A Broader Canvas

Since childhood, I’ve collected pictures of ships.  Mostly postcards, these portraits were easily affordable and portable during travels.  The collection started with the passenger liners on which my grandparents sailed, and then continued with whatever seemed relevant to the family or historically noteworthy.  The result is an eclectic assortment, a little of this and a little of that, with a little from here and a little from there.

Each image has its own story, and in several instances, its own connection to our family.  With no further ado, then, let me present a dozen or so of what I think are the best and most interesting photographs:

The place where it all started.  An aerial view of the passenger piers on the West Side of Manhattan.  Shown at left are three Cunard ships, including the Queen Elizabeth in the center.  At right are the America of United States Lines and one of the twins Constitution and Independence of American Export Lines.  Note the overhanging fantail tern on the American Export ship.  This is a long gone aspect of the shipbuilder's art, a lovely finishing touch on a very attractive vessel.

The Constitution and the Independence were my grandparents' favorite ships.  They made unhurried voyages between New York and several Mediterranean ports, and while certainly first class operations, they did not engage in the movie star sophistication of some of the more famous liners.  This is my favorite portrait of the Constitution, one of a half-dozen that my grandparents collected.  She appears to be at anchor, probably off a Mediterranean port, judging by the shadows cast by a high summer sun.

  

Twice my grandparents sailed aboard the Cristoforo Colombo of the Italian Line in the late 1950s.  They mailed this portrait of the ship home from Italy following a voyage from New York to Napoli in October of 1959.

When the Cristoforo Colombo arrived in Napoli, she docked here at the Stazione Maritima.  Monte Vesuvio looms in the background across the bay.  The American Export ships also docked here.  Note the multi-colored twin stacks of either the Constitution or the Independence rising above the building.  Many years after my grandparents' travels, the Rigel docked here during my time aboard here in 1979.  More recently, the Nieuw Amsterdam, on which my oldest son got married, has docked here while on her summer cruises.

During my transatlantic travels of the 1970s, I happened across this souvenir log of the United States, which I gave to my grandfather.  He and my grandmother had made one voyage on this ship in 1955, and I thought he would find this item interesting.  He did.  He told me, however, that the United States went too fast--New York to England in three days--and he preferred a slower, longer, and more leisurely crossing.  The voyage data on the back of this card brag about speed, speed, and speed.  I've come to agree with my grandfather.  The ships I later sailed on typically took ten days to reach Europe.

The troop transport Upshur is about to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, most likely after departing from the Military Ocean Terminal in Oakland, California.  For years this vessel carried American military personnel, their families, and their belongings between the West Coast and the Far East.  She also carried South Korean troops during the Korean War.  Long afterwards, as the school ship State of Maine, notices stenciled in Korean remained on the bulkheads in the troop compartments.  I made two summer voyages on this ship as a teenager in the mid 1970s.  I also sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge several times, not on the State of Maine, but while aboard the Mercury and the Comet in the 1980s.

The ferry R. S. Sterling of the Texas Highway Department.  I rode this ferry on Monday, May 30, 1977, during the time of my apprenticeship aboard the tanker New Jersey Sun.  While she was drydocked at the Todd Shipyard in Galveston, I wandered around town on Memorial Day and found entertainment in free ferry rides between Galveston and Port Bolivar, Texas.

The aircraft carrier Lexington moored in her home port of Pensacola, Florida.  On another side trip during my time aboard the New Jersey Sun, my brother and I took a tour of this ship on Saturday, May 21, 1977.  Years earlier, as a student pilot, he had landed on and taken off from the Lexington at sea in the Gulf of Mexico.  I remember him remarking that the flight deck seemed pretty small.

A winter view of the first Queen Elizabeth at the Ocean Terminal in Southampton, England.  While such snow is unusual in southern England, the Queen Elizabeth and her sister the Queen Mary called at this spot regularly for decades.  Years after they reached the end of their careers, the oceanographic survey ship Wilkes docked at this same berth several times with me on board in the winter of 1980 and 1981.

Cunard's new flagship Queen Elizabeth 2 leaves Southampton for the first time in 1967.  The QE2 and I have followed each other along the American East Coast.  I saw her a few times in Fort Lauderdale when I was posted on the Bartlett and the two ships tied up across the pier from each other.  Years later, I took the children to see the Queen several times in New York and once in Portland, Maine.

An aerial view of the passenger ship piers in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1970s.  I acquired this postcard in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, in early November of 1979 when I was sailing aboard the General Hoyt S. Vandenburg.  I wanted very much to visit San Juan and see the old colonial city, but that would have to wait a few years.

