Escape Fiction

In order to withdraw temporarily from the responsibilities, tensions, and sometimes boredom of everyday life, many people turn to such therapeutic pursuits as light reading, soothing music, or simple daydreaming.  A typical bus or train on its afternoon commuter run is filled with people reading books, listening to music, and staring out the window.  My own withdrawal takes a somewhat different form, but it still works very effectively.

My son Michael often wears a tee shirt bearing the slogan, “Keep calm, and imagine a place.”  Taking this counsel to heart, I not only imagine but remember many places to which I’ve traveled, and in my mind’s eye, I see them again and enjoy the pleasant memories of them.  One spot in particular returns frequently to mind, and I imagine spending a day off from work there.

Located on the North Shore of Long Island, Port Jefferson is a busy and picturesque municipality at one end of a beautiful natural harbor.  Shops, restaurants, a hotel, a park, and the ferry terminal fill the downtown area.  When the ferries are in port, they dominate the skyline and command the town’s attention.  Far larger than everything ashore combined, these vessels, like great works of art, naturally turn the eyes of pedestrians to themselves and compel those passing by to stop and stare at them.  On a busy day these ships arrive and depart hourly.  I’ve watched them for brief periods on a few occasions, but I’ve often thought that I could easily spend an entire day watching them come and go.  Until this opportunity presents itself, however, the thought of such a pleasant day serves as my escape fiction, as temporary relief from “the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread.”[1]

On this imaginary day off, I take the first train to Port Jefferson and arrive at 8:00am.  The station sits a mile and a quarter inland from the waterfront, about 25 minutes’ walk, mostly through a quiet residential neighborhood.  Traveling light, I carry only a small shoulder bag containing my camera, notebook, and picnic lunch.  At the docks, I get comfortable on the wooden pier in front of Danford’s Hotel and Marina and fire up the digital camera.  The Grand Republic is entering Port Jefferson Harbor through the inlet from the sound, and this grand event must be recorded.

On the summer schedule, each one-way voyage across the sound lasts an hour and a quarter.  An arriving vessel docks in Port Jefferson at fifteen minutes before each hour, takes fifteen minutes to offload and backload passengers and vehicles, and then departs on the hour.  In the case of the now arriving Grand Republic, she docks at 8:45am, sails at 9:00am, arrives in Bridgeport at 10:15am, and sails again at 10:30am.  This predictable schedule is followed precisely by the three ferries on the route.  In three hours, then, three different ships arrive at and depart from Port Jefferson, and after that the cycle repeats itself.

The Grand Republic slows as she gracefully approaches the dock.  To further check her progress and ensure a smooth landing, her engines are momentarily reversed, and a churning propeller wash gathers around her stern.  Gently, she touches the dock and is made fast.   With her bow doors now open, the ramp is set in place, and disembarkation begins.  The pier now becomes a beehive of activity.  A steady stream of vehicular traffic spills out of the ship and onto the streets which bear it away.  Pedestrians trailing suitcases on wheels go ashore from the stern gangway and fan out toward waiting taxis and bus stops.  A few cross East Broadway and set out for the railroad station.

When the exodus is complete, the process reverses itself.  The lineup of cars waiting on the pier now snakes its way aboard the ship and disappears into the cavernous cargo bay.  Pedestrians hike up the gangway.  A few moments later passengers gather on the upper decks to soak up the sun and take in the view.  The loading is done quickly and efficiently.  At precisely 9:00am the Grand Republic blows her whistle and backs away from the dock.  Propeller wash again churns up around the stern and along the sides of the ship.  When well clear of the pier, she turns and backs down to starboard.  The engines are now put ahead to propel her forward and to port.  When this maneuver is complete, the Grand Republic settles onto a north-northwesterly heading and proceeds along the channel, through the inlet, and out to the open sound.  Another voyage to Connecticut begins.

