had no logbook. Washburn said to him, “Just because they did it on the S. S. Neversink with the Whodunit Steamship Line, they're not going to do it here. Take your careless laid-back attitude and go wreck someone else.”
In the chief mate's cabin is a gallery of photographs showing the present cargoâhow and where it is secured and stowed. They are like photographs of residential interiors made to show the insurance company in the event of a fire. The chief mate's picturesâevolving and archivalâare intended for a courtroom. The odds that they will be needed are shorter than one might think. They are less than thirty to one. The chief mate is in charge of the cargo, and that is why he so often works a twenty-hour day. If anything tumbles or spills, the Coast Guard will be looking for him.
There are strange, amphibious cases in the annals of admiralty law: the ship that hit the train, the ship that hit the Rolls-Royce. On December 25, 1984, Christmas took a place between Charybdis and Corryvreckan on the list of nautical hazards. In opposite directions, two Very Large Crude Carriers were rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Each captain altered course so the ships could draw close and the crews could exchange Christmas greetings. The ships collided.
Captain Washburn, who calls depositions “séances,”
has had legal functions to perform that cannot be called unpleasant. On the Cygnus, for example, he was once heading south toward the Florida Straits when a third assistant engineer requested permission to get married. His name was Alan Kane, and he wanted to be married aboard ship, with the captain officiating. The bride was in Maine. By radio, Captain Washburn and the town clerk of Tremont, Maine, united the couple even as the ship increased their separation. The steward of the Cygnus prepared a wedding supper. He baked a wedding cake. The ship was on its way to the Far East. The Kanes now have a daughter whose name is Shannon Cygnus.
has had legal functions to perform that cannot be called unpleasant. On the Cygnus, for example, he was once heading south toward the Florida Straits when a third assistant engineer requested permission to get married. His name was Alan Kane, and he wanted to be married aboard ship, with the captain officiating. The bride was in Maine. By radio, Captain Washburn and the town clerk of Tremont, Maine, united the couple even as the ship increased their separation. The steward of the Cygnus prepared a wedding supper. He baked a wedding cake. The ship was on its way to the Far East. The Kanes now have a daughter whose name is Shannon Cygnus.
The four-to-eight ends. The four-to-eight begins. Four A.M. in the cashmere blackness. We have entered Colombian water. Intently, Andy leans over the radar plotter, a disk of suffused illumination on the otherwise dark bridge, working with his wax pencil. Calvin, the helmsman, is leaning over the plotter, too. Andy is designing an oak table. He is designing it for Calvin. At home in North Carolina, Calvin has four oak four-by-fours that he will turn into legs, and he says he wants a two-inch top. Andy recommends a one-inch top.
We have entered, also, the doldrums. The lovely atmosphere has slipped behind us. Now even the night air is sticky. It is windless, and is moved only by the ship. Andy remarks that the skipper of a tall ship once told him that everyone should spend at least twenty-four hours becalmed, just to see what it is like. “You can sustain more damage in calms than in gales,” Andy says. “A boat rocks endlessly
back and forth with no wind to steady her. A ship flips back and forth, snapping things. The heavy air doesn't move. Everything is stuffy, muggy, and totally sticky below.”
back and forth with no wind to steady her. A ship flips back and forth, snapping things. The heavy air doesn't move. Everything is stuffy, muggy, and totally sticky below.”
“That sounds like my house in New Jersey.”
“Your house doesn't rock back and forth.”
“Not anymore.”
The horse latitudes, which shift seasonally and lie between prevailing winds, are also calm. Becalmed shipscompletely out of corn, cereal, bread, hay, barley, oats, apples, and anything else a horse might eatâsometimes had to throw livestock overboard in the horse latitudes.
With daylight, the captain is in the wheelhouse, muttering, “One of these days, something amiss is going to happen in Buenaventura. A combination of current, bad pilots, little dock space, and so forth is going to ding a ship.” At eighteen knots, we bring Buenaventura into viewâa few mid-rise buildings among thousands of shanties compressed on a small peninsula in jumbled profusion, like laundry spread over rocks at the side of a stream. Bill Beach has described Buenaventura as “a cesspool of whorehouses and bars.” Vernon McLaughlin has called it “the romance port.” The River Anchicayá emerges from the jungle here. To get to our berth we must cross its bar and follow its sinuous channel. We are drawing twenty-four feet ten inches with our present cargo. The Fathometer shows no measurable gap between the hull and the bottom as we cross the bar. In front of the town, the ship describes an S in the channel. “We turn tighter to port because we have a right-hand screw,” Washburn says. “From one ship to the next, you
never know. I guess that's why they call them her and she, because they go any which way.”
never know. I guess that's why they call them her and she, because they go any which way.”