The nearly identical twin sisters Caribou and Joseph and Clara Smallwood of Marine Atlantic.  These were two of the four vessels that connected North Sydney, Nova Scotia, with Argentia and Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland.  We sailed aboard the Joseph and Clara Smallwood from North Sydney to Argentia on Monday, June 21, 2004.  At the time, it was the longest voyage the children had made--fourteen hours--and they loved every minute of it.  I did, too.  I remember that it felt absolutely wonderful to sail out of sight of land and onto the open Atlantic again!

The cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland-America Line appears in a computer-generated image.  While the line of foam alongside the ship would lead us to believe she is underway and making way through the water, there is no bow wave, no side wave, no stern wave, and no wake.  There are also no passengers or crew out on deck.  My guess is that this is an artist's rendering made while the vessel was under construction in 2010.  Still it's a good likeness of a fine ship.  Our oldest son, James, was married aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday afternoon, February 5, 2012.  Three days later, with the whole family aboard, the Nieuw Amsterdam docked at the cruise ship piers in San Juan.  A dream come true, I happily spent the day exploring this beautiful city.  In one further family history connection, my grandparents' final voyage was a winter cruise to the Caribbean in January and February of 1968.  Sailing one last time aboard the Constitution, they visited San Juan and docked at the same piers as the Nieuw Amsterdam.

Since my childhood, then, ships have been important means of transportation as well as the centerpieces at family gatherings on many occasions.  From the bon voyage celebrations at the West Side piers to the wedding aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam and numerous voyages in between, these vessels have have served us very well.  Now, even though most of these ships are long gone, they live on in the photographic arts and in the family archives, and they bring back many happy memories.  The family and the ships thus form a dual blessing, and we are expected to “receive it from the hand of the Lord, with a thankful heart” (D&C 62:7).  In looking back on these happy times aboard these great ships, how could anyone not feel thankful?

The Shipping News

For many years The New York Times ran a daily page carrying news of the shipping industry. Located toward the back of the main section of the paper, this page contained news articles concerning merchant shipping and notices of the arrivals and departures of ships in New York Harbor. The news articles were fairly prosaic, involving freight rates, schedule changes, service adjustments, weather reports, and so on. The arrivals and departures were presented in tabular form. These tables listed every commercial ship and military transport vessel, its time and date of arrival or departure, its pier, and its voyage’s destination or port of origin. Sometimes entire itineraries would be listed if a ship was scheduled to make several port calls on the same voyage. In addition, it listed arrivals and departures for selected foreign and American West Coast ports.

There was nothing artistic or literary about this writing. It was strictly business. Today, however, it’s history. The names of the world famous passenger liners as well as the names of comparatively unknown freighters and tankers filled these pages as if they were a social register. In an era when the vast majority of the passengers, mail, and cargo crossed the oceans by ship instead of by airplane, the names of the ships and their times and piers of arrival and departure were important news items.

Here’s an example. Going back 56 years, we read that the passenger ship Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland-America Line sailed at 12:00 noon on Friday, June 21, 1957, from Hoboken. She was scheduled to arrive at Southampton, England, on the following Friday, June 28, and then call at Le Havre, France, later that same day. Continuing her voyage, the ship would arrive at her home port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Saturday, June 29.1

This routine transatlantic voyage interests me because my grandparents, Robert Burns and Julia Murphy, made this sailing in order for my grandfather to attend an engineering conference in Switzerland. They disembarked from the Nieuw Amsterdam in Le Havre, took a train to Paris, and after a few days there resumed their journey. When his business was completed, they travelled by train to Genova, Italy, where on Sunday, July 14, they embarked on the Italian Line’s Cristoforo Colombo. This vessel subsequently delivered them to the passenger piers on the West Side of Manhattan at 9:00am on Tuesday, July 23, 1957.

Day after day and voyage after voyage, this tabular data of arrivals and departures indicate that merchant shipping was a big business. The movement of passengers, merchandise, and mail across the world’s oceans commanded the attention of millions of people who had a personal or financial interest in the shipping. For my grandparents’ travels, this news was important to the family twice a year—the voyage out and the voyage back—for about thirteen years. For many others, it was a livelihood. Hence the importance of devoting daily an entire page of a major metropolitan newspaper to this information. But now, it’s history.

For me, it’s a very interesting history. The shipping news combines my family’s history and my affinity for the things of the sea. Big ships, long voyages, exciting destinations—these are some of the finest things in life! Sailing to Europe is always so much more enjoyable and adventurous, even if it takes longer, than strapping oneself into an airplane seat and getting there overnight. I have flown to Europe once and flown back from Europe once. I’ve sailed there and back many more times. Sailing is definitely better. My grandparents agreed. They certainly had the option of flying, and they did cross the Atlantic a few times by air in the mid 1960s, but they strongly preferred to travel by sea.

