The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  There are sea-stories and sea-stories, millions of them. Every week an output of at least seven hundred and fifty. If you look closely, however, at those interesting sea-stories, you notice that they tell of sailors who are opera-singers in disguise, who manicure their finger-nails, and who have no other worries than their goddamned silly love-affairs. Even that heavenly, that highly praised, that greatest sea-story writer of all time knew how to write well only about brave skippers, dishonored lords, unearthly gentlemen of the sea, and of the ports, the islands, and the sea-coasts; but the crew is always cowardly, always near mutiny, lazy, rotten, stinking, without any higher ideals or fine ambitions. Of course the crew is that way. Why? What ambition shall the crew have? For whom? The skipper has ambition, because higher wages and promotion and orders await him. His names flares over the front pages of the papers and is set perhaps in golden letters on tablets on the walls of the Board of Trade. The crew have nothing in the world but their wages, their food, their health, their lives. They have no promotion in sight and no share in the dividends of the company. So what earthly reason have they to be ambitious about anything? To save the lives of passengers in a shipwreck no crew have ever failed in their duty as human beings; but skippers have, to save the company’s money. Sailors know that, and therefore they are the only people who know how to read a sea-story the right way, and how to read about the bravery of skippers in newspaper reports. Not the skipper, but the sailor is the one who is the first to risk his life, because he is always nearest the real danger, while the skipper on his bridge, like the general at headquarters, is farthest away from where he could lose something; yes, sir.

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  I hardly exchanged more than ten words with those sleepy men groaning in their bunks. When I had been told that there were no blankets, pillows, or mattresses for the crew on this bucket, there seemed to be nothing left to talk about.

  Above me, on the fore-deck, I heard the rattling and banging of the chains, the clanging and scratching of the anchor

  against the hull, the screeching of the winches, the hustling and trampling of heavy feet, the commanding and swearing and cursing of the mates and the bos’n and of whoever thought he had somebody to chase around.

  Noise like that always makes me sick at my soul. I feel best when the ship is out on the high sea. A ship in port is no longer a ship. It is merely a box to be loaded or to be unloaded. Nor is a sailor aboard a ship in port a sailor; he is just a hired man. Nothing better. The dirtiest work a sailor ever has to do is done while the ship is in port; the sailor works there exactly like a worker in a factory. No watches, only a full day’s work. Cleaning, scrubbing, wiping, painting the hull, polishing, sweeping, washing, repairing. You get sick only thinking of it.

  I didn’t leave the quarter while I still heard the noise overhead. It isn’t a good policy to go near where work is being done. No hurry for me. I don’t get paid for it, anyhow. Work always comes your way, don’t you worry. A long life of work is still ahead of you.

  I have read a hundred times in the magazines stories of men who succeeded in life, who were never such horrible sinners as to be failures, with pictures and photographs taken from life, in which you saw the great gun first as a dirty baby, then as a farm-boy, then shining shoes, running errands, selling newspapers and uxtras in the streets, then working as an office-boy for three bucks a week, and soon afterwards becoming the president of the bank and owning all the savings-account deposits of the customers, and marrying Margaret Wackersford and in doing so becoming the son-in-law of the president of the First National and the brother-in-law of the vice-president of Bethlehem Steel and the nephew-in-law of the Secretary of the Navy, and everything is fine now, and all he does from now on is just collect money and more money. All this is in the success stories, with pictures, and therefore it is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me. I have done exactly the same. When I was not yet seven, I was up at four in the morning working for a milkman until six thirty for forty cents a week; from six thirty to nine I worked for a news-agent, who paid me sixty cents a week for running like the devil from residence to residence with an armful of papers; from nine to twelve I shined boots; then there were the afternoon papers; then chopping wood and running to the laundry for ladies; then came the evening papers, and so on until I fell like a stone on the bare floor of a room in Lincoln Avenue, Chic, in which I was allowed to sleep free of charge for washing dishes at night for a German clergyman who had fled from his country on account of having, like a true gentleman, sworn falsely to save the reputation, if any, of a married jane. Before I was ten I shipped as a kitchen-boy on a Spanish tramp, making all the Pacific ports from Mexico down to Chile, after having had a hurried career as a dumb boy in a circus assisting a clown who couldn’t be funny without pushing and fighting a half-starved boy. I certainly have always known how to work, and I have always worked four times more than I was paid for. But I am still far from being the first president of the California Railroad and Steamship and Fruit Corporation. Suppose I should really work for thirty long years in a steel mill, always doing more and more in the hope that I might at least become cashier. Then, one day, thinking that the time has come to cash in the promised reward, I would go to the office and ask: “How about the job as assistant vice-president to begin with?” The answer is: “Sorry, nothing doing right now, but just go on the same way as you have been during the last thirty years. We are watching you all right and taking proper notice of all you do. As soon as we need another president, we will think it over. Don’t forget to punch the time-clock.” Meanwhile I have become forty, and soon out I go with the short but plain notice: “We have to take in younger men; you will find something else.”