Watching the Grand Republic from Danford’s pier, I record her arrival and departure movements with my camera, jot down some observations in my notebook, and review a few points in the company brochure.  Built in 2003 in Florida, the Grand Republic measures 300 feet long by 52 feet wide, carries 120 automobiles and 1,000 passengers, and is the second ship to bear this name.  Her fleet mates, the Park City, named for the City of Bridgeport, and the P.T. Barnum, named for the circus entrepreneur who was also the first president of the ferry line, date to 1986 and 1998, respectively.  The P.T. Barnum matches the Grand Republic in dimensions and capacity.  The Park City, however, is slightly smaller at 280 feet in length and 47 feet in beam with a capacity of 95 vehicles and 1,000 passengers.[2]

Looking up again, I see the Park City herself now coming through the inlet.  As she slows and enters the sheltered harbor, I begin a new series of photographs and record this second arrival, discharge, reload, and departure sequence of the day.  In the fifteen minutes allotted for the task, the exchange of passengers and vehicles is completed.  Then, starting at precisely 10:00am, the Park City blows her whistle, backs away from the pier, and maneuvers her way across the harbor and through the inlet, bound once more for Connecticut.

The Park City is followed soon afterwards by the P.T. Barnum.  This third arrival, cargo handling, and departure cycle runs as smoothly and efficiently as the first two, and at 11:00am the P.T. Barnum begins her return voyage to Connecticut.  With the three ships of the fleet now come and gone in under three hours in the bright summer sunshine and photographed on their port bows and starboard quarters, it’s been richly rewarding morning.  Now it’s time for lunch.

Retiring to the small waterfront park in front of Danford’s Hotel, I pause at the statue of the merchant seaman that gazes seaward.  Few such likenesses of merchant seamen exist, and that makes this one all the more special.  On the statue’s pedestal John Masefield’s famous lines are inscribed:

I must [go] down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.[3]

It’s always refreshing to know that someone else feels the same way about the sea as I do!

From the park I cross over to the ferry terminal building.  Finding it surprisingly quiet inside, I take a seat by one of the large windows that face seaward and eat my lunch as the Grand Republic returns to port.  She repeats the same sequence of arrival, cargo handling, and departure of three hours ago.  While splurging on chocolate ice cream for dessert, I make some notes in my book and photograph this grand ship from her starboard side, a different perspective from earlier today.  Then, with a noon blast on her whistle, she heads out once more for Connecticut.

I head out, too, for the nearby wooden dock of the Port Jefferson Marina, just to the west of the ferry pier.  From this new vantage point, I observe and photograph the arrivals and departures of the Park City and the P.T. Barnum with the new starboard bow perspective.  Next, the cycle begins anew with the return of the Grand Republic, now at close to 3:00pm.   The Park City and the P.T. Barnum come and go again, too, an hour and two hours later.  I move among a few viewing points in this time to get pictures of the ships from several angles.  Finally, with the P.T. Barnum passing through the inlet and sailing for Connecticut again shortly after 5:00pm, I reluctantly decide that it’s time to walk back to the railroad station.      

On the leisurely half-hour hike to the station, I contemplate the course of the day: three ships, nine arrivals and departures, excellent photographic opportunities, beautiful sunny and warm weather, and uninterrupted peace and quiet in a lovely little seaport where the land, sea, and sky converge harmoniously to inspire the mind and soothe the soul.  Port Jefferson proves to be the perfect place to spend an idle but productive day.  I learned this principle from the Italians in my Rigel and Waccamaw days.  The sweetness of doing nothing—dolce far niente—but spending the time well, even constructively and for a higher purpose.

I leave Port Jefferson on the train at 6:00pm.  The ride westward toward the city is pleasant but anticlimactic.  At some point along the way, I leave the realm of escape fiction and return to the workaday world and its daily grind.  My boss calls over to me.  It’s almost time to punch out and go home, he tells me, and then he asks if I’ve done everything on the list.  The day has gone by quickly!

Some well-meaning folks may chide me for my idle thoughts and seeming inattention to my work,  but I would counter with the classical Jewish teaching that holds:

the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee (1 Chron. 28:9).

I have long sought the Lord in both the vast reaches and the coastal shallows of the sea, and he has always been there for me.  Furthermore, he invites all of us:

Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me (D&C 88:63).