Here’s another example. In 1956 they sailed aboard the American Export Lines’ Constitution for the first time. Departing from Pier 84 at the foot of West 44th Street in Manhattan on Saturday, September 1, she called at Algeceras, Spain, on Friday, September 7, and at Cannes, France, and Genova, Italy, on Sunday, September 9. My grandparents disembarked in Genova.

They liked American Export and the Constitution so much that beginning in 1959 they sailed almost exclusively with this company. That year they returned to New York from Genova aboard the Independence, the Constitution’s twin sister. These are the ships that I remember from the 1960s. I was a small child then, but old enough to find everything about these great liners fascinating. On sailing day I spent hours wandering around these vessels with my family, examining everything and asking many questions before the ritual call of “All ashore that’s going ashore” was sounded.

But this is digression.² The shipping news pages in The New York Times call to mind a bygone era, when travel by sea was the norm, not the adventurous exception. It was a time when a person would speak literally of “when my ship comes in.” Shipping was a far-reaching business, a way of life, not just a vacation cruise or a novelty. From the humblest ferry crossing the Hudson River to the grand Queen Mary, vessels of all sizes, shapes, and purposes dominated the waterways. This changed as bridges and tunnels increasingly replaced ferries and the airlines became the mainstay for overseas travel. Ships do remain, of course, and they carry the freight and the petroleum the world uses, but so much of this is so far from public view that it is largely unknown. I’ve met people who honestly had no idea how all the Japanese automobiles arrived in the United States!

To read the shipping news, then, is to step back in time. Scrolling through reels of microfilm researching the ships and the voyages of my grandparents’ travels, I become absorbed by the lists of vessels arriving and departing from New York. The data, while tabular, is not impersonal. Merchant ships with names and personalities stand out on the pages. The American flagship United States; the two Queens of the Cunard Line; the –dam ships of Holland-America, including the Statendam, Noordam, Westerdam, and Nieuw Amsterdam, aboard all of which my grandparents sailed; the pragmatic Swedish Gripsholm and her fleet mates; the diminutive Atlantic; the several Export freighters; the numerous Esso tankers; the military troop transports including the good old Upshur³—these and dozens more connected New York with the rest of the world, and their comings and goings were important news to many, many people.

For some of us, the comings and goings of merchant ships remain very important. Something that was once a chosen career and a way of life for me does not lose its significance. Despite the passage of time, the yearning for the sea remains with me. While my seafaring days are regretfully long past, I can in some sense go to sea again by reading the old newspapers.

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¹ Rather than cite every last detail, I will simply note that all the voyage information comes from three sources: the shipping news pages on the appropriate dates in The New York Times, which are supplemental to my grandmother’s travel journals and my grandparents’ letters. They wrote frequently when they were away, and I consider this body of scripture a family heirloom.

² To continue the digression, see Leonard A. Stevens, The Elizabeth: Passage of a Queen, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, for a fascinating and in-depth description of the workings of a passenger liner in commercial service between New York and Europe.

³ The Upshur later became the State of Maine, on which I sailed in 1976 and 1978 while studying for the license as third mate.

Picking Up the Pilot

A hymn seldom sung in our corner of the Church is “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me.”  Written by Edward Hopper in the nineteenth century, it reflects in part the fears of those using the dominant mode of transportation of the era:

Jesus, Savior, pilot me

Over life’s tempestuous sea;

Unknown waves before me roll,

Hiding rock and treach’rous shoal.

Chart and compass came from thee:

Jesus, Savior, pilot me.

When at last I near the shore,

And the fearful breakers roar

‘Twixt me and the peaceful rest,

Then, while leaning on thy breast,

May I hear thee say to me,

“Fear not; I will pilot thee.”¹

In this age of travel by automobile and airplane, does the average passenger understand what a pilot is and does?  Probably not, because while the vast majority of the world’s international commerce is still carried by sea, this operation is far removed from both the sellers and the buyers of the goods that are shipped.  But as long as there are merchant ships plying the oceans, there will be pilots to bring them in and out of port.

Let us observe a pilot bringing the Queen Elizabeth into port:

The pilot, Captain Robert Ahrens of the Sandy Hook Pilots Association, boarded the Elizabeth at about 7 a.m. while the ship was still at sea.  He had arrived by motor launch from the Association’s pilot boat and had come aboard by climbing up a rope ladder to one of the shell doors.  Now he stood at a center window in the wheelhouse where he had a broad view of the waters ahead and of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the distance.  He was providing the compass headings which allowed Chief Quartermaster Bell to steer the safest course up the Ambrose Channel, through the Narrows into New York’s Upper Bay, and finally into the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan Island.

