A Commodore of Errors

by John Jacobson

  “You can get fog anywhere, Maggie, if the conditions are right.”

  “Oh? What conditions would those be?”

  “Look, Maggie, I can’t teach you meteorology over a cup of coffee. It took me years to master the subject.”

  “I’ve just never heard of fog in the Indian Ocean, that’s all. The North Atlantic, yes, but never the Indian Ocean.”

  Captain Tannenbaume felt slightly unsure of himself whenever he debated with the chief. He had to admit that the big Swede was smart and knew a lot about a lot of things. But still, weather was the captain’s bailiwick, not the chief engineer’s.

  “Just keep the plant turning and leave the weather to me, Maggie. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

  Captain Tannenbaume turned his back on the chief. “Swifty, give me an update on traffic. Ski, check the magnetic compass against the gyro.”

  “No traffic in the radar, sir.”

  “Use the forty-eight-mile scale. I want early warning of any closing traffic.”

  Captain Tannenbaume liked the way his rapid-fire commands sounded. He’d show the chief a thing or two about being in charge. What did the chief know about the responsibilities of command? The chief engineer was only in charge of one department aboard ship. Captain Tannenbaume got down from his chair and paced back and forth on the bridge with his head down. He’d show the chief and his little sidekick what it was to bear the heavy weight of command. The deep forlorn sound of the foghorn only served to heighten the sense of drama. As he paced back and forth, Captain Tannenbaume tried to think of another command that he could give. He whirled around. “Swifty, have you posted a lookout on the wing?”

  “Um . . . no, sir. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Goddamnit! I want a lookout on that wing now!” He was putting on a real show for the chief now. By the time the fog lifted, the chief would have a newfound respect for him. Maybe he was finally getting through to the chief. Maybe it’s a good thing that he’s up here seeing firsthand what it is that captains do.

  The door to the bridge opened and the lookout, an ordinary seaman named Thibodeaux, walked in. Tibby was from Massachusetts. Both of his parents were Harvard PhDs, and although he himself barely made it out of high school for profound lack of interest, he clearly possessed an IQ that was off the charts. At nineteen he still had a chip on his shoulder and went around telling everyone that on his next ship he was going to Africa. “Joseph Conrad country,” he called it. That no one on board had ever read Joseph Conrad gave Tibby a sense of superiority. The little shit even had the audacity to ask the captain if he had ever read Conrad. When Captain Tannenbaume said he had never heard of Conrad, Tibby told him Conrad was the greatest chronicler of the sea, ever. Captain Tannenbaume told the little shit that he preferred Patrick O’Brien. Tibby said O’Brien was inauthentic. When Captain Tannenbaume saw Tibby enter the bridge, he felt a tinge of uneasiness. The little know-it-all had better not embarrass him in front of the chief with any more questions about books.

  “Tibby, get out to the wing. We need a lookout.”

  “Why do you want a lookout?” Tibby said.

  “Don’t question me, OS! Just get out there on the wing. Can’t you see we’re in fog?”

  Tibby looked toward the back of the bridge and saw the open window. “Why’s the window open if you have the air-conditioning blasting away?”

  “The AC’s stuck,” Swifty said. “We opened the window so it wouldn’t be so cold.”

  “Well that’s where your fog is coming from,” Tibby said.

  “What are you talking about?” Swifty asked.

  “What happens when you take a glass of cold water outside on a hot day?”

  Captain Tannenbaume felt the color drain from his face.

  “It’s not foggy outside,” Tibby said. “The windows are full of condensation.”

  Tibby rolled open the large sliding door to the bridge wing with one swift pull on the handle. The intense Indian Ocean sun inundated the bridge in white light. The sun was so strong Captain Tannenbaume had to shield his eyes from the glare.

  “Will you still want a lookout?” Tibby asked, but Captain Tannenbaume could not make out the young man’s words over the laughter coming from the chief and the electrician. His head felt gauzy and all he heard was static.

  Captain Tannenbaume walked off the bridge like a blind man, with one arm covering his eyes and the other arm out in front of him feeling for the bulkhead and the door. His cabin was dark and it made his head feel better and he took off his clothes and crawled into bed with his young wife. Captain Tannenbaume fell into a deep sleep the second his head hit the pillow and he did not hear the danger signal sounded by the supertanker off the starboard bow of the God is Able. Everybody on the bridge sure heard it and, ironically, it was the chief who saved the day when he took the wheel away from Ski—who froze when he saw the huge supertanker bearing down on them—and swung the ship hard to starboard. The supertanker captain stood on the bridge wing waving his fist and yelling at the God is Able as it slid past the side of his ship, close aboard.

  When they woke up, Sylvia told Captain Tannenbaume she was tired of lying in bed all day and that she might as well start dealing with his mother now. She asked Captain Tannenbaume if he wanted to go to breakfast with her but he said that he was waiting for an apology from the chief first.

  Now it was Captain Tannenbaume who refused to get out of bed.

  SAFETY FIRST

  It was Mitzi who got everybody out of bed. It was her first cruise and she wasn’t going to let anybody spoil it.

  Her mother told her before she left that if she had any issues aboard ship, anything at all, all she had to do was call the purser’s office. Her mother had been on over one hundred cruises, so if anybody would know about these things, it was her mother. Mitzi woke up on the third day with the sun streaming through her porthole and decided to have breakfast served in her room—her mother told her that at least once on her cruise she had to have breakfast in bed and Mitzi figured today was as good a day as any. She looked at the ship’s phone directory taped to the bulkhead next to the phone in the cadet’s cabin and found the number for the galley. The chief cook answered the phone, and Mitzi told him she wanted breakfast served in her room.

  The cook hung up on her.

