Riding With the Pilots

The tanker New Jersey Sun weighed anchor after the pilot had come aboard early in the morning of Monday, May 16, 1977. A small motor launch had delivered him to the ship. From this vessel he climbed a rope ladder with wooden rungs which hung down the tanker’s starboard side. When he reached the main deck, he was welcomed aboard by the third mate and two able seamen. The third mate escorted the pilot to the bridge, and then joined the bosun on the bow. The two ABs stayed behind and hauled in the pilot ladder and stowed it away pending future use. On the bridge the pilot was greeted by Captain Jack Taylor and chief mate Joe Reilly. When the introductions were complete the mate recorded the pilot’s name in the bell book, the written record of the ship’s transit through the harbor. The pilot’s name¹ was Pizzatolla, and he had come aboard to bring the New Jersey Sun into the harbor of Galveston, Texas.

For Captain Pizzatolla, this morning’s arrival was a fairly routine operation. Standing on the port bridge wing next to Captain Taylor, he issued the engine and rudder instructions necessary to maneuver the ship out of the anchorage, into the channel, through the narrow inlet between the barrier beaches, and then through the port itself toward the Todd Shipyard on Pelican Island. This destination, a sprawling industrial complex across the stream from Galveston proper, would be the New Jersey Sun’s home for the next several weeks while she underwent an extensive overhaul. But getting the large vessel into this facility required some effort. Captain Pizzatolla called ahead on his walkie-talkie and arranged for a rendezvous with two tugboats as the ship approached the shipyard.

From his perch on the port wing, Captain Pizzatolla surveyed the scene before him and decided on his course of action. He explained his plan to Captain Taylor, who nodded and gave his consent, and then began issuing instructions to the tugboats via the walkie-talkie and engine and rudder commands to the chief mate and helmsman. With one tug pushing on the starboard bow and the other on the port quarter, with the rudder hard left and the engine going slow astern, the pilot turned the New Jersey Sun ninety degrees in the channel. She was now positioned so that she could back down into her berth with her port side to her assigned pier. But this was a tight spot. The pilot dismissed the tug on the port quarter. The second tug remained and held the New Jersey’s bow steady. Then, with the engine going slowly astern and the rudder amidships, the pilot eased the great ship into the narrow space between her pier and the adjacent floating drydock. There was no room for error here, and the operation had to be taken slowly.

The New Jersey Sun carried one rudder and one propeller. Rudders are simple enough tools, but propellers come in different varieties. They can be right hand or left hand, meaning they turn clockwise or counterclockwise when the ship is going ahead, and the propeller blades are shaped and pitched accordingly in order to get a good bite on the water and push it astern. A single engine ship like the New Jersey carried a right hand propeller. This was fine for going ahead, but when going astern, a right hand propeller caused the stern of the ship to “walk” to port. Likewise, a left hand propeller would produce a walk to starboard. By contrast, a ship such as the Waccamaw with two propellers would have one right hand and one left hand; they would be mirror images of each other, and when going astern, the opposite walking effects would cancel each other out.

As the New Jersey Sun backed alongside the pier, the walking effect produced by her right hand propeller became an important factor. Both Captain Taylor and Captain Pizzatolla eyed the stern carefully from the bridge wing as the ship eased slowly alongside the pier. Neither one of them wanted the propeller to walk the stern of the ship into the pier. When this motion of the stern toward the pier became evident as the ship moved farther into her berth, the pilot called for a quick burst ahead on the engine with the rudder hard left. The resulting propeller wash to port countered the walking effect and prevented the ship from colliding with the pier. In a backing move of over a thousand feet at slow speed, the pilot did this three times. Had there been no floating drydock moored to the next pier, a tugboat could have steadied the New Jersey’s stern and made the job much easier. The pilot really earned his fee on this arrival.

With the New Jersey Sun finally backed all the way into her berth, the crew tossed the mooring lines ashore, winched them in, and made her fast. Next they rigged the gangway. On the bridge, Captain Taylor ordered the engine rung off and the helm secured. He thanked Captain Pizzatolla for his services, signed his paperwork, and bade him farewell. The chief mate then escorted him down to the main deck and the gangway. The pilot stepped off the ship and into a waiting automobile. The driver would deliver him to his next assignment, most likely an outbound cargo ship. A routine day at the office.

For her part, the New Jersey Sun remained in the Todd Shipyard in Galveston for six weeks. When the time came for her to leave, another pilot was driven to the pier to meet her. He then performed the same duties as Captain Pizzatolla had, except in reverse. When the ship was safely outside the port, he climbed down the rope ladder with the wooden rungs to a waiting launch, and was whisked away to his next assignment, most likely an inbound merchant ship. And so the cycle continued.

This cycle of piloting merchant ships in and out of port goes on continuously in every harbor. Each port has its association of pilots, licensed Merchant Marine officers who are specialists in the waterways on which they serve. Possessed of an intimate knowledge of the port and everything in it, pilots know everything there is to know about the local tides, currents, weather patterns, navigable channels, shoal areas, anchorages, bottom topography, bridges, tunnels, and all aids to navigation including buoys, lights, and daybeacons. They know every pier and wharf and how best to approach and depart from them in all conceivable conditions. Pilots are expert shiphandlers. They simultaneously give instructions for engine and helm settings and tugboat positioning and maneuvering, often orchestrating solutions to the most complex situations so that it all looks like an art form. Their level of proficiency and the value of their services cannot be overstated. Outside of the seafaring profession, though, pilots rarely receive any recognition for their work.²

The Coast Guard examinations for pilots’ licenses are famously difficult. Many pilots already hold unlimited Master’s licenses from years of deep sea experience. While an unlimited license is valid over the limitless oceans, a pilot’s license is specific to a certain place. A man with pilotage for Galveston, for example, cannot bring a ship to Houston. There are also pilots who cover wider areas than single seaports. This would include pilots who bring ships through major inland waterways such as Long Island Sound or Chesapeake Bay. The transit times in such areas are many hours long, and typically at the end of the run a docking pilot comes aboard and relieves the original pilot. Sometimes called coastal pilots or bay pilots, they, like the harbor pilots, must also pass rigorous and demanding examinations, as well as complete a comprehensive apprenticeship. For a while I considered pursuing a pilotage endorsement for the port of Norfolk, Virginia. I thought this might be a nice addition to my license once I had reached the level of unlimited Master, and I had sailed in and out of Norfolk so many times on several ships that I came to know the port and the lower Chesapeake quite well. This idea never came to fruition, though.

Norfolk was a short pilotage run, about two hour’s transit time from the Virginia Capes. By comparison, Baltimore was a twelve hour transit from the capes. On my next-to-last day aboard, the New Jersey Sun travelled this long route. She picked up a pilot from the Maryland Pilots’ Association at the Chesapeake Bay entrance at 12:00 noon on the Fourth of July, 1977, a bright sunny day with excellent visibility. Both the Eastern and Western Shores of the bay were clearly visible as the ship headed north. The bay itself was punctuated at intervals by lighthouses that were built on steel skeleton foundations, webs of metal that rose up out of the water. After darkness fell, brightly colored fireworks shot up at many locations along both shores. Through this festivity the pilot brought the ship almost the length of the Chesapeake to the Francis Scott Key Bridge on the outskirts of Baltimore. There a docking pilot came aboard. He and two tugboats conveyed the New Jersey Sun the remaining distance to the Hess pier. She was made fast at midnight. A long day’s work for the Chesapeake Bay pilot. He had taken his lunch and dinner on the bridge and ate as he worked. After the docking pilot relieved him, he slept on a settee just aft of the bridge until he was able to go ashore.

