Now, Dad arranged for the dock boss to call when the ship was an hour or so away from being loaded. That was technically enough advance notice to make it back to the ship on time. But we lived in Duluth, and if the ship was docked at the Great Northern Ore docks across the bay in Superior, he’d have to cross the bridge. That was the “wild card,” as my mother said. The old Interstate Bridge opened for any passing ship.
The Old Interstate Bridge spanned the bay between Duluth and Superior. When it swung open for passing ships, it stopped traffic for an average of twenty minutes. It was replaced by the High Bridge in 1961, but a remnant of the old bridge remains as a fishing platform. ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, KATHRYN A. MARTIN LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-DULUTH
One night at the end of September, we got caught. Dad was home, and the dock boss called. We were just going out the door when Dad decided he’d better take his heavy wool mackinaw, as the weather could turn at any time now. He searched the front and back hall closets but couldn’t find it. He went up to the attic to check the garment bags, but it wasn’t there, either. Finally, it dawned on him; he had put it in the basement clothes locker under the stairs, the one with the mothballs in it. He ran down and grabbed it, shot outside, and headed for the car. But when he bent down to say good-bye to the dog, he noticed a screw missing in the gate latch and ran back in, got a screwdriver, and fixed it. By that time, we were running late.
Racing down Piedmont Avenue, we spotted trouble—a ship in the bay, headed for the bridge. It seemed like we could beat it, but by the time we got to Garfield Avenue, it wasn’t looking good. Dad started gunning for the bridge, but just as we were about to go over, the warning bells went off—ding, ding, ding—and the big white arm came down. There we were, the first car behind the last car that made it.
Dad didn’t swear in front of me very often, but this was one of the times that he did. Every minute’s delay cost the company money, and the company was not forgiving. Watching the lights of the oncoming ship creeping toward the open span, the three of us sat in silence. In the glow of the lights of the dashboard, I could see my dad’s cheek muscles clench and unclench. Mom even stopped talking.
After a few minutes, I looked out the back window and—wow!—the whole sky was full of magical shifting shafts of light over the hills of Duluth—green, white, and pale yellow columns, bleeding and blending into each other, as when you turn a kaleidoscope.
“Hey, look,” I said, glad to break the silence.
“Holy Toledo!” Dad said. “I haven’t seen an aurora borealis like that in ages.”
I asked him what caused it, and he started to tell me about gases, and sunspots, and solar winds, and electrical charges, the arctic sun, and the earth’s magnetic field, and how sometimes he would see this from out on the water along the North Shore. He made me say “aurora borealis” over and over again, and then we all started saying it, and then the bells started ringing. The big arm in front of us lifted, and the bridge locked back into place. Dad put the car in gear, and we were off, leading the parade of cars making low whining noises on the metal span. As soon as we got to the Superior side, Dad turned left onto a side street to avoid the traffic lights and floored it. Mom’s knees hit the glove compartment when he jammed on the brakes. He thought he’d spotted a police car up ahead, but it was just a taxi.
When we passed Barker’s Island going about a hundred miles an hour, we could see the beginning of the dock—but no ship. “Uh-oh,” Dad said. “They must have shifted her back.” In another five minutes, we were at the turn in Allouez, in South Superior. When we roared up to the guardhouse, we could see that there were no spouts down. The ore train was moving toward us and the ship was at the end of the dock, loaded. We screeched to a stop. Dad jumped out of the car, flashed his pass at the guard, and started running, without looking back or even saying good-bye.
“Goodbye, Willie,” Mom muttered to herself.
We sat there for a minute, watching him. Then Mom slid over to the driver’s seat, put the car in reverse, and turned around to back up. “Oh no!” she cried out. “He forgot his mackinaw!” She grabbed the coat and turned around, but he was gone. She slumped down in her seat. From the backseat, I could see a little tear run slowly down her cheek and land on her lip. She licked it, sucked in her breath, and then I watched as she rolled down the window and yelled at the top of her lungs, “I hate that bridge! And I hate steam boating!” The two of us drove home slowly.