Whether aboard a ship at sea, along the harbor front, or in the memory and imagination of these locales, our thoughts, intentions, and spiritual yearnings are known to God, and he abides with us wherever and however we seek him.

Now for some photographs taken on real days off!  We start at the railroad station, where Port Jefferson's heritage of the sea is commemorated by the weather vane on the cupola.  This picture was taken on Friday, August 27, 2010.

Next we go to the wooden dock at Danford's Hotel and Marina.  This structure serves as an observation platform when we watch the fleet's arrivals and departures.  This view at low tide is from the stern of the Park City on Monday, September 11, 2013.

So close to the action!  In this sequence of photographs we witness the arrival of the Grand Republic on Friday, August 27, 2010.

 

 

Between ferries on the same day, we visit the park in front of Danford's Hotel.  This statue of a merchant seaman overlooks the waterfront.  I'm very pleased that Port Jefferson honors its maritime heritage and my chosen profession with this likeness of a young man of the sea.

 

Returning now to the fleet, we see traffic waiting to board the P. T. Barnum on Tuesday, May 27, 2013.

 

Finally, my favorite sequence of photographs.  The Park City backs away from her dock, turns around, and begins her voyage overseas to Connecticut on Wednesday, August 2, 2017.

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[1] Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1899, p. 6.

[2] Information from The Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Steamboat Company, available online at www.88844ferry.com.

[3] John Masefield, “Sea Fever,” in Salt-Water Ballads, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1913, p. 59; reprinted by BiblioBazaar, LLC., n.p., n.d.  My mother, a career educator in East Meadow, Long Island, taught this poem in several of her junior high school English literature classes.

Ships That Pass In the Night

Many times aboard many ships, during long and otherwise uneventful night watches, I sailed past other vessels going in the opposite or nearly opposite direction.  Except for their running lights, these other ships were often invisible in the total darkness that covered the water.  I could see their “blips” on the radar screen, and from these calculate their directions and speeds of travel.  Beyond this information, though, these vessels and their crews remained anonymous as they sailed under the cloak of darkness—unless a lonely mate, yearning for even some temporary human companionship, picked up the VHF radio and called up the mate of the other ship.  Then the time-honored inquiries of “What ship? Where bound?” would be posed and answered, and then followed by friendly conversation until the two vessels passed out of radio range.

A few such impromptu conversations stand out in memory even after so many years.  One night aboard the Waccamaw along the coast of Cuba, the mate on another American ship called me up.  After some preliminaries involving my course and speed and destination of Guantanamo Bay, he thanked me profusely for supporting the armed forces and helping to prevent the further spread of Communism in the Western Hemisphere.  A very friendly fellow, I think he would have talked to me all night long, but we both had work to do, and so we bade each other farewell.

Another night aboard the eastbound Comet in mid-Atlantic, the mate of an westbound ship called  me up.  In this otherwise empty stretch of ocean, we had plenty of time to chat, and we found that we had much in common.  He was a graduate of Fort Schuyler, about my own age, and through school and sailing knew many of the same guys that I did.  It was a pleasant opportunity to catch up on the news of where everyone was and what they were doing.  Then he went his way and I went mine, separated by only a few miles of seawater, but bound for opposite continents.

In these and numerous other inter-ship encounters, two people at random points in their voyages met briefly, spoke with each other cheerfully, and continued on their way.  Most likely they would not meet again.  Nonetheless, their chance meetings were happy occasions with uplifting conversations that enriched them both.  After all, “it is not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18).

A similar scenario sometimes took place at harbor entrances, in both daylight and nighttime.  Two ships of the same fleet, one outbound and one returning, would meet in the channel or at the pilot station.  They could be, for example, the Rigel and the Pawcatuck meeting at the Chesapeake Bay entrance.  Even though busy with matters of arrival and departure, their Masters would take a moment to exchange a “Welcome home!” and a “Bon voyage!” and some collegial chit-chat over the VHF radio.  The common ground that they shared was palpable.  They worked for the same employer, sailed on the same ships, knew the same crews, did the same jobs, visited the same ports, ate the same food, and knew that they would meet again.

