The Voyage of the Rose City

by John Moynihan

  Inside the bridge the Chief and the Old Man were running around in an attempt to navigate the ship along the proper sea channel. One of the busiest spots in the ocean, the Cape of Good Hope was alive with seagoing vessels of all sorts and nationalities.

  My reverie was cut short by the Chief’s orders to keep an eye out for a crucial lighthouse and any new lights. I was more than happy to oblige: This was the turning point to warmer waters. From here on out we were headed north, and the African winter—along with those freezing winds that made lookout a misery—was soon to be left behind.

  On overtime, Jake, Tony, and I sugied the stack deck. I was feeling a bit more cheerful, mellowing into the situation, keeping the spirit up. It was becoming a ritual for the three of us to work overtime together. Our conversation consisted of sea stories, Jake’s politicking, and Tony’s singing. As it turned out, Tony was an accomplished banjo player and would regularly break into a goofy rendition of any number of songs. As if illustrating the lightness of mood in which the three of us worked, a gooney bird (as Bud called them) hovered three feet over Jake and Tony for several minutes without their knowing.

  In the evening I calculated my earnings to date and came up with a figure of around $2,000. It dawned on me that I was going to make lots of money. I filled out the day’s overtime and sat back on my bed. On the bedside shelf I’d put all the books I’d brought along to read. Collecting dust were unopened volumes of Lord Jim, The Reivers, and Seven Arrows. I reached out to the end of the shelf and picked up the Penguin edition of Moby-Dick.

  The day started after a night of wild dreams. On watch I had a lot of fun spotting boats while we circled around, measuring the compass against a light on what are the southern mountains of Africa. The dark birds, later on OT, were hassling the seagulls on and off. It was a beautiful day, morning especially, as the sea was a rolling, lolling mirror. The sun hung low and twilightish all day. Billy continued his violent hot and cold. I thought I saw a bird floating in the water as we sailed along. Lots of shit otherwise in the bend of the Cape of Good Hope. We splashed fish oil around, and as I ascended the wheel—a gorgeous sunset on the smooth rippled sea, and a wonderful view of the southernmost plains-mountains of Africa—sigh—. I saw the cadet again today, watching the sunset. But the key was when I relieved Jake on watch—ah, the sea sparkled with an incredible violet-green illumination. As we plunged through the steadily warmer waters the ship churned up glowing plankton—what a trip!

  —7/5/80

  It was true: The sea off the Cape was awash in trash. Everything from oil spills to kitchen garbage could be seen floating idly in the usually turbulent waters. And for this we were lucky—the Cape is generally known for its violent winter storms. It was assumed that this was where I’d experience my first bout with seasickness, but this was not to be. The weather was perfect, the sailing smooth. Smooth enough to see the death of this picturesque channel.

  The phosphorescent sea was the most startling thing I’d seen. It was still light out when I came off the wheel, and it seemed as if this was going to be just another evening watch. It was dark when I came on lookout. It was not just another evening watch. The great wake stirred up by the ship had vast, glowing repercussions throughout the dark sea. Ten-foot waves of neon green buffeted the bow and ran angrily down the side of the ship and past the house. The view from the stern was no less magnificent. The great screw bubbled and sang in a symphony of light. Our path was marked out by a vibrant green line that shone in the darkness clear across the horizon.

  When Joe relieved me he was duly unimpressed. He’d seen it before, and it was nothing to him. I stared down at the bow for a few minutes longer, and then decided I had to go out on the deck to the forepeak. This was not a good idea—and is one of the cardinal sins on a ship. Should a swell rise up and crush me against the pipes or knock me overboard there would be no one to help me, or even to hear my cries. Nonetheless, I had to go.

  Walking out onto the long, imposing deck was not an easy thing to do. The house was a looming bastion of security and light, but the bow at night was dark and elemental. After a few minutes I reached the forepeak and braved the ladder to the foredeck. It was awesome. The phosphorous wave rose up and thundered against the ship. The water splashed across the deck and, receding, pulled back for another assault. Again great waves of light crashed into our iron hull, and again the ship plunged on. It was an epic battle.