Another pilotage run of twelve hours that the New Jersey Sun made took her between the Gulf of Mexico and the oil docks of Garyville, Louisiana. She went upstream on June 28 and 29, spent seventeen hours alongside the pier, and returned downstream on June 30 with the oil that she subsequently brought to Baltimore. Two long runs on a winding and curving river channeled between high levees. Except for New Orleans and the delta, most of it looked the same. The pilots knew all the subtle differences in the riverscape, though, and hence always knew exactly where we were.

Several years later the Comet rode the Mississippi to New Orleans from the Gulf. This was a pleasant transit on a warm Saturday, January 7, 1984. Arriving at the entrance to Southwest Pass at midday, the Comet proceeded up the narrow channel to Head of Passes, the meeting point of all the tributaries of the Mississippi River Delta. She changed pilots at nearby Pilottown. The first pilot left the ship there and would subsequently take another vessel down to the Gulf. The pilot who relieved him then took the Comet the rest of the way upstream to New Orleans. A peaceful and picturesque place, the marshes of the Mississippi Delta stretched for miles in all directions, bisected only by the dredged channel and its low bordering levees. These pristine wetlands contained vast acres of low-lying lush green foliage interspersed with brownish river and gulf water topped by a leaden gray sky that stretched to all horizons. It was very pretty, but in an unusual way. And it was very peaceful. 

This serenity was breached only on arrival that evening in New Orleans. One very brash young officer looking for adventure demanded, “Hey, Pilot, where’s the action in this town?”

The pilot, far older and wiser than his interlocutor, advised him to be extremely careful about looking for action in New Orleans. “Y’all kin git yahself killed raht outside the gate heah,” he cautioned. Explaining that he knew the city as well as he knew the river, this gentleman counseled the young mate to be careful and avoid the vice dens of the city. Following the scriptural injunction that “every man should take righteousness in his hands. . .and lift a warning voice unto the inhabitants of the earth’ (D&C 63:37), he provided moral as well as navigational direction.

The Comet herself had to be careful on her way back down the river three weeks later. Caught in a blinding winter rainstorm with dense fog six hours below New Orleans, she anchored off Duvic, Louisiana, at 2:30pm on Thursday, January 26. Unable to see more than two hundred feet, she remained at anchor sounding fog signals until 10:30 the next morning. After listening to the Comet’s fog signal for twenty hours, the residents of quiet little Duvic must have been very happy to see her leave!

As the Comet transited the Southwest Pass enroute to the open Gulf, her pilot did something unusual. In a very narrow stretch of waterway, he stepped over to the helmsman and said jovially, “Why don’t you take a break for a few minutes, young man?” Then the pilot himself took the helm and personally steered the ship down the center of the channel for the next ten minutes or so. With a look of intense concentration on his face, he deftly handled the wheel, making short, sharp corrections to keep the ship on course. When the pass widened out again, he relinquished the wheel to the helmsman, who seemed very grateful to have his job back. By way of explanation, the pilot mentioned to both the mate and the helmsman that no one had done anything wrong; it was just a very tight spot in the pass and he always found it easier to steer the ship himself than to be constantly calling for minute corrections in the ship’s heading.

During my time on board, the Comet made several long pilotage runs. On each of her two transatlantic voyages she picked up an English coastal pilot off Brixham, England. These pilots assisted with navigation through the English Channel and the North Sea and rode the ship to Trondhein and Bremerhaven in November and December of 1983. Local harbor pilots then maneuvered the ship in and out of both these ports. Returning westward, the coastal pilots again assisted in the traffic lanes until they disembarked off Brixham.

In Panama, an American canal pilot brought the Comet through the locks, across Gatun Lake, and through the narrow confines of the Culebra Cut. This transit took eight hours on a very hot Tuesday, January 31, 1984. In the cut, with the ragged edges of mountains rising out of the water on both sides of the ship, the pilot turned to the bridge watch and remarked, “This is the part that God did not intend to be a canal!” In between helm instructions, he then described the difficulties encountered in digging through this mountain range during the canal’s construction. Partly inspired by this man’s casual conversation, I later read the great book about the Panama Canal in my leisure time on the Bartlett.³

On the other side of the world, the Comet made a very long pilotage run first through the narrow strait that separates Honshu and Kyushu, and then through the Inland Sea of Japan enroute to Iwakuni. Three separate pilots came aboard for this long route: the first for transiting the strait, the second for the nearly nine-hours-long voyage through the heavily trafficked Inland Sea, and finally a docking pilot. This operation, along with a six-hour period of loading cargo in Iwakuni, filled the entire 24 hour cycle of Tuesday, March 13, 1984.

Such long runs are exceptional, though. Most pilotage routes take up only a fraction of these transit times and cover much shorter distances. The shortest in my experience is Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Typically, the passage from arrival at the sea buoy to mooring at the pier took only 45 minutes. Furthermore, the weather was always good. This was not always the case elsewhere. Holy Loch, Scotland, stood at the opposite extreme. The pilotage run there took perhaps an hour, but the weather made it feel much longer. The anchor detail and the linehandlers on the Victoria always dressed for drenching rain, thick fog, and cold winds, and they often got all three. The Scottish pilots were always completely unfazed by these conditions.

Closer to home, New York has long been one of my favorite seaports. In the 1970s and 80s, I sailed in and out of there on the State of Maine, the Charger, the Vandenberg, and the Comet, and served as night mate aboard the Vanguard and the Hayes. Additionally, I always enjoyed riding the ferries between Manhattan and Staten Island. After the children arrived, they joined me on these short voyages across the harbor. One of the greatest shows on Earth, New York almost always had something going on. Merchant ships of all descriptions dotted the water and the shoreline, filled the anchorages, shifted between berths, passed beneath the bridges, and arrived and departed through the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn. This great movement of commerce called for pilots to bring the ships into, through, and out of the port. Aboard the ferries, more pilots wended their vessels’ ways through the traffic. The children always found this activity fascinating. They watched carefully and asked many questions. One day, something very special took place.

On a warm and hazy Friday, August 23, 2002, James, Steven, and Michael sailed with me from Manhattan aboard the ferry Governor Herbert H. Lehman. As the ferry got underway from the city, we gathered at the bow and spotted a large container ship inbound in the Narrows. A few minutes later, we saw a large tanker emerging from the Kills, the small channel that separates Staten Island and New Jersey. Estimating that they would meet off St. George, our ferry’s destination on the northeast corner of Staten Island, we watched and waited. Then the northbound ferry Andrew J. Barberi got underway from the St. George terminal and quickly crossed ahead of both ships. Through the binoculars we identified the inbound container as the Zim Mediterranean of Valletta and the outbound tanker as the Falcon of Piraeus. The Governor Lehman approached closer to both of them as their course changes carried them to the now-obvious meeting point in front of the St. George ferry docks. The binoculars were no longer necessary. Even using the camera proved awkward as both ships became too big to fit in the viewfinder.