Implicit in all these ship-to-ship conversations was common ground.  Even if not employed by the same company, the participants shared the rigors of the sea and the life away from home.  They took sights of the same stars and endured the same rough weather.  They lived in similar lodgings, worked similar inconvenient schedules, and enjoyed similar dubious comforts.  In short, they understood one another without needing to say so.  It just came with the territory.

In a broader sense, entering and leaving life are a lot like entering and leaving port.  A newborn baby has a long voyage ahead of him, and an elderly person has a long voyage behind him.  When they meet at the harbor entrance, one setting out and one coming back, there is so much the one returning could tell the one heading out concerning what lies ahead on the open sea of life.  Yet with each one busy with the pressing matters of arrival and departure, the situation is simply not conducive to a lengthy and detailed analysis of the sea conditions.  Some aspects of the voyage the newcomer will just need to learn on his own.  Perhaps in mid-ocean a friendly mate on a passing ship will call up and chat with him, but that remains to be seen.

My mother, Justine Elizabeth Burns, entered Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, Long Island, on Christmas Day of 2017 at the age of 99, and was diagnosed with what the medical staff described as her final illness.  They gave her a few days to possibly a few weeks to live on home hospice care.  Mom said that she wanted to last long enough to see all her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren one more time.  With the meter thus ticking, the family rallied to her bedside.

In this last week of December, my oldest son flew in from Alaska; my youngest son drove down from New Hampshire; and my middle son, traveling by airplane and train with his pregnant wife, also arrived from Alaska.  With this young couple was their soon-to-be-born baby girl whom they would name Katherine Elizabeth.  Finally, on New Year’s Day, my daughter and her daughter, Miss Lydia Elizabeth, arrived by air from South America.  Faced with such an impromptu reunion, Mom’s joy was complete.

In several days filled with heartwarming moments, the most heartwarming but also bittersweet moments occurred between Mom and her two great-granddaughters.  She had of course seen Miss Lydia several times previously, but not Miss Katherine.  She was thus very pleased to meet Miss Katherine, in a sense, by placing her hand on the appropriate spot and feeling her kicking in the womb.  Awed by this little girl’s ability to make her presence known, Mom remarked on the miracle of life and the continuation of the family line.  It was truly a very special occasion for her.

Like two ships that pass in the night, and with neither running lights nor radar, Mom and Miss Katherine were completely invisible to each other, yet at least one of them knew that the other was there.  If they could have seen one another, what sights they would have beheld!  If they could have spoken with one another, what conversation would have passed between them!  Like inbound and outbound ships meeting at the pilot station, one was starting her life’s long voyage and the other concluding hers. If they could have called across the water to each other, what enthusiastic greetings they would have exchanged, and what wise counsel one would have imparted to the other!  Alas, it could not be.  As merchant seamen must do after an all-too-brief acquaintance, each had to go her separate way, one to return to Alaska and one to remain on Long Island.

All of Mom’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren likewise had to leave and return to their distant homes.  With her goal of seeing everyone achieved, the family anticipated that Mom’s long voyage would soon be finished.  But there was a delay.

On Wednesday, January 24, 2018, in Providence Hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, Miss Katherine Elizabeth emerged from the prenatal darkness and came into the light of the outside world.  Her great-grandmother, patiently awaiting the news of this blessed event, received the announcement happily and thankfully.  Soon afterwards, she saw the first photographs of Miss Katherine, transmitted to her bedside via cell phone.  Once again, Mom’s joy was complete.

Everyone’s attention now turned to little Miss Katherine.  As her cousin Miss Lydia had done two years previously, she  came down from Heaven—descendit de caelis[1]—to become part of our family.  We all bore a serious moral obligation to treat her well, provide for her properly, protect her from harm, and help her succeed in her new life.  That this new life was a miracle seemed self-evident, providing much food for serious thought and contemplation, yet leaving very little to say.  It seemed best, then, to maintain a reverent silence and pray for God’s blessings to accompany Miss Katherine always.