  Sunday was Billy’s twenty-sixth birthday. I had made a birthday card with a pen rendering of a genie coming out of a bottle but couldn’t think of a way to give it to him. Finally I decided to get it over with, and while at the wheel I stepped out onto the wing, where he was standing lookout, and handed it to him. He looked up surprised and silently accepted it. Later I heard that he really appreciated it, and I was glad.

  On the outside, the dusky hills of South Africa were passing by, and the sea continued to be crowded with vessels. Part of the experience of going around the Cape was mastering the wheel. The course changed regularly as we made our way along the coast, and I was getting a handle on the mechanics of steering. At first I was shaky; a laden tanker has a hell of a momentum to it, and my first course change was a bit of a disaster. The Chief told me to swing ten degrees right. Taking her off the gyro, I made the usual course change. But the ship didn’t stop. Panicking, I pulled her hard left, and she finally responded. Unfortunately she was again pulling much harder than I’d expected, and I jerked the wheel fast the other way. After five minutes or so she was finally on course, and, flipping the gyro switch, I returned the controls to automatic. The Chief in the meantime had been watching my struggle with an amused look on his face.

  “When a ship’s laden, you’ve got to compensate for it. Say you’ve got to take her fifteen degrees left. When you see that she’s at seven or so, pull her fast thirty degrees right. That’ll balance ’er out and get her under control.”

  All things considered, the Chief was all right. While at the wheel he’d shoot the breeze with me about this or that, often using me to vent his feelings about the crew or the way work was going. For my part, I picked his brain about the sea. While the crew had an intuitive understanding of the ocean, he had a scientific knowledge. It was good background; his talks on the technicalities of the Merchant Marine also helped me pass the long hours on watch.

  Even so, he still continued to call the crew “a bunch of dumbshits.”

  The compulsion to be accepted—the fear. Here it’s a different world. It’s closed. Real. Fair.

  —7/6/80

  Africa faded out over the horizon, a thick stretch of gray. We were in the Indian Ocean. Throwing the Tarot, I turned up the Tower. It made sense. I had gone from an overgrown playground where Westchester Marxists drove Daddy’s car to the protest and conversation focused on feminism and boycotting Nestlé into a vengeful situation. Here the only escape was the eventual passage of time. I had reached the LCD. The pits. And then a curious thing started happening: I began to almost enjoy it. In the absolute still of the morning watch, in the rapt hour before the dawn when the only light was the dull glow of the electric compass and the useless pulsings of the broken radar, in the foaming seas of another hemisphere and on another side of the planet, I relished the thought that all those fuckers back there at the university were scratching one another’s eyes out with the same old bullshit. There was none of that here. None you could get away with, anyway. This was life and death with every turn of the compass. It was real.

  It was a strangely comforting thought.

  On the seventh the clouds began to gather. Monsoon season, which I had once longed for, sweating out the blistering heat of India, now loomed with grave intensity, and we were sailing into the heart of it.

  The Bosun had us chipping and scraping in preparation for a massive painting project the Chief had planned. On our return to the States, the Coast Guard was going to inspect the ship, and everything had to look smart. It didn’t matter that it took twenty minutes to force
the lifeboats out of their frozen moorings, or that the three compasses on the bridge all read different points. Just so long as everything looked nice.

  Nothing much today. Slept in this morning and lazed into lunch and afternoon work. Blustery seas. Beautiful sunset—endless cumulus clouds illuminated various shades of red, lavender, and blue, iridescent against the electric blue-green sky. Shocks of rays bolted out from behind a cloud that calmly shielded us from the setting sun. They say a typhoon is expected. Billy’s been a decent chap. Today.

  —7/7/80

  Taking strong seas on the starboard side. There was no OT today.

