Departure Day

More childhood memories.  The passenger liner Independence of the American Export Lines was due to sail from Pier 84 on the West Side of Manhattan at 11:00am on Monday, October 31, 1966, bound for several Mediterranean ports.  My grandparents, Robert Burns and Julia Murphy, would be two of the vessel’s passengers.  In honor of the occasion, my brother and I did not attend school that day, nor did my parents go to work.  Instead, my father drove the entire family into the city, and we all took part in the traditional departure festivities.

My grandparents had been travelling to Europe regularly since 1953 for my grandfather to attend the annual international engineering conferences.  Sailing overseas back then was always a special occasion, and the passengers’ families and friends customarily came to the ship dressed in their best to see them off.  I remember their sailings that took place in the mid-1960s, such as their departures aboard the Atlantic in September of 1964 and aboard the Constitution in August of 1965.  Their sailing for Europe aboard the Independence on Halloween of 1966 was their last, as my grandfather subsequently retired in March of 1967.

When we arrived at the pier, my father let the rest of us out of the car.  Then he drove away to find a parking space, usually at a nearby gas station.  Longshoremen took the luggage.  Later it magically appeared in my grandparents’ stateroom.  Once my father had rejoined us, we all hiked up the gangway and boarded the ship.  My grandmother took care of the business of showing tickets and passports, settling into the room, and choosing a table in the dining hall.  In addition, we all toured the ship, posed for pictures, and joined in the general merriment of the morning.

Since we were free to roam around the ship at will, we made the most of the opportunity.  To a teenager and a small child, the Independence was an object of fascination, full of all sorts of interesting things.  To my young eyes, everything looked so very, very big, as if constructed on a gargantuan scale to add mystery to the fascination.  There were towering funnels, cavernous lifeboats, expansive public rooms, long passageways, high railings, and wide-open deck spaces, but a diminutive swimming pool.  While the pool was closed, the grand library was not.  I especially loved this room.  It had deck-to-overhead bookshelves fronted by glass doors, oversized windows for viewing the sea, plush couches and lounge chairs, and in the center, a large globe, probably four or five feet in diameter, that stood taller than I did.  I remember liking this shipboard library so much that I didn’t want to leave it.  For that matter, though, I liked the whole ship so much that I scarcely wanted to return ashore, let alone return to school!

Unfortunately, though, as sailing time approached, all the visitors needed to leave the ship.  White-coated men paraded through the passageways beating gongs and calling out repeatedly, “All ashore that’s going ashore!”  Naturally, my brother and I imitated this until the adults grew tired of the incessant repetition.  After we took leave of my grandparents, the four of us returned to the pier, and found a viewing space from which we could wave good-bye and watch the great ship depart. 

This was an exciting finale, as a carnival atmosphere prevailed over the crowd.  We spotted my grandparents at one of the large promenade deck windows and waved enthusiastically to them.  Other folks were less subdued and shouted valedictions across to their friends on the ship.  People threw streamers, waved pom-poms, let go of balloons, and generally raised a good-natured and celebratory commotion.  Somewhere in the background a band played, but this was hard to hear.  At the appointed time, the Independence blew her whistle and slowly backed out of her berth and into the mid-stream of the Hudson River.  Tugboats assisted her, whistles tooting in response to the pilot’s commands, and after the ship had gotten well clear of the pier, they turned her sharply to starboard and pointed her seaward.  Then the tugboats left, and the Independence proceeded downstream on her own.  A new atmosphere of quiet melancholy now prevailed.  With the ship passing out of view on her way to sea, the crowd dispersed.  My father went to retrieve the family car, and soon we were on our way home.

Since it was Halloween, I suppose I went trick-or-treating that evening, but I really don’t remember.  For me, visiting the Independence and watching her sail was the big event of the day.  Nothing else could compare to that.

Back in this earlier time, such bon voyage celebrations were standard practice when a passenger liner sailed.  Now, of course, all this festivity is a thing of the past.  For one thing, few people now have any interest in sailing to Europe when they can fly there overnight.  The golden age of the transoceanic passenger trade came to an end in the late 1960s, and airplanes have dominated the business ever since.  Families and friends could see travelers off at the airport, but it was not the same thing. 

Then, too, there came the matter of security.  Cruise ships now depart from the West Side piers.  Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, however, no one but passengers and employees are permitted access to these facilities.  The families and friends of those going to sea now say good-bye in the street in front of the piers, and the passengers must pass through modern-day airport-style screening before they are allowed to board the ships.  All of this was simply unimaginable in 1966.

Whether I like it or not, the world of my childhood and the world of today are vastly different.  It is tempting to view the age of the transatlantic passenger liners as the good old days, but the world had problems then, too.  I experienced this era with the innocence of childhood.  Later, I watched as my own children and eventually my grandchildren gazed in fascination upon big ships and jet airplanes with the innocence of their own childhood.  But there were restrictions by this time.  No longer could we just walk up the gangway and wander around the ship.  Blissfully ignorant of these new rules and the reasons for them, though, all the children and grandchildren had a wonderful experience.  Such a beautiful thing is the innocence of childhood!  Little wonder the Lord told his disciples,

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not:  for of such is the kingdom of God….And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them (Mark 10:14, 16).