Just as we waited for Miss Katherine to finish her descent from Heaven and begin her earthly voyage, we now wait for Mom to finish her earthly voyage and begin her ascent into Heaven.  Exceeding the hospital staff’s estimated survival time, she displays no readiness to ring up “Finished with Engines” just yet.  She has already requested enlargements of Miss Katherine’s photographs.  She will keep these by her bedside along with Miss Lydia’s portraits, and she will gaze lovingly at these two most precious little baby girls’ images as she prays her daily Rosary for them.

Even if they never meet again in this life, Mom and Miss Katherine have already shared a very special time together.  With the common ground of family, which is “ordained of God,”[2] they met like two ships that pass in the night, unseen and unheard by each other, but probably more known and more loved by each other than the rest of us can imagine.

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[1] From the Nicene Creed; this translates as “He (or she) descended from the heavens.”

[2] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Relief Society Meeting, September 23, 1995.

The Yacht Club

Situated on Unqua Point in the Nassau Shores neighborhood of Massapequa, Long Island, the yacht club provided berthing for a variety of small recreational sailboats and motorboats that spent their summers plying the protected and shallow waters of the Great South Bay.  Only one of these vessels could properly be called a yacht, though.  This was a broad-beamed, gaff-rigged, bowsprited New Englander, conspicuous for her size and design, and somewhat out of her element on the South Shore of Long Island.  We saw her frequently at the dock, but seldom underway.  At the time, I hardly gave it a thought, but my parents wondered about this boat as we sailed our diminutive Justine up and down the channel between Unqua Point and Karras Creek.

This channel was the thoroughfare that skirted the mud flats east of Massapequa and south of Amityville and led to comparatively deeper and more open water.  From Karras Creek, where my parents kept the Justine, it was a fairly short and easy sail to the open bay, if the wind was right.  When the wind didn’t work, we paddled.  Eventually, when my father got tired of paddling, he invested in a small outboard motor.  I was a small child then.  My father did not appreciate my powers of observation when one day I remarked that while the new motor broke down routinely, the old paddles always worked just fine.

We sailed on the Great South Bay from Karras Creek in the mid-1960s.  In the 1970s, my parents traded in their sailboat for a slightly larger Justine, and they berthed the new boat first in Lindenhurst and later in Babylon.  Aboard these vessels in my formative years, we sailed the bay from Massapequa to Heckscher State Park.  In my teen years, I decided that the bay was too small for me and yearned to sail on the open Atlantic.  Eventually I did this, but aboard vessels somewhat larger and more durable than the twenty-feet-long Justine.  In all my transoceanic travels, though, the memories of my childhood voyages remained with me, and I have returned to the Great South Bay many times.

On one such occasion, two of my sons accompanied me to Massapequa, and we visited both Karras Creek and Unqua Point.  This outing took place on Saturday, June 2, 2005.  Not surprisingly, forty years after my initial voyages aboard the Justine, many things had changed.  Karras Creek, Unqua Point, and the Great South Bay were of course all still there, but the neighborhood had been revamped.  Karras Creek abutted the Riviera, a waterfront party house used for weddings and other special occasions.  Back in the day, this was a large but humble and down-to-earth affair.  It has since been gentrified into a five-star, world-class venue complete with brick driveways, Belgian block curbing, and lavish landscaping.  Down the street at Unqua Point, the yacht club was completely gone.  In its place stood the new Nassau Shores Bayfront Park, a publicly owned facility with playground equipment, expansive lawns, and benches facing the water.  In its simplicity of design and with its expansive views of the bay, this new park was quite impressive.

My sons were not very impressed, though, either with the new facilities or the family’s connection with the old facilities.  I looked at it all philosophically.  In four decades, places and people do change. Just as the old waterfront neighborhood in Massapequa had undergone a metamorphosis, so had I.  Indulging my sons’ patience for a while, then, I gazed at the Great South Bay from the new park and found plenty of food for thought.

This was the place where my lifelong love of the sea had started.  I was six years old when my parents bought the Justine.  The bay was different then.  The water was cleaner and there was less traffic on it.  The mud and sand bottom teemed with clams ripe for the picking.  People were friendlier.  When boats sailed past each other, their crews waved and called out greetings.  If someone’s boat got in trouble, folks on other boats would come by and help.  It was all very neighborly, a microcosm of the universal brotherhood of the sea.