James, Steven, and Michael watched closely as the shipping drama played out in front of them. The Governor Lehman maintained a steady course but cut her engines to reduce speed as both the Zim Mediterranean and the Falcon adjusted their courses to pass safely port-to-port in front of the ferry. The Lehman coasted to a stop with the Zim’s starboard side perhaps 400 feet in front of her and the Falcon less distance than that from the Zim’s port side. The Falcon became momentarily obscured from our view by the larger Zim. From where we stood on the Lehman, the Falcon and the Zim were first bow to bow, then side by side, and finally stern to stern as they passed each other on their reciprocal courses. No sooner did water open up where their sterns had been than the Governor Lehman rang up full ahead and resumed her voyage to St. George. The Zim turned more to port to enter the Kills, evidently enroute to the big container docks in Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey. We gained a clear view of her broad transom stern piled six-high and thirteen-across with containers which would soon be off loaded onto trailer trucks and freight trains. We had a similar view of the somewhat smaller but still impressive Falcon as she turned to starboard to pass beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and into the Ambrose Channel. With these two vessels now safely past and well on their way, the Governor Lehman eased anticlimactically into her berth in St. George.

All these vessels’ movements in this congested situation were carefully controlled by pilots. No doubt they had all spoken to each other on channel 16 on the bridge-to-bridge VHF radio and had agreed upon a safe and convenient place to meet. With their intimate knowledge of the harbor, their expertise in shiphandling, and their years of experience, these pilots were eminently qualified to direct these large merchant ships worth hundreds of millions of dollars in circumstances where there was almost no margin for error. A routine day at the office.

James, Steven, and Michael were suitably impressed. They seemed to intuitively recognize that bringing such massive vessels around sharp corners and into narrow channels and through congested harbors required an expertise above and beyond the ordinary. Unfortunately, this goes largely unnoticed and unremarked by those with no connection to the sea. Once in a while, though, word does get out.

The new Queen Mary 2 of the Cunard Line arrived in New York on her maiden voyage on a misty Thursday morning, April 22, 2004. Because of the historical significance of the Cunard Line and the Queen ships, the city took notice. The following day, The New York Times reported on this event with special attention to Captain Robert D. Jones, the harbor pilot who brought the new Queen Mary into port:

Standing on the ship’s bridge with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a pair of binoculars within reach of the other was Captain Jones. He is not the captain of the Queen Mary 2, but the harbor pilot who guided it on the last few miles of its maiden voyage to New York.

Through it all, Captain Jones never touched the throttles, never turned the wheel. But his was the last word on where to steer the ship, how fast it could go, and where the trouble spots lay in the harbor’s complicated underwater geography. He long ago memorized where the navigational buoys are—knowledge that helps when, as was the case yesterday, he cannot see them for the early-morning fog.

So he knew when and where, off Brooklyn, the ship had to make two crucial turns on its way to Manhattan.⁴

The Times noted that Captain Jones had previously piloted the Queen Elizabeth 2 in and out of New York, one of over 8,000 ships he had boarded in his long career. Additionally, the paper recorded his assessment of both Queens’ maneuvering capabilities and acknowledged the tremendous efforts required for safely docking the new Queen Mary. Alluding to the risks inherent in such an operation and the ever-present possibility of something going wrong, the Times graciously left the last word to the pilot:

After 45 years as a harbor pilot, Captain Jones, 69, will retire today. “You’re only as good as your last job,” he said, “and this was pretty good.”⁵

In the early evening of Sunday, April 25, 2004, the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth 2 sailed from New York in tandem, bound for England. Darkness had just fallen as the two ships were piloted down the Hudson River from their midtown piers. As they approached the Statue of Liberty, fireworks erupted into the sky and cascaded downward onto the surface of the water. The sky and the sea sparkled in celebration of these grand vessels. My sons and I watched from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, and we all agreed that it was “pretty good.”

But the Queen Elizabeth 2 was embarking on her last transatlantic voyage. Soon afterwards, she would be withdrawn from service and retired. On the night we saw her, she was crossing the bar for nearly the last time. Likewise, all the ships of my youth had also crossed the bar and put to sea for the last time, most of them bound for dismantling in a scrap yard. All of us, too, will metaphorically cross the bar and put to sea for the last time, bound for the grave yard, no doubt hoping as we depart that it was all “pretty good.”

Then we will meet our Pilot, the One whose navigational instructions during the voyage of life we will have hopefully followed. Like the pilots who board our ships, the Supreme Pilot holds all the necessary and detailed knowledge that we need for a safe transit. All we need do is consult him, for we are assured, “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Matt. 7:7). Our Pilot will give us moral guidance, just as the Mississippi River pilot on the Comet gave to the young mate looking for “the action” in New Orleans. He will be completely unfazed by adverse conditions, like the Scottish pilots aboard the Victoria, and his calmness will soothe our souls. Like the Panama Canal pilot who knew the intent of God concerning the isthmian mountains, he will not leave us to wander aimlessly through an artificial world. But we must first take him aboard:

Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me. Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you (D&C 88:63-64).

Our Pilot will convey his directions to us via the Spirit, through the still small voice, through inspiration, and through the leadership of the Church, not only when we are transiting pilotage waters, but throughout our long voyage. In the end, we may anticipate a happy conclusion to our travels when we meet our Pilot in propria persona:

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.⁶

And when we meet our Pilot we will find that it is not just “pretty good,” but very, very good.

---

¹ I regret that I cannot remember the names of many of the pilots who boarded the ships I sailed on, but for some odd reason I recall Captain Pizzatolla’s name and perhaps a half-dozen others with particular clarity.

² See Matt Jenkins, “Running the Bar,” Smithsonian, February, 2009, pg. 62-69. This is a very informative description of the work done by the harbor pilots serving Portland, Oregon.

³ David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1977.

⁴ James Barron, “A Queen Arrives in New York, and Even in the Jaded Big City, Jaws Drop,” The New York Times, April 23, 2004, available at www.nytimes.com.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Crossing the Bar,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1970, p. 756.

Going Home to the Sea

The view took my breath away.  From the Crow’s Nest Lounge on the uppermost enclosed deck of the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam, I beheld Port Everglades for the first time in 27 years.  Moored to the same wharf that my diminutive Bartlett had occupied in the mid-1980s, this flagship of the Holland America Line was the largest vessel on which I had ever set foot.  With a week-long voyage to the Caribbean islands ahead, I would have ample opportunity to explore this great ship.  For the moment, though, I studied Port Everglades.

Much had changed over the years.  There were new cruise ship terminals, new parking garages, new airport-style security checkpoints, and of course, new ships.  Much had also not changed.  The artificial basin that comprises the port looked the same.  So did the industrial landscape to the west, the high rises of downtown Fort Lauderdale, and the waterfront condominiums that flanked the harbor entrance.  But one landmark in all of this was missing.  Burt and Jack’s, a fancy restaurant owned by the actor Burt Reynolds that had occupied the point of land separating the basin from the intracoastal waterway, had been deemed a threat to national security and removed by the federal government.  Gone were the broad lawns and stands of palm trees and the parking lot full of Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, and Jaguars.  Their places were taken by bland concrete and a blander warehouse.