 

My childhood visits to the Independence and other passenger ships were very happy and special occasions, and in retrospect they have become sacred memories.  Viewed in the larger picture of life and against the backdrop of often cataclysmic world events, these bon voyage parties now represent an age of innocence, like the innocence of childhood, when embarkation was festive and gracious and not the logistical security nightmare it has since become.  Would that we could all “become as little children” (Matt.18:3) and return to such an Edenic state!

Now for some photographs from this happy time:

In one of my earliest attempts at photography at the age of nine, I took several pictures aboard the Independence, all of them off-center to the left.  First, we have the swimming pool near the stern.  The mile-wide Hudson River flows behind the ship.  The shoreline beyond that features the Palisades of New Jersey.

 

Next, we see one of the funnels.

 

Now, part of a row of lifeboats.

Then, a life ring, stowed upside-down.

 

As the ship sailed away from the pier, I tried a dramatic shot and achieved this ungainly result.

Fortunately, my father owned a better camera and took better photographs.  Here, he caught me unaware as I came down these steps.

He also took this picture, which looks much more professional than my humble efforts.

Finally, I include this three-generational portrait because it's one of my favorites.  My father actually took this aboard the Constitution on Wednesday, September 13, 1961, when I was not quite four years old.  My mother stands next to her father and my grandfather, who stands behind me with his hands on my shoulders.  In the several family pictures taken that day, my grandfather has his hands on my shoulders in all but one of them.

The Lady Commodore

In between voyages, the Bartlett usually moored in the basin of Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  During these layovers, oceanographic survey equipment was  installed and changed out, technicians reported aboard and were discharged, fuel and provisions were loaded, and repairs to machinery were made.  All routine operations.  Occasionally visitors came aboard, mostly in connection with the survey equipment and mechanical repairs.  On Thursday, October 18, 1984, however, the Commodore of the Fleet came to visit the ship.

Nowadays a Commodore is an unusual personage.  In the Navy, there were Commodores ranking above Captains and below Rear Admirals until the late 1890s, when the position was abolished.  In the Merchant Marine, a Commodore was the senior Captain in the company.  Mostly an honorific, the rank and title of Commodore recognized the long years of experience and extensive knowledge of ships and the sea held by the line’s longest-serving Master.  In some cases, merchant Commodores had some administrative duties ashore; more typically, however, this administrative work came under the jurisdiction of the Port Captain.  Most Commodores continued to go to sea.  When they retired and came ashore, they often wrote their memoirs.

The Commodores who reigned over our line in the 1980s were different.  They were commissioned naval officers holding the rank of Captain, not Commodore.  Also, they were not the senior shipmasters in the fleet; in fact, none of them even held Merchant Marine licenses of any level, let alone as Masters.  Simply put, they were administrators.  They were not real seamen but office personnel who sailed desks in the company offices in Bayonne, New Jersey.  And these offices, contained in a windowless building situated on the waterfront of New York Harbor, did not permit the Commodores to even peek outside and see the shipping.

In my eight years with the company, I think we had four or five Commodores in succession.  They never stayed long, but arrived and departed with express train regularity.  Until this one day aboard the Bartlett in Port Everglades, I never saw any of these Commodores, although aboard all the ships we routinely received communications from them.  They remained distant and ethereal figures who sent commendatory memos for work well done and felicitous greetings at Christmastime.

Most of the seamen preferred it this way, and for good reason.  The Commodores and many other high-ranking personnel were regarded not with reverence and respect but with suspicion and disdain.  Too many times aboard too many ships big shots of various descriptions  came on board in various ports for very dubious purposes.  They demanded lavish attention from busy crews, and their presence on board interfered with the ships’ routines and wasted much of the company’s time and money.  In short, they got in everyone’s way.  They had no useful work to do and they made nuisances of themselves.  Consequently, the seamen came to regard visiting big shots as nothing but trouble.  The more inquisitive-minded of the seamen wondered about the psychology that drove these big shots to behave the way they did.

Impromptu discussions in the chow hall or at the gangway sometimes focused on the abnormal psychosis of the big shot.  There were many questions but few answers.  Why does this guy act like this?  What’s he trying to prove?  Is he compensating for an overwhelming inferiority complex?  Is he an unwanted second son trying to outshine his older brother?  Is he an  ignorant person trying to sound more sophisticated than he really is?  Is his demonstrated contempt for the crew an act to conceal his own lack of self-esteem?  Whatever his problem is, we don’t need it here.  He should go home and get counseling!