That night it sounded like there was someone or something in the house—like an animal rustling around. I crept into my parents’ bedroom, but Mom wasn’t there, and then I heard the hangers banging around in the bedroom closet. I was about to investigate, when a voice from the back of the closet called out, “Willie? Willie, is that you?” (Mom was the only one who called Dad Willie.) Just then the telephone rang, and Mom stumbled past me into the hall, reaching for the phone.
Uh-oh, I thought. Sleepwalking again. Sometimes she did that before Dad called. She seemed to have a sixth sense about when he would be in port. Tonight, however, he would still be in the middle of Lake Superior, which meant it would be a ship-to-shore call, which also meant it must be important.
“Yes, yes. I’ll accept the charges,” she said.
They talked for quite a while, and then I heard her say, “Not even time for a good-bye?” I didn’t understand it when she said, “Ours is a winter affair,” but I giggled right out loud when, after a long silence, I heard her say, “Good-bye, sweet prince.” I thought she was awake, but she must have still been dreaming.
A few days later, a local reporter called Mom, saying she wanted to do a feature article for the Duluth News Tribune about the ship captains’ wives. It wasn’t good timing. Mother had a feeling that the reporter already knew what she wanted to write. People loved to romanticize this life, and Mother wasn’t in the mood. But the reporter was a woman and said she was eager to tell it like it really was, so Mom met with her and did just that.
“At home alone, a skipper’s wife, of necessity, becomes a jack-of-all-trades,” my mother told the reporter. “She not only has to learn to balance the checkbook, she becomes self-sufficient. She must learn to change a faucet’s washer, do electrical repair work, clean the garage, and mow the lawn. A wife may accompany her captain husband on the lakes for up to a month of the season, but most of us break up the time—it would be too confining to stay aboard ship for a month at a time.”
She went on to say that sometimes she was afraid of the weather. “Years ago a ship would head for the nearest port in a storm. Now, with modern technological advances, like radar to look ahead at the weather, the ship just keeps going. Those Lake Superior storms can be frightening.
“There could be a real morale booster,” Mom continued. “If only a captain could have a week or two at home during the summer to see Duluth without overshoes and storm coats in its summer finery—without having to watch the clock for sailing time.”
But then … “Night or day, it’s always a thrill to go through the Soo Locks,” she conceded, adding that Burns Harbor was her favorite port. “It’s such a clean, lovely place compared to most other stops.”
Sure enough, when the article appeared in the paper, the reporter had summed up the interview with the headline, “Life of Skipper’s Wife Rewarding.”
“Oh, no,” I thought; she’ll say, “I told you so.” But included in the article was a picture of Mom and Dad in the pilothouse behind the wheel. They were smiling. I guess the picture must have brought back the good times, too, because she cut it out and put in on the refrigerator, where it stayed until it yellowed and faded. And surprisingly, she didn’t say anything about the choice of title.
The portrait of my parents that ran with the article in the Duluth News Tribune
The newspaper article in which Mother shared her thoughts about her life as the wife of a ship captain appeared in the Duluth News Tribune. DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE
I Set Sail
Fi
nally the summer of my twelfth birthday arrived, and I was old enough for my first sailing trip. It was exciting at first, especially the fire drill, when all the horns and whistles were blowing, but it wasn’t long until the days dragged on a bit. The wind, water, and sky seemed endless. Lake Superior was the best for Dad, as after he cleared the breakwater, barring bad weather, it was twenty-six hours of open lake to the Soo Locks. There were always paperwork and occasional personnel issues, but for the most part, it was the time when he had a little break, to sleep, and read, and listen to classical music, which was his passion. Dad loved having us on board with him and tried to make it interesting and fun, but he was also used to solitude. He was able to sit for long periods of time thinking, working on projects, and not talking. For a passenger like me, some days could be long, especially when it was my birthday and nobody seemed to notice!