To the east, however, the great Atlantic Ocean—my ocean—remained the same.  A gentle onshore breeze came out of the east, as it almost always did.  In plain view just beyond the narrow barrier beach, the deep blue water capped by the lighter blue sky speckled with tufts of white altocumulus clouds beckoned the exiled son of the sea to come home.  I would, in a few hours’ time, when the Nieuw Amsterdam sailed.  But first, I needed to reacclimate myself.

Port Everglades was alive with activity.  In addition to the Nieuw Amsterdam, four other cruise vessels were loading passengers—the Westerdam, the Carnival Freedom, the Celebrity Solstice, and the Allure of the Seas.  Across the basin the tanker High Energy discharged petroleum ashore while the tanker Pula took in her lines, left her berth, and headed seaward escorted by police boats.  From the cargo docks along the intracoastal waterway the container ship Melbourne Strait emerged and passed through the inlet to the open sea.  The sight of all these vessels going about their business brought me back in time.

On October 12, 1984, I had reported aboard the oceanographic survey ship Bartlett at this very dock.  With a brand new chief mate’s license in a deteriorating employment situation, I was very fortunate to join ship as second mate.  I made several voyages from Port Everglades aboard the Bartlett.  She did survey work in the Caribbean and the Gulf, passed along the Keys and through the Bahamas to her operating areas, called at Key West, Florida, and Gulfport, Mississippi, and late one night rescued a shipwreck victim, a mysterious figure whose story did not quite add up.  Toward the end of February, 1985, the Bartlett was once again in Port Everglades, preparing to go into the nearby Tracor Shipyard for her annual overhaul.  When she was safely in the yard, I took a few days off and travelled north by air to visit family.  Not included in the itinerary were the medical checkup that diagnosed my cancer and the subsequent surgery and radiation treatment.  I never did return to the Bartlett.  And until James signed the family up for this voyage aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, I thought that I would never return to Port Everglades, either.

Like a child with a new toy, then, I merrily reminisced and enthusiastically pointed out all the sights of Port Everglades to my children from the upper deck of the Nieuw Amsterdam.  It was Sunday afternoon, February 5, 2012, but I had completely lost track of the time.  At length, Miss Patty came along and reminded me that we were not there to sightsee, but to attend our oldest son’s wedding.  Leaving the Crow’s Nest, then, the entire family went outdoors and up to the highest deck on the ship.  There, in a lovely ceremony under the canopy of the open sky and surrounded by merchant shipping at the edge of the great Atlantic, our son James married Miss Sarah Ruth Marchand.  Steven and Michael served as ushers, and Miss Karen as a bridesmaid.

If ships could speak, I mused, what tales they could tell!  As our son and his fiancé prepared to exchange vows aboard this Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland America Line, I thought of my grandparents.  In June of 1957, shortly before my time, they had sailed from New York to Le Havre aboard an older Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland America Line.  On other occasions they had also sailed aboard the Noordam, the Westerdam, and the Statendam.  Little could they have known that their great-grandson would work for Holland America, meet his fiancé there, sail aboard the Zuiderdam, and marry aboard the new Nieuw Amsterdam—a unique family history connection!  I trust that they were watching the day’s events from their celestial vantage point with smiles on their faces.

Following the wedding ceremony Holland America hosted a reception one deck below in the Crow’s Nest lounge.  Elsewhere on the ship, passengers were boarding and the crew was preparing to go to sea.  At 4:30pm emergency drills were held, and promptly at 5:00pm the Nieuw Amsterdam quietly took in her lines and eased away from the dock.  Gathered on the promenade deck, the entire family watched in fascination as the great ship left the port behind and sailed through the inlet and out to sea.  As she did so, I called my parents on Long Island on the cell phone.  For the first time in the family’s history, three generations were able to converse by telephone while two of them were at sea.

The Nieuw Amsterdam sailed eastward from Port Everglades into the Atlantic and then through the northwestern Bahamas overnight.  The next day she steered southeast past Eleuthera, Cat Island, and San Salvador.  Her first port of call would be Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday she would visit San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Philipsburg, St. Maarten.  Friday and Saturday would be spent entirely at sea, and early next Sunday she would return to Fort Lauderdale.  A tourist itinerary, to be supplemented by fancy dining and entertainment aboard ship.  My principal interests aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, however, were threefold: my son’s wedding, the ocean, and the ship itself.  Tourism took a lower priority, although I have always found the history and geography of the Caribbean fascinating.  With James and Sarah married and the ship now at sea, I turned my attention to the ship and the sea.

It felt so good—so ineffably good—to go to sea again aboard a merchant ship.  The sights and sounds and sensations of a ship at sea were marvelous beyond description.  The east wind driving the low swells, the rippled surface of the water, the endless circle of the horizon, the sun and clouds by day, the moon and stars by night, the swishing of the water alongside the steel hull, the churning of the propeller wash, the gentle rolling of the ship, the soft vibration of the decks—all of these and more combined to produce the supernal experience of once again being at sea.  The exiled son of the sea had come home and was partaking of “the magic monotony of existence between sky and water”¹ that only the most eloquent of writers with experience at sea can begin to articulate.

I spent many hours of every day and night simply looking at the sea and sky.  It had been many years, and I felt that I needed to make up for lost time.  As I had done on watch long ago, I analyzed the weather conditions and the sea state and concluded that the semi-permanent Azores high pressure system was producing the east-southeasterly wind which in turn was the driving force behind the waves and the swell pattern into which the Nieuw Amsterdam was heading.  A very gentle combined pitching and rolling motion resulted, just enough to let everyone know that we really were at sea.  I watched as the sun gradually dropped from the sky to the distant western horizon and colored in pastels the towering cumuliform clouds that are so typical of the lower latitudes.  In the predawn hours I gazed at the stars and tried to pick out my old navigational favorites through the intermittent cloud cover.  The nearly full moon illuminated the horizon sufficiently to facilitate an accurate star plot, although in this technological age a loran-c fix would be just as good and require a lot less effort.  That’s very practical, of course.  Still, few things in life can offer the sense of satisfaction that comes from working out a round of stars and plotting perfectly intersecting lines of position on a chart.

I made frequent visits to the Nieuw Amsterdam’s library.  This was an ideal spot to sit down and write letters describing the voyage to the folks at family headquarters.  I also consulted the National Geographic book of atlases.  Not having traversed these waters in a while, I felt the need to refamiliarize myself with the neighborhood.  Memories of vessels and voyages long past came to mind as I studied the shipping lanes through the Bahama and Virgin Islands.  James and Steven looked on several times as I pointed out where I had gone before and where we were going now.  In addition, a flat screen monitor mounted on a nearby bulkhead provided continuous updates of navigational and meteorological information.  I consulted it often.