  —7/8/80

  As we entered the Indian Ocean, which had been described to me as sweltering but peaceful, the ship was assaulted by barrage after barrage of angry waves. It started out as a series of exceptionally large swells washing over the deck; soon, however, it became clear that we were in the midst of the remnants of a typhoon, and to leave the house was suicide. The view from the bridge was the best. As the ship rode the waves, mountains of water swept over the railing and crashed against the steam pipes. Every tenth wave or so the entire deck, from starboard to port side, was swamped. How long the storm was going to last was uncertain. We had two weeks to go before the Straits, and in this season there was the possibility that the bad weather wouldn’t abate even then. Through the rain-choked windows one could see the ship’s great iron hulk buckling under the force of the storm, the entire ship convulsing in a series of ripples that ran down the whole length of the deck.

  Since there was no overtime to be had, the crew whiled away the hours by drinking the last of the booze. The Heineken the officers had been selling us ran out that week, and the liquor-starved seamen began a desperate hunt for the few remaining intoxicants left on the ship. One night Jake and Jimmy called me into Jake’s room, where they were getting drunk on their last case. I brought in most of my own alcohol and proceeded to join them in a three-hour binge that left us trashed and in incredible pain for the next morning’s watch.

  It was a great evening. Jake, the character actor, provided nonstop entertainment for the two of us. Jimmy, for his part, told outrageous sea stories and terrible jokes. The highlight was when Jake broke out his harmonica and went into a rendition of Hitler’s favorite jig. His seasoned face turned red as a beet as he tooted madly away, jumping up and down and laughing hysterically.

  Jimmy, when he finally stopped laughing, recounted a story he’d heard from someone in the union hall about Jake. As he described it, Jake was in a hotel in Saigon with some of the boys when he found he had to go to the bathroom. Crossing the ballroom, lavishly decorated like some palace out of a Bing Crosby–Bob Hope On the Road picture, he suddenly leaped up onto the stage and broke into “On the Road to Mandalay.”

  Laughing, I remarked that I’d been to Mandalay while living in India. The two of them fell silent. I’d blown it. I’d reminded them of who I was, and our drunken comradeship was broken. Jimmy eventually lifted his head and uncomfortably looked away out the window.

  “Y’know, it’s not how much money you have,” he said. “It’s what you do with your life.”

  The party broke up soon after that.

  Aside from reading Moby-Dick my only pastimes were the movies in the lounge. Occasionally I would sneak into the kitchen late at night and steal a can of whipped cream. Hiding it under my shirt, I’d make my way out onto the stack deck and slowly suck out the nitrous oxide (laughing gas) that propelled it. It was a cheap thrill, but then there weren’t too many alternatives. It was very amusing to see the crew puzzling over why the whipped cream didn’t work the next morning.

  By the eighth, the booze was gone. Miguel and Ned started trying to brew raisin jack in the mess, but it was generally a dismal failure. Nonetheless, they, Billy, and a few of the others drank it. Rumor had it that the reason Miguel often locked himself in his room for long periods of time was to drink Listerene. Billy said he and a mate of his had done that at Piney Point, the training academy where no liquor was allowed. He also said that it made them sick to their stomachs, but it did get them drunk. Other tales of being caught without booze included the story of one seaman who, when desperate for a drink, emptied the alcohol out of the compass and drank that. I mentioned this to the Chief, and he said, “Why not? It’s pure, ain’t it?”

  The skies over the Indian Ocean are epic. With nothing but sea below them, they open up with cyclopean grandeur. The great storm clouds of the monsoon rise up and out without measure.

  On the morning of the ninth I saw perhaps the most impressive example of this. As we sailed into the east, the bridge looked straight into the amber sun that rose over the hyperactive sea through restless, scattered storm clouds. Coming at us full force was a rain squall that, because of the sun behind it, appeared as a great sheet of glistening orange. Smoothly working its way across the water, it soon engulfed us. It didn’t last more than a minute before moving on to the west, when I realized there was no rainbow. I stepped out onto the port wing and stopped. Filling the sky was a beautiful double circular rainbow, vivid and perfect. It plunged deep into the sea, and up again into the sky. Gradually it drifted off, borne away by the gray sheet of rain that receded into the horizon.