The day I turned twelve, Mom appeared to be asleep in the bedroom. Dad was sitting at his desk mending a transistor box, and I was just standing there watching. Then, suddenly, the telephone above his desk rang and the red light started blinking. It was the chief engineer inviting us back to the engine room.
“OK, Harvey,” Dad said. “We’ll be right back.”
Whoopee! I thought. Something to do! We got on our jackets and quietly slipped out the door. I held Dad’s arm as we walked back aft. Walking aft made me kind of dizzy, because the ship is moving forward while you’re walking backward, so you’re going backward and forward at the same time.
The engine room with all its gauges on the floating museum the SS Irwin moored in the Duluth harbor
When we got to the middle of the after-cabin, Dad pushed down the handle of the heavy steel door. We stepped over the high coaming and turned around to go backward down the steep steps. It was like entering the inner workings of an enormous watch. Everything was ticking and whirring. The big pistons were going up and down, lights were blinking, the little wheels in the gauges were spinning, and in the middle was the chief engineer, sitting at his desk, drinking from his coffee mug. With no windows, the engine room was warm and smelled of oil.
“Well, hello there, young lady,” the chief said. “You know, I had an idea.” He took us to his tool bench and showed us a pile of blocks of wood that he’d cut out. “I thought we could make some little boats,” he said. He took one piece of wood and nailed it on top of another larger piece, and then he nailed another little piece on top of that, and it did look like a boat. Then he screwed an eye hook in its bow that he had sawed into a point, tied some twine to it, and superglued a toothpick with a little American flag on top.
My dad laughed and said, “Blow me down, Harvey.”
Then the chief looked at me and said, “Now you do it.”
I picked up the hammer and the nails that he’d laid out, took the other big block of wood and nailed a little smaller one on top of it, and a little smaller one on top of that, and he screwed an eye hook in the front of it and put the flag on top. He put a long piece of twine through the eye hook, and then we went over to the gangway. He pushed down with all his might on the big clamps and opened the top half of the gangway door, which opened onto the deep blue Lake Superior water. The ship was loaded so the water was just a couple of feet below us.
He tied the twine around my wrist and threw the boat in. It bounced around a bit before diving under the water. He reached for the string and pulled it in, letting it back out slowly, and when he handed the string to me again the boat was floating. Then he gave the first one that he’d made to Dad, who threw it in. It bounced around a bit, and then it floated, too. We laughed and sailed our boats in the sun.
Then the chief turned to me and said, “I hear we have a birthday girl with us today.” Dad winked, and I blushed. When we got back to our cabin, Mom had a birthday cake waiting with twelve candles. She and Mr. Gregory, the cook, had made it. I blew out the candles and made a wish for smooth seas and a daylight landing, so we could get off the ship and go shopping.
It wasn’t long until I discovered that the most exciting place aboard ship by far was the pilothouse. It was like the forward end’s family room. During the river passages, the captain and a mate and the wheelsman were always up there, and on the half hour, after checking the spar and the running lights, the watchman came by with his standard report, “Lights are bright.” Watches were four hours long. Some men had been together for many seasons and had known each other on different ships over the years. At that time there were no crew rotations for vacations, so a group of men worked together for an entire sailing season and formed (for better or worse) a work family.
Nighttime was the best time in the pilothouse, when the radar and direction finder were lit, and the two-way radio jabbered with shipping traffic. The men talked about the news, their families, their childhoods, and sports, and everybody smoked, drank coffee, and ate donuts. Sometimes, when it was warm, the doors on either side were latched open, and everyone stopped talking as we sailed in the glow of the moon. All you could hear was the turning of the wheel and the lapping of the water on the bow. One night, Dad bet me I couldn’t stay up all night, but I had to try. Right before sunrise, it was deadly quiet. The night loosened around the edges; the blackness thinned but it wasn’t quite light. The smell was different, a little like fish, and now you could see that the leftover bacon sandwiches from two a.m. had gotten crusty on the windowsill and the fat had hardened. A wind came up, causing a little bounce to the ship. It started to feel humid, and the horizon line became visible, as straight as if it had been drawn with a ruler. It was morning. I had made it!