The Nieuw Amsterdam had many such state-of-the-art features.  Built in Italy, she entered service in 2010.  She was 936 feet long and 106 feet wide; carried 2,106 passengers and 929 crew; measured 86,700 gross tons; was powered by six diesel generators, four producing 16,000 horsepower and two producing 11,000 horsepower; was driven by two azipod electric-drive propeller units, each with an output of 17.6 megawatts; had a maximum speed of 23 knots; and carried three bow thrusters for maneuverability when docking and undocking.  Her port of registry was Rotterdam, the Netherlands.  Her Master was Captain Edward van Zaane, and her Chief Engineer was Pieter Kesteloo, both of the Netherlands.²

Additionally, the Nieuw Amsterdam was a floating art museum.  Gracing the landings in the midships stairway were magnificent original paintings of historically significant Holland America Line vessels.  My favorite depicted the earlier Nieuw Amsterdam, on which my grandparents had sailed, at sea eastbound from New York and passing on her starboard side the lightship Ambrose.  I practically fell in love with this painting and wished that I could take it home with me!  One deck down hung an equally impressive port quarter view of the old Nieuw Amsterdam entering port.  In the Crow’s Nest, the brass bell from this ship was prominently displayed behind a plate glass window.  Nearby stood a ten-foot-long scale model of this earlier Nieuw Amsterdam.  In her era, 1938 to 1973, she had been the flagship of the Dutch Merchant Marine.

The landings in the forward and aft stairways were decorated with varied artwork of a colonial theme.  This included pen-and-ink drawings of the Dutch settlements in Lower Manhattan, a painting of Captain Henry Hudson’s famous ship Halve Maen,³ and a portrait of Governor Pieter Stuyvesant.  As history has always been one of my favorite subjects, I appreciated these displays of historical material.  Much of it focused on New York.  It was all very attractively and graciously presented, yet I wondered if the Dutch were subtly reminding the English, “We were there first!” 

Lining the bulkheads in all the passageways leading to the passengers’ staterooms were vintage black and white photographs of all the Holland America Line ships over the years.  Some were portrayed at sea and others in various ports.  Most notable was New York, where the Manhattan skyline in its various stages of development loomed large behind vessels underway on the Hudson River.  A few of the most recent of these photographs showed ships passing the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  Whether we like it or not, this is history now, too.  The Dutch, with a long and not always easy history of their own, demonstrated a profound respect for both countries’ heritage in this extensive gallery.

The history continued in the ports that we visited.  Miss Patty and I learned a lot about both Grand Turk and St. Maarten on the cultural and historical tours.  My favorite port of call, however, was San Juan. 

Steeped in both natural beauty and colonial history, San Juan, like Port Everglades, brought back memories for me.  I had been there before in November of 1982, when I was embarked on the tanker Waccamaw as second mate.  This ship docked briefly in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, on a few occasions.  During one of these intervals a few of us drove to San Juan in a borrowed automobile and spent the midnight hours wandering through the streets of the old colonial city.  I saw San Juan in the dark, never in daylight.  Even so, it was clearly a beautiful city, and I have long wanted to return to it in the daytime.

The Nieuw Amsterdam docked in downtown San Juan at 1:00pm after passing the famous El Morro fortress that has for five centuries guarded the harbor entrance.  With Miss Patty I again wandered the narrow blue cobblestone streets of the colonial city.  Reaching El Morro, we gazed upon the beautiful north coast of the island where the sun-lightened blue sea turns white as the surf crashes ashore on the narrow strip of sand and rock that borders both the old and new cities of San Juan.  Multicolored Spanish architecture melds into white stucco high rise as one looks eastward along the shore.  It was truly a magnificent sight to behold, and one that I had only previously beheld from the bridge of the Waccamaw several miles offshore.  From El Morro we walked through the old city back to the piers.  Along the way we passed through neighborhoods filled with beautiful Spanish Mediterranean style buildings painted in vivid Caribbean hues.  My favorite stood opposite a small park on the aptly named Calle Cristo: the Catedral San Juan Bautista, a colonial outpost of Roman Christianity and the spiritual center of the old city.  With its white arched façade and its front steps intersecting the slope of the street, the cathedral stood out as the architectural magnum opus of the city.  I remembered it fondly from the nocturnal meanderings of my youth.  I had sat on those front steps in the middle of the night.  I had been awake and busy for far too many hours.  Nonetheless, I stayed awake to see this beautiful city and then returned to the Waccamaw and went to work again.

This time, though, Miss Patty and I returned to the Nieuw Amsterdam.  Enroute back to Port Everglades, she had one further stop to make, at Little San Salvador Island in the Bahamas.  Situated between Eleuthera and Cat Island, Little San Salvador is the site of Holland America’s  resort called Half Moon Cay, so named in honor of Henry Hudson’s ship.  The cruise ships anchor a short distance offshore there, and the passengers go ashore by tender.  By the time the Nieuw Amsterdam arrived, early on Saturday morning, the weather had changed.  A thirty knot wind blew from the southwest onto the island, and this generated large waves that made the tendering operation much too dangerous.  Speaking over the public address system, Captain van Zaane explained the situation and announced his decision to cancel the visit to Half Moon Cay.  Instead, the ship would continue through the Bahamas toward Port Everglades at reduced speed and arrive as scheduled early Sunday morning.

I had to laugh at this.  Of course, I fully understood and respected the Captain’s decision.  The amusing part was that during my years at sea I had sailed through and between and past the Bahamas many times on several ships, but I had never stopped and gone ashore there!  The Vandenberg, the Mercury, the Waccamaw, the Comet, the Bartlett—all these ships had carried me within sight of the Bahama Islands, but none of them had stopped there; they had all been going elsewhere.  After that, I had been eagerly looking forward to finally going ashore and actually setting foot on one of the Bahamas, only to have it cancelled at the last minute!  And so I gazed longingly at Little San Salvador Island as the Nieuw Amsterdam sailed away on a northwesterly course and left it far astern.  Miss Patty made it the family joke.  She claimed that with my history I had jinxed our visit to Half Moon Cay!

In the predawn hours of Sunday morning I watched from the Crow’s Nest Lounge as the Nieuw Amsterdam approached the Florida coast.  The lights of Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood shone clearly in the darkness, and I searched diligently for the entrance to the inlet that leads into Port Everglades.  At 5:15am the pilot boat came alongside to port.  A minute later, with the pilot safely delivered on board, the launch scurried away, soon to deliver another pilot to another inbound ship.  The sky lightened as the Nieuw Amsterdam eased through the inlet and then slowly backed into position alongside the wharf.  By 6:00am, it was all finished. 

It had been a voyage of accomplishment.  Our little family—Miss Patty, myself, James, Karen, Steven, and Michael—had enjoyed a wonderful week-long reunion.  We had seen James and Sarah marry, both of them radiantly happy, and we had met her family.  In this way our family had grown.  And I had gone back to sea with my family.  This enabled them to see me in my element, and they came to understand, up to a point, why I liked it so much.  Miss Patty maintained that I was “obsessed with the ship and the ocean.”  That gives me two obsessions now: seafaring and family history.  The Nieuw Amsterdam combined them very nicely on this voyage.  But now it was time to reluctantly go ashore.