  I don’t know where jobs as presidents and as millionaires could be found for all the readers of success stories if they should try to cash in on the promises. A hundred and twenty years ago there was a saying: “Every one of my soldiers carries a marshal’s baton in his bag.” Today it is: “Every one of our employees may become president of our company; look at Mr. Flowerpot, he did it.” I think all these successful men must have shined boots of another sort than I, and the newspapers they sold must have been different from the papers I carried.

  I waited until the noise on deck had ceased and I was sure that there was no more extra work left. When everything seemed quiet and the Yorikke went softly on her way, I left the quarters and went to look about the deck. The moment I stepped out, the pickpocket who had introduced himself as the second engineer hopped me and said: “Just looking for you, guy; the old man wants to see ye and sign ye on. Just follow me.”

  Rich experience has taught me that whenever somebody says: “Just follow me,” or: “Come along,” it means always: “We shall take good care of you, and keep you here for quite a while. Take it easy and don’t resist.”

  The Yorikke was running like a devil flitting into hell. The pilot had left the ship long ago, and the first mate had taken the bridge.

  The skipper was still a young man, hardly more than thirty-five. About five seven in height. Slightly fat without looking it. He certainly never overate, though what he ate was good. His face was healthy and red; he must have had freckles when a boy. His hair was brownish yellow; it might have been nearly red when he was ten. His eyes were light waterish blue, without a definite expression, and with the look of a man with very little energy. Later I learned that his eyes did not indicate his character. Very well dressed, one might say really elegant. The color of his suit, his tie, his socks, and his smart shoes all matched well and showed him to be a man of good taste.

  If one did not know his profession, one would never think him the captain of a tramp. He would have been the glory and essence of an ocean liner in which women between thirty and forty were sailing to get away from their rich and bore-some husbands. But any person who was in a hurry to reach Europe safely would never have trusted a liner on which he was the skipper, looking as he did. From his looks one would not have guessed
that he could ever bring even a three-hundred-ton bucket from one port to another in calm weather. Here again he betrayed his looks. I learned soon that he was one of the ablest skippers and the most daring and enterprising I have ever met. In war-time he would make a skipper of a torpedo-boat chaser such as there are very few of in the whole world.

  He spoke a refined English, the kind one may learn in a good school in a foreign country. It was grammatically too correct for anybody American or English to think him a native of an English-speaking country. When speaking he selected his words with great care and good taste, giving the impression of a cultured individual, but at the same time an English-speaking person would feel that he was not trying to give that impression, but that he talked that way because he wanted to use only words of which he was absolutely sure of the proper meaning and of the correct pronunciation.

  Once when I was alone in his cabin I had a look at his library. There were only four or five books of such trash as detective or mystery stories. The rest of his books were so carefully selected that ever afterwards I wondered how that man came to be the skipper of a tramp. There must have been something back of it. Perhaps his wife was found in bed with another man, and a shooting resulted. Lost honor for abandoning a ship or crew, or something like that, it could not have been. He was not the kind to do that. Later, knowing more about human beings, I think I came pretty close to understanding him through and through. He was the type that refuses an offer to be the captain of a liner, for if he had taken it he would have been bored to death and Would have resigned after two trips — after being chased by American women from the East and Middle West who stepped up behind him at three o’clock in the morning or at midnight and asked questions, already twenty-five million times correctly answered, about why a ship carries green lights at star and red lights at port, and why the propellers are at the stern instead of at the bow since an airplane has the prop at its bow, and why a liner is tugged out of port instead of going out under its own power — questions never asked to learn the facts, but to brag: “Oh, my dear, I’ve just come from the master of the ship. I had a long talk with him about navigation. He told me all about it, and just think, oh, dear me, he’s had that sort of job for fourteen years!”

  The contrast between the skipper and his second engineer, who also ranks as a ship’s-officer, was not striking, but simply destructive in every way. If I had still been in doubt as to what kind of ship I was on, this contrast alone would have told me and convinced me without any other evidence.

  “So you are the new drag?” the skipper greeted me when I stepped into his cabin.

  “The what, sir?”

  “The coal-drag, the coal-shoveler; you know, the man who hauls the coal from the bunkers to the fireman, to the stoker, if you understand that expression better.”

  “I, sir? You mean me? I the drag, the shoveler? You are mistaken, sir, excuse me. I am no drag, I am a fireman.” The truth began to dawn upon me.

  “I didn’t say a single word to you about being fireman,” the horse-thief broke in. “I said the black gang, the fire gang, didn’t I? That’s what I said.”

  “Right,” I admitted. “That is what you asked, and I answered yes. But in all my life I have never been a coal-drag.” The skipper’s face showed that he was beginning to be bored.

  He said to the pickpocket: “That is your business, Mr. Dils. This does not concern me. I thought everything was in shape.”

  “I wish to be put ashore right away, sir,” I said to the skipper. “It was never my intention to sign on as coal-shoveler. Not me, sir. I shall protest, and I sure shall complain to the harbor authorities of attempted shanghaiing.”

  “Who shanghaied you?” the horse-thief yelled. “Did I? It’s a stinking, funking lie, it is. I haven’t to shanghai anybody.”