A few days later, when I’d read all the books I had brought aboard, all the magazines, and all the funnies in the papers from the Soo, I went up to the pilothouse to visit and picked up the Merchant Marine Handbook on the chart desk. Dad looked over at me, smiling, and asked how I liked it. I smiled back and said I liked it just fine. I quickly flipped the page I was on and impressed him when I asked some questions about cargo boom stresses and blank spots on the radar. Later, he told everyone at dinner what a good little sailor I was and told me that I should get my A.B. (able-bodied seaman’s license).
I never told him that the chapter I was reading was the one titled “Men’s Health,” which included anatomically correct pictures and a fascinating section on rashes.
The perfect moment—calm seas and the glow of the moon. The old-style telescoping hatches are visible. In bad weather they were covered with canvas tarps to prevent leakage.
As morning broke after a long night in the pilothouse, the horizon line looked as straight as if it had been drawn with a ruler.
Winter Life
Summer passed quickly and merged into the cold and severe weather of fall. By the first of November, we started to wait again for the end of the shipping season and for Christmas, which was a homecoming for us as well as a holiday—a celebration of safe reentry to extended family, city life, and “land time.” When the sailors came back at season’s end, I always got to skip school to meet them.
It was eight o’clock—the time I usually left for school—but today was different. The train was due in half an hour. It took only fifteen minutes to get there, but we didn’t want to be late and miss seeing the sailors get off. I asked Mom if they were coming into the “castle station,” as I called it. It was so grand to go to Duluth’s Union Depot. The round turrets made it look like a French château, which made me feel important. We parked and asked what track the train from Chicago would be coming in on, and then we walked down to the gate to join the little group of sailors’ wives and children who were already there, shivering from the cold and the excitement. When we heard the train chug around the bend, all the other school-skipping kids and I started jumping up and down as we watched the engine puff toward us and roll to a stop.
Steam shot out from between the wheels, and then the conductor whistled and put down the step stool, and the men detrained: Mary and Peggy’s dad, Ellen and Mick’s, and Tom and Marshall’s, and t
hen mine, taller than all the rest and looking like a movie star in his traveling suit, bow tie, and hat. Dad kissed Mom first and then bent down to me so we could rub noses. I was so excited to see him, and, of course, to stop by Bridgeman’s to buy the hand-packed vanilla ice cream we needed to make a treat we always had whenever he came home, even if it was in the morning: giant root beer floats.
Dad’s ship encased in ice on Lake Huron, headed for Ashtabula, in December 1968. Ice, though beautiful, could be dangerous, increasing the weight of the ship by many tons and causing it to ride lower in the water or to list.
When we got home, a spruce tree was waiting for us in the yard. While we were gone, my grandfather had delivered it and put it in a snowbank by the back door. He knew that the first thing Dad would want to do was to put up the Christmas tree. He was always in charge of the trimming. He liked to get it “just right.”
Usually, Dad was home by the beginning of December, but this year the sailing season had been extra long, and he’d had to make a couple of extra trips. It was now only a week before Christmas.
At the end of each season, my father often arrived at the Duluth Depot, which served seven different rail lines. It became a museum in 1973 and now houses several ore malleys, huge retired engines used to pull the ore trains from the mines to the ships in the port.
After our root beer float breakfast, Dad unpacked. By lunchtime, his mackinaw was back in the basement closet. His suit and good hat for the train trip were hung up, his bow tie was back in the top dresser drawer, his toothbrush was back in the bathroom holder, and his slippers were back on his side of the bed. Once again, everything was in its place. He was home from another nine months on the water.
Ship Captain's Daughter Page 3