Numerous poets have written about the seaman’s return from the sea.  Two of them even shared the famous line, “Home is the sailor, home from the sea,”⁴ which one of Great Britain’s most revered merchant seaman later used as the title of his memoirs.⁵  Well, I have been “home from the sea” for a long time.  Aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, however, I felt as if I had truly come home after a long absence.  As soon as I stepped aboard, I felt a sense of having returned.  In fact, it all made me feel at home—the collection of merchant ships in Port Everglades; the transit outbound through the inlet with the leaving of a continent behind; the voyage through the Bahamas and on the open Atlantic; the arrivals and departures at the ports of call, especially the visit to San Juan.  Most of all, though, I felt at home on the open decks of the Nieuw Amsterdam in the very early morning hours when the stars peeked through the scattered clouds and the moonlight reflected on the rippled surface of the water.  Simply put, a seaman is at home at sea.

But he is not alone there.  I had my family with me this time, but beyond that, the night sky over the open ocean always exudes a spirituality that is unmistakable.  The Master and Chief Engineer of the universe stands watch over the sea and makes his presence known through the sight, sound, and feel of the sea and sky.  How can anyone look at this, I mused, and not believe in God?  “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,”⁶ as one devout poet exclaimed.  The supernal creative genius of a Supreme Being stands as self-evident when viewed from the deck of a ship at sea, a view that is always uplifting, edifying, and inspirational.

In one of my favorite verses of scripture, Nephi asserted after a long voyage, “he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep” (2 Nephi 4:20).  I would make the same assertion after a short voyage.  I came ashore from the Nieuw Amsterdam preserved and also improved by the voyage, and very thankful for the privilege of having returned, however briefly, to the sea where I belong.

---

¹ Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1920, p. 6.
² Information from Holland America Line.
³ In English, Half Moon.
⁴ Robert Louis Stevenson, “Requiem,” in The Harvard Classics, v. 42, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, p. 1261-1262; and A. E. Housman, “R.L.S.,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970, p. 901.
⁵ Captain Sir Arthur Rostron, Home from the Sea, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1931.
⁶ Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., “God’s Grandeur,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5^th ed., v.2, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986, p.1581.

Visiting the Waterfront

The famous passenger liner Queen Elizabeth 2 rested peacefully alongside Pier 92 on the West Side of Manhattan.  To most outward appearances, the ship seemed quiet.  As groups of passengers began to arrive at the pier and make their way on board, however, the initial quiet dissipated and was replaced by a hum of activity.  Conveyor belts delivered food, supplies, and suitcases aboard from the base of the pier.  Several decks higher, passengers strolled across a separate gangway to the ship and were welcomed aboard by Cunard Line representatives.  From the top level of the pier, Miss Patty and the children and I enjoyed a balcony view of the embarkation as well as a spectacular close-up view of the mammoth vessel and the surrounding riverfront.  It was a cloudy and warm Saturday, August 12, 2000, and we had come to visit the Queen.

Many years earlier, in the 1960s, my parents had brought my brother and me to the West Side passenger piers to see our grandparents off when they sailed on the Constitution or the Independence of the old American Export Lines.  My grandfather had engineering conferences to attend in Europe, and both he and my grandmother preferred ocean travel over air travel.  For my part, I envied them.  Sailing away on a long ocean voyage seemed so much more interesting than going to school.  Eventually, I did sail away on many long ocean voyages, not on glamorous passenger ships but on beat-up old freight wagons.  But that didn’t matter.  What did matter was that these freight wagons went to sea and they took me with them and they opened up the world for me.

While my Merchant Marine career had reached its conclusion as the children started to arrive, I continued to hear the call of the sea, and I wanted to share this experience with the children as much as possible.  Hence our numerous voyages aboard the Staten Island and Long Island ferries, among others.  But there were more occasions when we did not actually sail on the sea but simply went to visit it.  Such was the case this Saturday in August as we admired the great Queen Elizabeth 2 from the pier.

The children were fascinated by this beautiful ship.  From the vantage point of the uppermost level of the pier—a rooftop parking facility surrounded by a waist-high concrete wall—they could see everything.  They admired the Queen from stem to stern, taking in the anchor windlass, the lifeboats, the promenade decks, the navigating bridge with its oversized windows, the lavishly decorated passenger lounges, the swimming pools, and atop it all the famous red and black striped funnel that has for so long been emblematic of the Cunard Line.  They watched as middle-aged passengers casually sipped wine in deck chairs and as tuxedoed waiters danced attendance on pretty girls relaxing around the pool.  They asked many questions and listened carefully as I explained various aspects of the ship to them.  In addition to the Queen, there were tugboats and barges and other passenger ships moving about the neighborhood.  While these were all very interesting, the Queen nonetheless reigned supreme as the star of the show, and she commanded the children’s interest for the afternoon.

At 5:00pm, it was time to go.  Many things started to happen simultaneously.  The chief mate and several linehandlers appeared on the bow.  A younger officer with a similar group appeared on the stern.  Dock workers started to toss the mooring lines off the bollards on the pier and the crewmen aboard ship winched them in.  More dock workers removed the gangways and the crew then closed the sideports and secured them for sea.   A tugboat came along and towed away an oil barge that had been delivering fuel on the Queen’s starboard side.  Important looking personages stepped purposefully out onto the port side bridge wing—the master, the pilot, the mate of the watch.  These men and a host of others serving in less visible capacities would soon take the great ship to sea.

The Queen’s mighty whistle sounded a single prolonged blast which echoed off the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan—the signal for getting underway.  A moment later three shorts blasts sounded forth, signaling that the ship’s engines were now going astern.  As the whole family watched from the end of the pier where a small crowd had gathered, the Queen began to move, very slowly at first but then gaining momentum.  A space of open water formed between the ship and the pier as she backed out at a slight angle into the Hudson.  Propeller wash surrounded her stern and eddies of water swirled around her bow as the large hull gracefully pulled away from the city.

Soon the bridge wing would come abreast of the crowd at the end of the pier.  I picked up the two youngest children, Steven and Michael, so they could see over the heads and waving hands and balloons of the assembly.  James and Karen squeezed into an open space along the low wall at the end of the pier.  Miss Patty and I then squeezed in behind them.  As the Queen continued astern and the bridge wing came alongside the crowd, the children waved enthusiastically to the great men there who were directing her.  They all called out loudly,  “Hi, Captain!  Hi, Pilot!”  To all the children’s delight, these two great men took a moment from their duties to gaze down at them and smile and wave and return the friendly greetings.  Then, back to business, they looked sternward again as the Queen slowed and started turning upstream in a wide arc as she cleared the pier.

With her bow now pointing seaward, the Queen came to a momentary stop in mid-Hudson and then gradually started moving forward.  She would now proceed to sea.  We watched carefully as her propellers bit into the water and eased her ahead.  Her speed increased as she headed south and away from her audience on the pier.  She continued past many other piers where no doubt many other people were watching.  Eventually, she passed from sight.  The children waved a last good-bye to her as she became lost to view behind the buildings of Lower Manhattan.  Their previous excitement now gave way to melancholy as they expressed the wish that they could sail away on the Queen instead of walking back to the subway.

