The Ship Not Taken

After seven months aboard the tramp freighter Comet, I arrived home in New Hampshire on Wednesday, May 23, 1984.  I had sailed as third mate and second mate, made four transatlantic and two transpacific voyages, transited the Panama Canal, hauled many tons of cargo, and visited several interesting seaports, including two of my all-time favorites, New Orleans and San Francisco.  Next, I planned to study for the chief mate’s exams, work on the house, and visit family.

A few days after returning home, I received a phone call from a lady in New York.  She was a fleet personnel manager with American Trading and Transportation, a tanker outfit headquartered in midtown Manhattan.  I had once filed a job application with AT&T, but I had never heard back from them.  Now this lady desperately needed someone to take a just-opened-up third mate’s job on a tanker that was docked in Port Jefferson, Long Island.  Was I interested?  She needed to know right away.

Well, yes, I was interested—but.  After seven months at sea, I had work to do at home.  I had already visited the Coast Guard office in Boston, gotten my sea time approved, and signed up to take the chief mate’s exams in July.  Now I needed to study.  Besides that, I had to get busy on the unfinished second floor of our house, and I wanted to spend some time with my parents.  I felt very reluctant to change my plans and sail away on a whim with a new employer.  Perhaps another time.

The lady on the phone listened politely, assured me that she understood perfectly, and finally said she would call back in half an hour, at which time she would need a definite answer.

In this interval Miss Patty and I discussed this unexpected job offer and concluded that it was impractical.  I was unwilling to postpone the license upgrade to chief mate, especially as I had already invested so much time at sea in it.  I was also unwilling to jeopardize future shipboard assignments with my present employer by going on a lark with another fleet.  Finally, I had just arrived home, and I really did not want to leave again after a mere few days.  When the lady called back, she accepted my decision, and she also agreed to meet with me for an interview the next time I was in New York. 

This meeting took place about a week later, on Tuesday, June 5.  It was cordial, but strictly business.  Underlying the discussion was the fact that I could have had a job with this company if I had dropped everything and run off to sea with them a week ago.  But how long this job would have lasted, or in other words, whether I would have been a permanent employee or just a temporary replacement, remained unresolved.  No promises were made.  Furthermore, this lady stated unequivocally that she already had sufficient seamen for her fleet and that she would not over hire.  These remarks seemed to contradict the urgency of her initial phone call and thereby diminish her credibility somewhat.  When the interview concluded, we parted pleasantly, but I began to think it had all been a waste of time.

Back home in New Hampshire, I carried on with my original plans.  I studied diligently for and passed the license exams, and I worked feverishly to finish the upstairs bedrooms.  It was a busy and productive summer.

In October, I joined the Bartlett with my new chief mate’s license as second mate.  I was 27 years old.  Even with the deteriorating job market, my prospects still looked reasonably good, and I was on track to attain the unlimited license as Master before reaching the ripe old age of 30.  How young that seems now!

In the years since these events took place, I have sometimes wondered, what if?

Of course, if I had taken the AT&T job, my license upgrade and house projects would have been postponed.  This would have been inconvenient; more importantly, stalling on the license would have retarded my professional advancement.  If the new job had turned into permanent employment, this would have become a moot point, but if the job were only temporary, the delay would have been problematic.  Thus, jumping impulsively from one company to another, with no better prospects for the future than I already had, seemed reckless and irresponsible.  Now, after 37 years and with 20/20 hindsight, I’m certain that declining this offer was the wise course of action.

Occasionally, I have rethought other major decisions, too.  What if I had attended Fort Schuyler in New York instead of going to Maine?  Those were my two options at age seventeen.  Unlike Maine, Fort Schuyler offered a broad academic curriculum in addition to the Merchant Marine license program.  I likely would have studied meteorology and possibly had a second career in weather forecasting.  But unlike Fort Schuyler, Maine sent its children away as apprentices aboard commercial vessels during the summers. To my teenage mind, shipping out seemed far more exciting than doing more schoolwork!

What if I had attended law school, as I briefly considered, after sailing for several years?  There was an ample supply of law schools where I grew up, and a second career in admiralty law may have had some appeal.  Except in this narrow field, though, I think studying the law would have proved more interesting than actually practicing it.

Throughout life we travel metaphorically on many roads that diverge in the forest, as Robert Frost artfully expressed in one of his most famous poems:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

            To where it bent in the undergrowth.[1] 

As we go along, we reach junction points, make irrevocable decisions, follow our chosen paths, and for good or ill live with the consequences.  If we are fortunate, we are happy with our choices most of the time.  I’m happy with most of my mine, but sometimes I still wonder, what if?

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[1] Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” in The Poetry of Robert Frost, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, p. 105.