“Steer three-four-six,” said the harbor pilot, and the number was repeated by the Chief Quartermaster, who simultaneously turned the large ship slightly to starboard.  The pilot’s directions laid down the true compass heading the liner was to follow until another figure was called out.  In a few minutes he ordered, “Steer zero-zero-two,” and the Quartermaster again brought her to starboard.  Thus the Sandy Hook pilot held the Queen Elizabeth to the Ambrose Channel and guided her directly through the Narrows.

Captain Ahrens also directed the ship’s speed.  At one point he called out, “Half Ahead!” His command was followed by a ringing of bells as the quartermasters operated the telegraphs and signaled the Elizabeth’s engine rooms, more than ten decks below, to reduce revolutions on her four propellers from 100 to 80 per minute.  This slowed her from 17 to 13 knots.²

While this does not seem terribly complicated, terrible complications would result if the Queen Elizabeth or any other vessel entering port were not held to the straight and narrow line of deep water.  A very large part of piloting involves knowing where the dangers are as well as where the safe water is.  Acquiring the necessary knowledge and expertise requires work and takes time:

Captain Ahrens and other Sandy Hook pilots work at one of the most ancient occupations connected with the sea.  Since men have sailed to foreign lands they have needed pilots in the unknown and dangerous waters at the mouth of a safe harbor.  “A shift in the wind before a reef without a pilot,” says a history of the profession, “and the spices of India could lie deep at the mouth of the harbor.  A storm off the coast of Dover without a pilot could bereave the most prominent houses of England.”

The fact that Captain Ahrens could pilot the Queen Elizabeth indicated he had risen to the top of his profession.  To learn his trade he first had to serve seven years as an apprentice.  Meanwhile he had to pass stringent examinations.  He knew by heart every detail of the New York and New Jersey harbor waters, including the bottom surface, rocks, reefs, shoals, buoys, and currents.  With such facts in his head, he was then allowed to progress slowly from the smallest vessels entering the harbor to the largest.³

            In every seaport in the world, pilots direct merchant ships into and out of their harbors at all hours of the day and night.  Naturally, this system requires the ship’s officers to place a great deal of trust in the pilot, who is often a man they’ve never met before.  Very rarely does anything go wrong, however.  Over the long history of commerce by sea, piloting has evolved into a tried and true method of ensuring that the freight, the mails, and the passengers depart and arrive safely.  So much is this the norm that the great seaman and author Joseph Conrad described a pilot as “trustworthiness personified.”⁴

Edward Hopper uses pilotage as a metaphor for the Gospel and the various hazards to navigation as metaphors for the many pitfalls of life.  He has points that hold true even in this age of diversified transportation.  Many of the dangers that confront people on their journey through life are concealed by a harmless appearance, or worse, are made enticing by an attractive appearance.  These are the rocks and reefs that can rip open a ship’s hull.  Just as the pilot must know exactly where these dangers are situated in a harbor entrance, so must we know where similar dangers lie in wait ashore.  Just as every merchant ship must pick up a pilot when entering and leaving port, so must we take on a pilot to safely guide us through life.  The pilot we need is the Lord Jesus Christ, and his sailing directions are contained in the scriptures and the teachings of the Church.

The Lord made this point very clear in both ancient and modern times.  “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).  Of all the written and spoken material contained in the world’s numerous libraries, this Word of the Lord constitutes the single most important directions for the safe passage of mankind along the voyage of life.  Whether the Word is ancient or modern, inscribed on stone tablets, printed in book form, or spoken in General Conference makes no difference: “whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same” (D&C 1: 38).  And we must continuously learn it: “study my word which hath gone forth among the children of men, and also study my word which shall come forth among the children of men” (D&C 11:22).

These sailing directions include but are not limited to such precepts as the word of wisdom, the law of tithing, the law of chastity, baptismal covenants, the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, and the Temple ordinances.  These and other principles chart the course all people need to follow to lead good, clean, and morally upright Christian lives.  These teachings are updated from time to time by additional pronouncements from the Prophet and other leaders of the Church, all of whom are “trustworthiness personified.”  This is typically done at General Conference, but on can be done on other occasions as well.  This is accomplished in much the same way a pilot updates his directions for compass headings and engine speeds.  To ignore a pilot’s direction would lead to extensive property damage, bodily injury, and possibly loss of life.  To ignore ecclesiastical direction would lead to moral degeneracy and a fall from grace with the risk of eternal consequences.  In extreme cases this could possibly involve estrangement from one’s eternal family, and eternity is a long time to spend alone.

Happily, however, “it is easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss” (Alma 37:44), and the Lord is the best and most trustworthy harbor pilot in the world.

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¹ Edward Hopper, “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me,” in Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake

² Leonard A. Stevens, The Elizabeth: Passage of a Queen, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, p. 11-12.

³ Op. cit., p. 13-14.

⁴ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1971, p.1.