The Queen Elizabeth 2 was one of many merchant vessels that we took the children to see.  In the New England seaports closer to home they gazed upon oil tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, pilot boats, fishermen, and an occasional cruise ship.  But the purpose of these outings was as much to gaze upon the water as upon the shipping.  The words of England’s most famous merchant seaman, John Masefield, come to mind:

I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.¹

We answered this “wild and clear call” many times.  In Portland and Portsmouth and Boston, at Nubble Light and the Footbridge Beach and Point Judith, we answered the call and were rewarded with many windy days, flying clouds, and spray flung from whitecaps.  We gazed upon “the lonely sea and sky”² but without experiencing loneliness.  Instead we enjoyed the soothing feelings of peace and quiet and a renewed appreciation for the beauty of the Earth which only the sea and sky can generate.  In short, the seaside was our special place in which to feel the presence of the Spirit.  Even as young as the children were, they sensed this, too.  They would gaze upon the ocean with expressions of wonder showing on their faces.  In this way the innocence of childhood came face-to-face with the pristine natural elements of the sea and sky.  What a beautiful way to spend a day!

Of course, children being children, they did not simply sit and stare at the sea all the time.  They enjoyed many happy hours of splashing in the waves, climbing on the rocks, running across the beach, building sand castles, and eating picnic lunches.  Their fun was as limitless as the sea and sky around them.  And they always asked questions.  The waterfront was a place of learning as well as a place to feel the Spirit, and the children wanted to know everything.  How do lighthouses work?  What do the buoys mean?  How did you use the sun to navigate?  Did you miss Mommy when you were at sea?  And so on.  There was even the occasional language lesson.  One summer morning in Portsmouth we happened upon a freighter bearing Hellenic block letters that identified her as the  AΛEΞANΔPEIA     from  ΠEIPAIEΨΣ.  Suddenly called upon to remember the odd bits of Greek that I had learned in my vagabond youth, I explained to the children that this ship was the Alexandria from Piraeus.

Occasionally there was sadness.  Regrettably, the sea has not always been used for strictly peaceful purposes.  The lighthouse at Point Judith, Rhode Island, stands on a narrow spit of land that is surrounded on three sides by water, a truly beautiful location.  A historical marker on this site informs the visitor of a maritime battle that took place a few miles offshore in the final days of the Second World War.  On May 5, 1945, the American coal carrier Black Point was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-853.  On the following day, the U-853 was depth charged and sunk by a half-dozen American naval vessels.  Twelve men out of the crew of 46 aboard the Black Point perished, as did all 55 crewmen aboard the U-853.³  How tragic that 101 men lost their lives so unnecessarily, when the outcome of the war had already been determined, and in a place of such sublime and pristine beauty.  It grieved all of us to read the historical marker and contemplate these terrible events.  No doubt it grieved the Lord as well, for these seamen were all his children regardless of which side they had fought on during the war.

More happily, however, the innocence of childhood prevailed on these visits to the waterfront.  One thing that growing children like to do is eat, and our four had especially good appetites when next to salt water.  We always brought a picnic lunch with us, and if we left the house early enough we brought a picnic breakfast, too.  They dined with views of the sea in several locations.  The best one of all, though, was at the end of the breakwater in Portland Harbor in Maine.

This stone jetty extends 900 feet into the water from Spring Point in South Portland.  At its end stands the historic Spring Point Light, which warns arriving and departing ships of a section of shallow water at the harbor entrance and dates to 1879.  The breakwater that connects the light to the shore dates to 1951.  It has a reasonably flat walking surface, and visitors are free to hike out to the lighthouse.  People fish, eat, read, sunbathe, and relax on this jetty, but it does not get crowded.  From this vantage point one has unobstructed views of the city skyline and tanker docks to the left, and Casco Bay and its lush islands to the right with the Portland Head Light to the far right.  It is a truly beautiful place, and we have visited it with the children numerous times.  One of these occasions in particular stands out in memory.

It was in the late morning of Wednesday, August 7, 2002.  The sun shone brilliantly in a bright blue sky decorated with tufts of white altocumulus clouds.  We carried our lunch cooler to the end of the breakwater and sat down on the rocks with the lighthouse at our backs and the open water spread out before us.  Except for the line of stones and the lighthouse immediately behind us, we were surrounded by blue water—always a pleasant sensation.  We ate a leisurely and informal lunch as we enjoyed the unsurpassable beauty of the area.  Ferries periodically passed before us on their voyages between the city and Peaks Island and Long Island.  Then a tugboat materialized, passed in front of us, and proceeded seaward.  We watched as it went in the direction of Portland Head.  Before long, the bow of an incoming vessel appeared off Portland Head, and the tug went to meet it.  A merchant ship was coming into port, and we were there to see it!

The family watched in rapt attention as the tanker Nassau Spirit arrived.  A second tug went forth to meet her as she passed through Casco Bay.  Soon she stood abeam of Spring Point.  With the two tugboats’ assistance, she made a wide and graceful turn to come around the end of the breakwater.  Then, straightening her course, she made her approach to the Portland Pipeline pier a short distance to the left of the stone jetty in South Portland.  She eased her great bulk slowly alongside the pier and came to rest.  The tugboats held her securely in place until the mooring lines were made fast.

When they were finished with the Nassau Spirit, one of the tugboats headed seaward again to meet a second incoming vessel.  We watched again as the passenger ship Regal Empress came up the bay towards Portland.  An older vessel with traditional lines and fresh blue and white paint, she made an impressive sight as she passed abeam of the Spring Point Light.  But she did not dock at the Portland Pipeline pier.  With the tugboat’s assistance, the Regal Empress gracefully turned herself about and then backed alongside the passenger pier in Portland proper.

Two large merchant ships had arrived in Portland in succession, and we had watched them from the best seats in the house.  It had all happened literally right before our eyes—a thrill for the whole family, and one which brought back many memories for me.  It was a privilege to be present, all the more so because the Spirit was present, too.  Later in the day, it was very difficult to leave.

Another seaside spot that was difficult to leave, and for that matter, took considerable effort to get to, was Peggy’s Cove on the south coast of Nova Scotia.  The cove itself is a small fishing port surrounded by modest wood frame buildings and protected from the open ocean by a rolling landscape of solid rock.  In the center of this rock stands the famous Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse, a diminutive white tower with a red cap.  Tourists come in great numbers to see this.  We did, too, but we lingered longer, unable to pull ourselves away from the wide open Atlantic that stretched out seemingly endlessly before us.  It was an overcast Wednesday, June 25, 2003.  Both the sea and sky were largely gray, but even in this unremarkable weather, Peggy’s Cove stood out as an indescribably beautiful location.  Gray waves topped with white foamy crests rolled in towards the shore and washed up on the rocks.  The water made a soothing natural sound as it came ashore, like subtle background music.  There were plenty of visitors on the rocks, but it did not seem crowded.  Nor did it get noisy.  We could have sat on the rocks looking at the ocean all afternoon and felt quite undisturbed.  But the children had far too much energy for something so sedentary.

We walked into the little village.  Like most tourist attractions, it had a gift shop.  Like most gift shops, it sold a lot of junk.  But it also had a well stocked book section.  This was not junk.  There were history books, particularly the history of seafaring.  Much of this history had taken place in and just offshore of Nova Scotia.  Much of it had been peaceful, but some of it was not.  In recent years the coast of Nova Scotia had commanded the world’s attention in a terribly tragic way, and a monument just up the road commemorated the event.  It was not a shipping casualty, but ships and boats of various descriptions tended to the cleanup.