Since that time so long ago, many tides have come and gone, and the salt water that filled the bay then has since travelled around the world many times.  The same seawater that carried the tiny Justine on her intracoastal cruises also carried the great cargo ships of my subsequent career on their more ambitious voyages.  It was a big leap from the Justine to the Rigel and the Waccamaw and the Comet, but everything big originates as something small, just as the oak tree starts life as an acorn.  Holding the Justine on a steady course as the wind filled her sails later became bringing the Waccamaw alongside an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean for underway replenishment and maneuvering the Comet through the fishing fleets in the Sea of Japan.  Studying the chart of the Great South Bay and navigating by landmarks aboard the Justine became navigating by the sun, moon, and stars first on the New Jersey Sun and then aboard a host of subsequent ships.  And recreational sailing under the tutelage of kindly parents became important employment, often with roughneck crewmen and demanding if basically good-natured Captains.  The happy innocence of childhood was thus replaced by the serious responsibilities of an often difficult profession.

Indulging my sons’ patience just a little longer, I thought of what I had gained from going to sea.  The sea gave me tangible experiences and also taught me abstract qualities that in turn produced tangible results.  The sea taught me motivation, ambition, perseverance, and discipline.  It taught me to set priorities and distinguish between genuine needs and mere wants.   It taught me to do what must be done, to consider the next step, and to anticipate the likely consequences of decisions and actions.  It taught me to gauge other people and determine what qualities they possessed.  All this and more that I learned from the sea has accompanied me through life since.  The sea was one of the three things that shaped my character and made me the person that I am.  The other two influences were church and family, and while the three worked in harmony, I came of age at sea.

Like so many things in life, the yacht club had its moment in time and then passed into oblivion.  But the small inland sea beside which it stood remains, as does the larger sea that encircles the Earth.  The sea will continue long after I am gone, and it will teach future generations of young merchant seamen as it did me.  In some ways the sea was the best teacher I ever had.  And to think that it all started here, on the sheltered and shallow water of the Great South Bay!  This was indeed the cradle of my craft, and for that I will always be profoundly thankful.

Now let’s look at some photographs of the old waterfront neighborhood:

This is Karras Creek in Massapequa, Long Island, in the summer of 1967, in one of my very early attempts at photography.  The sailboat in the left foreground is the Justine.

A much better view of Karras Creek and the Justine in the summer of 1967 taken by my father.

Yours truly at the helm of the Justine, underway on the Great South Bay in 1967.

Returning after many years and many voyages, we see Karras Creek on Saturday, June 2, 2005.

The entrance to the new park on the site of the old yacht club on the same day in 2005.  Steven and Michael pose by the sign.

Unqua Point and the Great South Bay on the same day with the same sons.  Usually a very pacific body of water, the bay was an excellent place to begin a career at sea.  Decades later, this small stretch of salt water holds a flood tide of memories.

Culture Shock

The freighter Mercury was sailing southeast in beautiful tropical weather several miles off the coast of Mexico in June of 1980.  She was  bound from San Diego to the Panama Canal with a load of military vehicles which were on their way to the Marine Corps base near Wilmington, North Carolina.  Because of the military nature of this cargo, the Mercury carried a military officer to superintend it on this voyage.  He was a Navy lieutenant in his mid-twenties, which made him a few years older than myself.  He had previously sailed aboard Navy ships and had become a fully qualified surface warfare officer of the unrestricted line.  His voyage aboard the Mercury, however, was his first experience of a civilian cargo vessel, and it astonished him.

Lieutenant Mike was an affable shipmate.  He seemed to blend in reasonably well with the Merchant Marine crew, and he displayed a healthy interest in the workings of the ship.  Some of our ways puzzled him, but he never criticized us or our methods.  This trait alone would have endeared him to the crew.  Above and beyond that, though, he was a genuinely friendly fellow and a good dining room companion.  He loved to eat, and he remarked over almost every meal, “This is even better than the Navy chow!”

One morning when I was on watch, the lieutenant came up to the bridge.  Opening the door slightly, he poked his head through the opening and politely requested “permission to come on the bridge.”   I of course bid him enter, and he came in and stood by me and chatted for a bit.  As we talked he looked around at everything with a somewhat confused expression on his face.