  Something told me that this was an omen. After all, there were only twenty-four days to go.

  Well, no work today; I feel like I’m unemployed. As for remarkable phenomena, I saw on the p.m. watch (port wing) the same flashes/sparkles I had observed earlier, except there were also great bursts of that same cool blue electric light, like flashbulbs going off under the surface of the onrushing water. Aye, ’twas odd; whole patches would light up.

  —7/10/80

  As a lark, one night I drew a picture of Jake as a rebel standing in front of the Confederate flag. That he would act like a “reb” sometimes had been a running joke for a few weeks now, one that Jake himself had laughed at. Seizing upon this, I taped the cartoon to his door and thought nothing more about it. The next morning, Billy, with a smile on his face, asked me if I had done the drawing. When I told him I had he laughed and walked off. Jake was not so amused.

  When we were both on the bridge at the same time we’d usually stand at the doorway—one on lookout, the other on the wheel—and shoot the breeze. He had a wealth of sea stories and a love of telling them. I was more than happy to lend an ear. But that night he was not so cheery. I was on the wheel when Jake came up for lookout. He said his usual curt hello to the Chief on his way through the bridge to the wing. The gloom of night obscured his features, but I could tell he was upset.

  Standing way out on the wing, he kept to himself for half an hour. I finally decided to break the ice. Going up to the door, I got his attention, and he came slowly over. Though he was an old and tired little man, his body was still as tough as an ox’s. He looked at me with that mixture of suspicion and betrayal tempered by his liking for me as his apprentice.

  I told him I was sorry about the picture. It was intended as a friendly joke, but I guessed it was not in good taste.

  He frowned. “That’s okay. It’s all right to joke about these things, but you can’t pin a label on somebody. Out here there’s something we call the Court Jester Syndrome. Y’know, like the clowns played for the king. When a fellow on a ship starts being treated like one, he can’t shake it. It can build up on a ship. Tensions can flare and build up. You’ve gotta be careful what you say about the other guy. One time I was on this ship when we had a real performer. Patty Finn was his name. A little fella, but he had a real mean temper. One time this big guy starts giving him trouble in the mess, and before you know it they were humping on each other, and plates were flying. We crawled under the tables …”

  And so on. Having made his point and illustrated it, he went back into his sea stories, laughing and gesturing, aping the characters with a professional’s skill. I still hadn’t cooled down enough. My propensity for overstepping the line, even at this advanced point in the trip and after all t
he railroading I’d already gotten, was still rearing its ugly head. I guess I’d hit a little too close to home.

  But I was not the only subject of abuse. The old black steward’s insistence on being woken up early, and his surly manner in the kitchen, soon made him a very unpopular character. He was an old-timer (i.e., he knew the ropes), so no one messed with him to his face. But when he wasn’t around he was the subject of much angry derision. Billy was especially vehement in his attacks.

  Billy had grown up in a bad part of town, working in gangs sometimes, stealing refrigerators or breaking into freight trains. His attitude toward blacks was partly the result of this background. The back-alley rivalry between the black and Irish gangs was no doubt very intense.

  So it was that he hated the old steward. The others generally agreed—the old-timers especially. Dave Martin, as usual, was a remarkable exception to this rule. He seemed to give everybody a fair chance and judged them on their abilities, not on their backgrounds. There were a number of reasons for this. The first was that Dave had been the toughest seaman around since the ’40s. He’d been known to deck a first mate and escape by swinging from the boom line off the ship and onto the dock, where a car was waiting. In his time he’d taken them all on, and because he usually won he didn’t have the insecurities that drove others into fits of rage. On the other hand, Dave was also very close to death. A number of times he graphically recounted his stroke. It had left him weakened, but, as the old saying goes, unbowed; yet it had seriously affected his wild character. Almost tender at times, he now approached his crews with a good-natured, encouraging attitude. It sometimes drove the others crazy; they thought he was approaching senility. And his logic was often misguided. Once, when I suggested an easier way to go about a certain job, he looked up and said, “You’re not paid to think.”