On September 2, 1998, a Swissair flight enroute from New York to Geneva diverted toward Halifax in order to make an emergency landing because of an onboard fire.  Unfortunately, this attempt proved unsuccessful, and the aircraft came down in the water just outside of Peggy’s Cove.  Everyone aboard perished in the accident.  The monument stands atop a hill overlooking the site where the airplane came down.  Inscribed in both English and French, its prose is clear and concise:

            In memory of                                      A la memoire

            the 229 men, women, and children     des 229 hommes, femmes, et enfants

            aboard Swissair flight 111                  qui ont perdu la vie au large de

            who perished off these shores                   ces cotes voi Swissair 111

            September 2, 1998.                             le 2 Septembre 1998.

            They have been joined to the              Ils appartiennent maintenant

            sea and sky.                                        au ciel et a la mer.

            May they rest in peace.                      Qu’ils reposent en paix.

Despite the horrific and violent nature of the accident, this monument overlooked a placid and quiet scene.  Shrubberies interspersed with rocks covered the slope that led down to the water.  From the walkway in front of the monument we looked upon a still landscape, a calm sea, and an overcast sky.  It was a very peaceful and spiritual location.  We did not speak.  The inscription on the stone had said it all, and there was nothing that we could add to it.  A few other visitors came along.  They also read the inscription and then gazed at the sea and sky.  No one spoke.  We exchanged only nods of acknowledgement.  The atmosphere was one of walking on hallowed ground.  Everyone was reverent and respectful.  The presence of the Spirit was obvious.

It was a time for quiet contemplation.  In considering the deaths of over 200 people, the words of Isaiah came to mind:

Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live;

and I will make an everlasting covenant with you (Isa. 55:3).

One of the best aspects of visiting the waterfront, whether at Peggy’s Cove or anywhere else, is the opportunity to do just as Isaiah said, to incline the ear and hear; in simple terms, to simply be quiet and listen to the still small voice.  In a world that is saturated with noise—blaring televisions, squawking loudspeakers, canned music, traffic jams, and people who talk incessantly but say nothing—the quiet, gentle, and soothing sounds of nature in the wind and surf come as medicine to the soul.  In these magnificent settings where earth, sea, and sky meet, the Spirit of the Lord resides and the still small voice speaks to us.  All we need do is go there and listen.  Not even a tragic accident or an act of war can prevent the Spirit from reaching us.

Several hundred miles to the southwest the Spirit reached us in an entirely different way.  On a rainy Saturday, August 24, 2002, my three sons and I drove from their Nana’s house on Long Island to Philadelphia on a family history expedition to visit the great passenger liner United States.  Built in Newport News, Virginia, the United States entered transatlantic service in 1952 and set speed records between New York and Europe that have gone unmatched since.  In her day she was the largest and fastest American merchant ship ever built, the flagship of the United States Lines, and the pride of the American Merchant Marine.  As a small child, I had the honor of seeing this great vessel at her Manhattan pier in the early 1960s.  My grandparents, Robert Burns and Julia Murphy, had the honor of sailing aboard her once, though somewhat before my time.  They left New York aboard the United States at noon on a rainy Friday, June 24, 1955 and sailed to Le Havre, France, arriving there in the evening of June 28.  From Le Havre they travelled by train to the sites of my grandfather’s engineering conferences.⁴

Because of the historical significance of the United States and the family history connection to her, I brought my sons to see her at Pier 82 in South Philadelphia.  My grandmother had noted that it “poured rain on [the] way to the ship”⁵ in 1955; appropriately, then, it poured rain with thunder and lightning on our way to the ship in 2002.  Unlike my grandparents, who had sailed on her when she was young and in her prime, when she was “the last word in everything”⁶ and had “every convenience on board”⁷ including “a regular moving picture theatre,”⁸  we visited her in her old age, and it showed.  Covered with dirt, peeling paint, and rust spots, the United States was held alongside the pier by miles of mooring lines, many more than were really necessary to keep her in place.  She was a forlorn sight, locked away in an industrial backwater.  Little wonder, though, as she had been taken out of service in 1969 and had received scant attention since.  Nonetheless, she was in her own way an impressive sight.  The rake of the funnels and the mast, the sweep of the promenade deck, the graceful curvature of the hull, the flare of the bow, the oversized bridge windows facing forward with confidence—it was all still proudly there.  No amount of dirt, peeling paint, or rust could erase the ship’s grand persona.  As my oldest son James remarked, “She still looks ready to race.”

And she really did.  I could easily visualize my grandparents standing at one of the large deck-to-overhead windows on the port side promenade and waving good-bye as the great ship eased away from her Manhattan pier, and I asked my boys to imagine such a scene, too.  This may have been a stretch for them, but the family history connection was undeniable.  I had a sense that my grandparents were watching us, not from the promenade deck of the United States, but another, higher, vantage point.  It was a special moment.  Naturally, I took several photographs, especially after the rain had stopped.  One shows James, Steven, and Michael standing on the dock with the United States looming large behind them.  I later gave a framed enlargement of this picture to my parents.  They immediately put it on display in their living room.  Because it bridged four generations of the family, it meant a great deal to them.

It didn’t show that much in the photograph, but South Philly was everything that Spring Point and Peggy’s Cove were not—part of the “opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11), no doubt.  An industrial neighborhood of battered pavement, railroad sidings, truck terminals, warehouses, freighter piers, overflowing dumpsters, and barbed wire fences, it hardly seemed the place to go to feel the Spirit and hear the still small voice.  And yet they were both present.  Despite the difficulty of driving in the pitch dark through heavy rain and heavy traffic to get there, and afterwards fighting a traffic jam the size of New Jersey to return to Long Island,  the presence of the Spirit and the feeling of closeness to deceased yet still beloved family were unmistakable.  It was truly well worth the effort.  Perhaps because it required such an effort, I appreciated it all the more.

Living inland as we do, it always involves some effort to answer “the call of the running tide”⁹ and go to the sea again.  But it is always worth the effort.  We have never been disappointed.  No matter what the weather conditions are, no matter what the location is, no matter what time of day or night it is, the sea always calls and the Spirit of the Lord always stands watch over it.  Just as the call of the tide is clear and undeniable, so the presence of the Spirit is also clear and undeniable.  Just as the tide flows endlessly between the coastal estuaries and the open ocean, so the Spirit also flows endlessly between the celestial and earthly realms.  For centuries and even millennia, humans have spoken of “the eternal sea.”  Just as eternal as the sea are its Creator, his Spirit, and his people and their families.  When we visit the waterfront, the still small voice testifies of this.

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¹ John Masefield, “Sea-Fever,” in Salt-Water Poems and Ballads, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916, p. 55. 

² Ibid.

³ See also www.usmm.org/blackpoint.html, http://uboat.net/boats/u853.htm, and www.armed-guard.com/riem26.html.

⁴ Information from my grandmother’s travel journal, entries dated June 24, 1955, and June 28, 1955.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Letter from my grandmother, dated June 28, 1955.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ John Masefield, op. cit.