The Mercury had a very spacious bridge.  From where we stood, we could see everything, including out the large plate glass windows to the sea beyond and out the side doors to the also very spacious bridge wings.  The lieutenant took all of this in and realized that until he arrived, I had been all alone up there.  I was a very young third mate, all of 22 years old, and I was in charge of the ship’s movements with no one to assist or supervise me.  His astonishment at this situation soon became obvious,

In a stammering voice, the lieutenant asked me, “There’s no one else here?  There’s no helmsman?”

“It’s on automatic,” I started to reply.

But he continued as if this hadn’t registered.  “You do everything here?  You do your own radar plotting?  You do your own navigation?  You’re your own lookout?  What if something happens?  And the weather observations?  Do you do that, too?”  And so on and so forth.  He was clearly flabbergasted—and possibly terrified, too—at finding one solitary third mate on the bridge of a large cargo ship underway at sea.  This did not fit in with his Navy experience, where an army of crewmen swarmed a much smaller bridge.

I explained that this situation was perfectly normal.  We were in open water with good weather and no traffic.  Since they were not needed on the bridge, the three unlicensed seamen on my watch were working with the bosun on deck.  With my license, I was fully qualified as the mate of the watch and could do everything he asked about and more.  There really was no cause for concern.  I’m not sure that he believed me, though.

After a short interval, the lieutenant turned to go below.  He wished me well, but as he left he muttered uncomprehendingly to himself, “I don’t get this.  Only one man on the bridge?  I can’t understand these guys.  How do they do it?”  And so on and so forth as he disappeared down the stairs.

A few years later, when I was the second mate aboard the Waccamaw, something similar took place.  The ship was docked in Norfolk, Virginia, one weekend in October of 1982, and a large group of naval reservists came aboard for a tour.  These men held full-time civilian jobs and did part-time military work.  They were middle-aged in dress blue uniforms with numerous gold stripes on their sleeves.  To facilitate the sightseeing, the group split in half.  The chief mate led one tour, and I led the other.  We took them through the entire ship, from bow to stern and from bridge to engine room.  They followed closely, listened attentively, and asked intelligent questions.  A few times, though, they seemed confused by the answers they received.

Down in the pump room, one reserve commander asked several questions, and then exclaimed, “I don’t understand how you fellows can run a ship this size with such a small crew!”  He went on to explain that compared to a Navy ship, we had “so few officers” and “so few crewmen” that he just couldn’t see how we got the job done.  This led to some lively discussion, and it came out that several of the other reservists felt the same way.

Through no fault of their own, these men had been taught the Navy way of doing things and not the Merchant Marine way.  And there is a difference.  A commercial ship must operate efficiently and turn a profit in order to survive, while a military ship relies on the bottomless pit of government funding.  Also, the Navy sees a ship primarily as a floating gun platform, whereas in the Merchant Marine a ship is transportation.  These financial and operational dichotomies lead to two completely different ways of thinking and working. One might say that “never the twain shall meet,”[1] but they did in our fleet and usually with the result that the Navy men and the Merchant Marine fellows simply could not understand each other.  Each group looked at the world from its own point of view and found the other’s viewpoint incomprehensible.

One of our Church officials, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, recently made a similar observation:

Each of us has a personal lens through which we view the world.  Our lens gives its special tint to all we see.  It can suppress some features and emphasize others.  It can also reveal things otherwise invisible.[2]

My experiences as a merchant seaman crafted my personal lens many years ago.  My subsequent academic career as a college librarian and student of the humanities reinforced and enhanced this

personal lens  So, after all these years, I still view the world as if I were standing on the bridge wing of a cargo ship.  I like this view.  I see everything quite clearly from this vantage point.

Quite naturally, people do think in terms of what they know and understand, and of course this colors their view of everything outside their own corner of the world.  And when people are confronted with something radically different and completely alien to everything within their range of understanding, they typically respond with astonishment and often say the most outlandish things.