The berth we are headed for comes into view. It is the middle one of three beside a long wharf, and in the two other berths ships are tied up. The bow of the one and the stern of the other are separated by seven hundred feet. Stella will need ninety-five per cent of that space. A thirty-five-foot margin divides Washburn from a ding. The pilot's nonchalance is in inverse proportion to his experience. Reflected in the pilot's eyes Washburn can see a courtroom full of lawyers. Tugboats churn around the ship. They lack experience, too. Until recently, tugs were not included in the services of this port.
As Stella inches forward, the captain watches over the pilot as he might over one of his great-grandchildren attempting to ride a bicycle for the first time. And he says to the rest of us, “This ship probably handled better before it was stretched than it does now. They made it a hundred and fifteen feet longer, and they added greatly to the gross tonnage. So you're pushing a lot more ship and a lot more weight through the water. On top of that, you have the same propeller, engine, and rudder characteristics that she had when she was a smaller shipânot only smaller but with a different hull configuration, which means different power curves. With more ship and the same rudder, she probably does not answer the helm as quickly as she did when she was smaller. She still answers the helm well at high rates of speed. At low rates of speedâwhen you're maneuvering, dead slow, and slow, and when the ship is
dead in the water, to pick it upâthat's where she is sluggish, and that's where you'd like a higher degree of maneuverability. But you don't have it, so that is something that you take in mind when you are handling this particular ship. Also, she does not back down strong immediately. If you're approaching a situation and you're coming in too fast, you cannot count on your engines going astern to pull you out of it. You have to allow a little extra time. She backs down strong once she grabs, once she gets ahold of it. You have to take that into consideration when you're maneuvering or coming up to a dock. You cannot count on the engines to pull you out of it if you're coming in at too high a rate of speed.”
dead in the water, to pick it upâthat's where she is sluggish, and that's where you'd like a higher degree of maneuverability. But you don't have it, so that is something that you take in mind when you are handling this particular ship. Also, she does not back down strong immediately. If you're approaching a situation and you're coming in too fast, you cannot count on your engines going astern to pull you out of it. You have to allow a little extra time. She backs down strong once she grabs, once she gets ahold of it. You have to take that into consideration when you're maneuvering or coming up to a dock. You cannot count on the engines to pull you out of it if you're coming in at too high a rate of speed.”
“How long does it take her to grab?” I ask him.
“A minute or two. But a minute or two is a lifetime in this business. You're down to seconds sometimes. A minute can be an eternity. But when she does grab she will back down strong, and she will pull the ship astern. The thing to do is not to be going too fast in the first place, yet you have to keep a certain amount of way on her to have rudder control and maneuverability, because if you go too slow she doesn't answer the helm. There isn't a bow thruster on her, as there is on most modern ships. They didn't put one on when they stretched her.”
When Washburn was skipper of the Sue Lykes, he found an overturned ship in Indonesian waters with her captain and four remaining crewmen standing on the hull, where they had been for eighty-four hours. Numerous ships had reached the scene, but the weather was so wild that no
one could achieve a rescue. Washburn maneuvered for an hour, and docked his ship beside the upturned hull. For this feat he was later summoned by the United Seamen's Service to the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, where he was elevated to the honorary rank of Admiral of the Ocean Seas. Now, in Buenaventura, the admiral decides to dock the ship himself, to ignore the hurt feelings of the pilot, to keep at a safe distance the incompetent tugs and reduce their crews to spectators, to rely on his own eye and his commands through the engine-order telegraph to solve this problem in very tight large-scale parallel parking. As an automobile driver, he may not know where he is. To watch him as a golfer, though, is to notice that the closer he gets to the pin the abler and more precise he becomes. Which of these characteristics will predominate here remains to be seen. His commands fall like rain, and in the same steady rhythm, with no revisions. With a few adjusting motions fore and aft, he goes into his berth as if he were closing a drawer. Leaning over the bridge wing, he looks down at the dockside and sees fifteen inches of water. He straightens up. “Nice job,” he says. “I couldn't have done it better myself.”
one could achieve a rescue. Washburn maneuvered for an hour, and docked his ship beside the upturned hull. For this feat he was later summoned by the United Seamen's Service to the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, where he was elevated to the honorary rank of Admiral of the Ocean Seas. Now, in Buenaventura, the admiral decides to dock the ship himself, to ignore the hurt feelings of the pilot, to keep at a safe distance the incompetent tugs and reduce their crews to spectators, to rely on his own eye and his commands through the engine-order telegraph to solve this problem in very tight large-scale parallel parking. As an automobile driver, he may not know where he is. To watch him as a golfer, though, is to notice that the closer he gets to the pin the abler and more precise he becomes. Which of these characteristics will predominate here remains to be seen. His commands fall like rain, and in the same steady rhythm, with no revisions. With a few adjusting motions fore and aft, he goes into his berth as if he were closing a drawer. Leaning over the bridge wing, he looks down at the dockside and sees fifteen inches of water. He straightens up. “Nice job,” he says. “I couldn't have done it better myself.”
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