One big shot and retiring Commodore especially rankled the crews of every ship in the fleet with a farewell message which he sent on his departure.  In this missive he discussed his upcoming retirement, and went so far as to brag that he had taken the exams for and had been given an original Master’s license by the Coast Guard!!  This meant that on the basis of going to sea in the Navy, the Coast Guard had permitted him to take the exams not for third mate or second mate or even chief mate, but to jump right to the top.  Whatever his military credentials may or may not have been, he had not built a career of sailing aboard civilian cargo ships.  This lack of experience in seaborne commerce, of which the Master’s license stood as the crowning achievement, struck the Masters and mates in the fleet as outrageous beyond belief, a slap in the face to all merchant seamen everywhere!  If this fellow could get a Master’s license without ever having been a merchant seaman, let alone working his way up through the licensing levels, then the Master’s license itself would become nothing but a meaningless piece of paper, a mere decoration.  But then, big shots always seemed to somehow get everything they wanted.

It was with the cynicism generated by negative experiences involving big shots that the crew of the Bartlett anticipated the arrival of the company’s first lady Commodore one bright and sunny October morning.

About 9:00am Commodore Elizabeth Wylie drove onto the pier in a nondescript rental car.  She parked the vehicle in a legal parking space, got out, and walked over to the ship and up the gangway.  She arrived alone, without an entourage.  She wore plain Navy khakis with only her rank insignia on the collar.  She did not wear battle stars, campaign ribbons, or gold braid.  The gangway watchman and I met her when she stepped aboard.  She greeted both of us cordially and introduced herself simply as Elizabeth Wylie without adding any titles.  She cheerfully showed me her company identification when I asked for it.  In fact, she remarked that of the five ships that she had visited thus far, the Bartlett was the only one to require identification, and she was happy to see this done.  I next notified Captain Giaccardo that the Commodore had arrived,   He came along a minute or so later, and the introductions continued.  The discussion that followed took place in normal conversational tones.  There was no shouting nor barking of orders nor unreasonable demands for lavish hospitality.  Neither were there any displays of self-importance, military pomposity, or personal aggrandizement.  On the contrary, the occasion was noteworthy for its simple civility.  After previous experiences aboard other ships, it seemed astonishingly benign.

After a few minutes of light conversation at the head of the gangway,  Captain Giaccardo  and Commodore Wylie set out on a tour of the Bartlett.  I returned to my own duties thinking that the day would not be so bad after all.

And it wasn’t.  The Commodore spent the next few hours touring the ship, meeting and talking with the crew, having lunch, and discussing business with the Captain and Chief Engineer.  I saw her again a few times, too.  She impressed me as being very interested in the ship and the oceanographic survey work that it did, and also as an exceptionally pleasant person.  After spending most of the day on board, she wished us all well and returned ashore as quietly as she had come aboard.  After her departure, a broadly smiling and very happy Captain Giaccardo told me more about her visit.

He, too, had not been looking forward to this state occasion.  A young man in his early thirties, Captain Giaccardo was serving his first stint as Master on the Bartlett, and quite naturally he did not want any trouble with big shots visiting from the Bayonne headquarters.  Well, he didn’t get any.  Captain Giaccardo described Commodore Wylie in glowing terms.  She was friendly and courteous and very gracious.  Obviously intelligent and well educated, she asked many good questions about the ship and its survey voyages, and then she listened attentively to the answers without interrupting or otherwise demonstrating impatience.  Somewhat surprisingly, she admitted to never having gone to sea—this was before the Navy became fully co-ed—and also to being new on the job as Commodore, having started only two and a half weeks ago, at the beginning of the month.  For these reasons, she stated her intention of visiting as much of the fleet as she could and learning as much as possible about all the ships and their operations.  She expressed a sincere admiration for the crews she had met thus far and for the work they did.  In this way, she made an outstanding first impression as a gracious guest and industrious administrator. 

Everyone on the ship who had met Commodore Wylie liked her and appreciated her polite and professional demeanor, her interest in the ship and its crew, and her demonstrated willingness to listen and learn.  While this behavior sounds like simple common courtesy, previous experiences had unfortunately shown it to be more the exception than the rule with visiting big shots.  But this one was different.  In Shakespearean terms, Commodore Wylie displayed neither “the insolence of office”[1] nor “the proud man’s contumely.”[2]  In shipboard terms, she did not act at all like a big shot!

The Bartlett remained in Port Everglades for another week and then sailed on Thursday, October 25.  She went on a three-weeks-long survey voyage in the southwest Atlantic, just outside the Caribbean basin.  I never saw Commodore Wylie again, but I did hope that she would do well in her new position as Commodore of the Fleet.  In retrospect, I see Commodore Wylie as following the scriptural admonition, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:10).  She boarded the Bartlett humbly and without fanfare as a new employee striving to learn the ropes, and she returned ashore commanding the respect and admiration of the entire crew.

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[1] Hamlet, III:i:73.

[2] Op. Cit., III:i:71.

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.