This is reflected in some of the remarks that people ashore have made to me about seafaring.  They’ve ranged from the bizarre—“Do you sleep in hammocks?” and “Do you have flush toilets?”—to the uncomprehending—“Oh, how exciting! You work on a cruise ship!”—to the demeaning—”How can you stand to live like that?!”—to the sadly inevitable and inappropriate jokes about shipwrecks.  While these remarks grow very tiresome very quickly, they do serve to illustrate the gulf that separates the merchant seamen from the laymen.

Captain Paul McHenry Washburn, the Master of the container ship Stella Lykes and a literary figure, asserted the opposite point of view:

But there are a lot of us who are here because this is where we fit in, and we don’t fit in anywhere else.  We seem to be out of step.  The square peg in the round hole.  I was out of place as a child, and now I am not looking forward to retirement.  I dread it.[3]

Furthermore, he added as he looked toward land from the Stella Lykes:

I would rather be here for the worst that could be here than over there for the best that could be there.  I’ve never felt comfortable or secure anywhere else.[4]

 

Admittedly, this is an extreme opinion that seems to border on solipsism.  After all, Captain Washburn did have a family ashore, and he cared for them all very much.  Nonetheless, his remarks do summarize the situation well.  The merchant fleet is a culture unto itself, separate and apart from life in any other profession, including the Navy.  A landsman, or for that matter a naval officer,  stepping aboard a cargo ship would experience culture shock just as much as a seaman going ashore and taking up a new occupation would.  Some things, like the proverbial oil and water, just don’t mix.

It is precisely for this reason that the seaman-turned-playwright Eugene O’Neill penned his famous lines:

It was a great mistake, my being born a man.  I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish.  As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death![5]

Another extreme position, this one not only borders on solipsism but also leans toward misanthropy.  Still, the author makes his point well, and I have thought similarly many times in social and business situations over the years.  In the end, I’ve just had to resign myself to the simple fact that going to sea has made me immutably different.  Thus, both Mr. O’Neill’s and Captain Washburn’s assessments are correct.

Yet there remains one further point which these gentlemen did not address.  In his trial before the Athenian court, Socrates asserted that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”[6]

Sea gulls and fish, with their inherently limited capabilities, cannot know how fortunate they are. Unable to think and reason, they cannot ponder the higher matters of life.  They cannot read and study the classics of literature and history and philosophy and theology or master the natural and applied sciences.  At first glance, their lives may look more attractive than that of the social outcast who can’t fit in anywhere except at sea, but the intellectual limitations of the sea gull and the fish would inevitably become intolerably crippling.  Humans, including merchant seamen, are created in the image of their Creator, and as such, they share in his characteristics, including intelligence, which enables them to learn, enrich themselves, and achieve so much more than animals.  What an honor this is, since the scriptures inform us that “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36).  Even the most socially misfit, solipsistic, and misanthropic merchant seaman shares intelligence, light, and truth with God.

Furthermore, with these divine qualities, there is no need to dread retirement.  I’m actually looking forward to it.  I anticipate a robust retirement filled with grandchildren, academic studies, church activities, and occasional cruise ship voyages!

Before I leave for work in the predawn hours, I often step out onto the porch and gaze upon the stars.  The constellation Orion stands out in the south.  Betelgeuse  shines on the east flank, Rigel on the west, and Sirius below.  I smile as I remember standing with my sextant on the bridge wing of the Rigel, taking sights of her heavenly namesake.  Thoughts of ships, voyages, and even sea gulls and fish crowd upon my mind, too.  But the great celestial majesty above me transcends these idle reminiscences.  Thus enlightened, my mind recalls in the great celestial language, Gloria Dei est intellegentia.

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[1] Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Ballad of East and West,” in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895, ed. Edmond Clarence Steckman, at www.bartleby.com.

[2] Quoted in “Spiritual awareness” (sic), Church News, June 25, 2017, p. 16.

[3] Quoted in John McPhee, Looking for a Ship, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990, p. 157.

[4] Op. cit., p. 155-156.

[5] Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 153-154.

[6] Plato, The Apology of Socrates, tr. Benjamin Jowett, in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, vol. 1, 6^th ed., New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992, p. 824.