  “Dils!” the skipper fell in again with a warning tone in his voice. “I will have nothing to do with this, you understand, Mr. Dils.” He laid, this time, particular stress upon the “Mister.” “I am not responsible for anything of this sort, I want to make this as clear as sunlight, Mr. Dils. You will have to stand for what you are doing. Straighten this out between you. Outside. Not here in my cabin.”

  The pickpocket seemed not to mind what the skipper said. He asked me again: “What did I say to you? Didn’t I say black gang?”

  “Yes, you said that. But you didn’t say —”

  “So what? Does the drag belong to the black gang or does he not? Just tell me your opinion,” the louse questioned.

  “Of course, the coaler belongs to the boiler gang,” I answered, “but, see here, mister, this does not mean —”

  “All right then, this will do, this surely settles the issue,” the skipper said. “If you really meant fireman, you should have said so. Then our Mr. Dils would have told you that we are not short a fireman. Well, now we may write.”

  He opened the book with the crew’s register and asked my name.

  My honest name in the register of a death ship? Not me. I have not come down so far yet. Never again in all my life would I have a chance to sign on for a decent ship. I sure would rather prefer a release paper from San Quentin or Leavenworth or some other honest mansion than the paybook of a death ship. Every honorable skipper would shun me more than if I were coming full of syph ole Phillis.

  So I abandoned my good name. I think it was anyway only my mother’s name, since it had never been clear if my father had really his name added or not. I severed all family connections. I no longer had a name that was by right my own.

  “When and where were you born?”

  My name gone, I still had my country.

  “In in in “ I began to stammer.

  “Where did you say?”

  “Alexandria.”

  “Alexandria what? In the United States?”

  “No, Egypt.”

  With this my country was also gone. For the rest of my life I would have for identification only the pay-book of the Yorikke.

  “Nationality? British, I presume.”

  “No, sir, without nationality.”

  Can there be anybody in the world who would expect me to register on this ship my name and my nationality? On the Yorikke? It would give the Yorikke a chance to say: “American? Shit. Bullshit. An American even came here, to shovel coal within my very hull, a dirty assistant to a Portuguese fireman who was an escaped convict from an Arabian pen.” No, sir. I couldn’t do that. It was not patriotism. It was simply — well, I could not. It would have been like betraying my country to the enemy. Sell out my country to the Yorikke? Whatever the consuls or all the other authorities in all the world may say, it is still my country; and it is still my country with all her gangsters, bandits, corruption, red tape, unlimited mediocrity and hypocrisy, and with her political mandarins; it is still the country which nobody can ever take away from me. It’s just love, like the love for a mother whether she likes it or not. And it is so far, so very far away from all the loud jazz-patriotism and flag-waving. It is love. And against love there is no medicine and no death-penalty of any use. So for this love, and for her honor, I had to renounce my country, as if I had never heard of it.

  So I repeated: “No, sir. No nationality. Without a country. League of Nations, Geneva.”

  He did not ask for a passport or for my sailor’s card or for any paper or envelope with my name on it. He knew that men aboard the Yorikke must not be asked for papers. They might say: “Sorry, sir, I have no papers.” Then what? In that case he would not be permitted to sign the man on, and the Yorikke would never have a crew. A man with any paper, whether his own or not, never shipped on the Yorikke. In the next port the list of the crew has to be verified by the consul of the country under whose flag the ship claims to sail. Since the man has made a trip already, the consul cannot refuse to acknowledge him a proper member of the crew. He has to accept him, paper or no paper. The man is now actually considered a resident of the country under whose flag the ship sails. But it does not give the man a coun
try, or a nationality, or the right to claim a passport.

  The consul does not know death ships, officially; and unofficially he does not believe in their existence. It requires certain talents to be a useful consul. Nor do consuls believe a person was ever born if said person cannot produce a birth-certificate.

  Every skipper of the Yorikke knew how to get his men. He could never sign on a new man as long as the ship was still in port. In that case he had to take the man to the consul. The consul was obliged to ask for the passport or sailor’s card. If he had none, the consul was not permitted to let the man sign on. Then the skipper would have been one man or many men short. The skipper always waited until the blue flag was up, the signal that the ship was sailing within two hours. The blue flag up, the ship is considered already out of port and on her way. From that moment on, the port authorities no longer have any jurisdiction over the ship, with certain cases excepted. Any man coming aboard now is regarded as having signed on under the emergency rules — a ship under weigh with crew incomplete. The skipper now has the right to sign on as many men as he wishes without being compelled to take them to the consul. After the man has made one trip, short or long, the consul must sign him on or the port authorities will report him. This, by the way, settles once and for all the question of how the skunk survived the flood. He hopped on when the ark was already under sail, leaving Noah no time to sign him on properly with the American consul, and, owing to international regulations, the skunk could not be thrown overboard, but had to be signed on under the emergency rules. That’s why. Because these regulations are so old that long before Adam came to life, sailors who had sold their sailor’s cards signed on that way to get away from a hot spot.