  When Mitzi called back, she overheard the second cook tell the chief cook to “tell that bitch to get her ass down here like everyone else and what the fuck makes her so special.” That infuriated Mitzi. She didn’t think she was special—she just wanted breakfast in bed. It looked like it was time to call the purser’s office. She got the number off the phone list and dialed it as fast as she could. The phone just rang and rang. She checked the phone list to make sure she had the right number and dialed again. Again no one answered. Mitzi let it ring.

  She, of course, had no way of knowing that not only was there no purser aboard the God is Able, but the purser’s office was now a storeroom used by the chief engineer.

  At one time, every ship had a purser. The purser’s main job was paymaster, but he was also responsible for signing the crew on and off the ship, maintaining the ship’s articles, keeping track of their Mariners documents, and issuing shore passes. It was a big job when ships carried a big crew, but when the size of the crew on cargo ships began to dwindle with the advent of container ships, the purser’s job became obsolete. The God is Able was over forty years old, and her purser’s office was centrally located on the main deck so that the crew had room to form a line when the ship hit port and the purser paid out draws, an advance of money subtracted from a sailor’s earned wages. This meant the purser’s office was prime real estate, and when the purser became a thing of the past, a battle royale ensued as to which department aboard ship would get the office. The chief steward complained that he did not have enough space to store all the sheets and towels and tablecloths, not to mention all of the precious foodstuffs. Also, if he had the use of the purser’s office, he’d
be able to keep mops and buckets handy and maybe the main deck wouldn’t look so grimy all the time. The chief mate said he’d be damned if the purser’s office became a glorified slop chest. The mate needed a new ship’s office, the one he had was tiny and located on the upper deck. The ship’s office needed to be centrally located so that when the ship was working cargo, the cargo bosses could find him. “Why do you think longshoremen never follow the stowage plan?” the mate wanted to know. The chief steward told the mate that if he was out on deck where he belonged, maybe the cargo boss could find his ass. The mate ignored this and repeated that he’d be goddamned if the purser’s office became a fucking slop chest.

  The chief engineer stayed quiet and let the steward and the mate duke it out for a while. When he finally weighed in, the chief intoned that the question of who got the use of the purser’s office was strictly a safety issue. The ship did not have a safe space to store spare lube oil, and he always felt the purser’s office would be the perfect place to keep it. It was an air-conditioned space, and the lube oil needed to be kept in a cool place because of the “flammability thing.” Captain Tannenbaume, who was judge and jury, said, “Safety first,” and that was that. That lube oil had a flash point equal to that of water apparently went over the heads of the chief mate and the steward, but Captain Tannenbaume did not bother to let them in on the chief ‘s secret. The truth was, if the chief didn’t get his way on this, he’d be a royal pain in the ass, and Captain Tannenbaume just wanted the power struggle over the purser’s office to go away. In the end, the chief used the purser’s office to store beer for the engine department. The office was stacked to the overhead with cases of Heineken. That the chief never did keep the dangerous lube oil in there burned all of their asses, but what could they do? The chief had the key to the office and that, as Captain Tannenbaume said, was that.

  When the chief had his guys clean out the purser’s office, they took out every stick of furniture, including the shelving. The only thing left in the office was the wall-mounted telephone. The phone worked and the engineers just could not bring themselves to rip a perfectly good phone off the bulkhead. The phone was in the back of the office, completely blocked by cases of Heineken. Until now, no one had ever bothered to ring the office, so it was never a problem.

  The purser’s office sat adjacent to the crew lounge, where the chief steward was watching Dirty Harry for the umpteenth time. The crew lounge was the one place on the ship that was not spic and span. The lounge was off limits to Captain Tannenbaume and the other officers, so the crew was free to keep their little clubhouse any way they saw fit. “Loungy” is how the chief described it. “A goddamned mess” is how the chief mate saw it, but then again, it didn’t matter because neither one was allowed to set foot in there.

  Between the ringing phone and the electrician jumping on Clint’s lines, the steward couldn’t hear a thing Clint said. Finally, he hauled himself off of the lounge’s worn davenport and called the chief. “Someone’s ringing the phone in your storeroom.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” the chief said.

  “I want you to answer it. It’s driving me crazy,” the steward said. “How I’m supposed to hear what Clint’s saying?”

  “Clint doesn’t say much anyway,” the chief said.

  “Don’t you go making fun of Clint now!”

  “Now, now, don’t get your shorts bunched up, Stew.”

  “Look,” the steward said. “Get someone in there to answer that phone or else.”

  The chief laughed out loud. “Or else what?”

  The steward hung up the phone and lay down again. After a moment, he slapped the side of the dusty davenport with his ham-sized hand. His favorite part in the movie was coming up and he couldn’t concentrate. He got up again and called the bridge.

  “Wheelhouse, Third Mate here.”

  “Who the hell’s calling the purser’s office?”

  “Who’s this?” Swifty said.

  “It’s the steward!”

  “How am I supposed to know who’s calling the purser’s office? I didn’t even know we carried a purser on board.”

  “We don’t! Man, you’re an idiot.” The steward hung up the phone then called the radio room. “Sparks? This is the Steward here. Are you calling the purser’s office?”

  “We don’t carry a purser on board,” Sparks said.

  “I know we don’t, you idiot!”

  “Duh-Duh-Don’t call me an id-id-idiot,” Sparks said. “You’re the wuh-one who—”

  The steward hung up the phone and called Captain Tannenbaume. “Cap this is the steward. I hate to bother—”

  “Oh it’s no bother, Stew,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Someone’s calling the purser’s office and—”

  “We don’t have a purser on board, Stew.”

  The steward did not respond.

  “Stew? You still there?”

  The steward waited another moment before he answered. “Yes, sir, I’m still here. And yeah, I know that we do not have a fucking purser on board—”

  “Now, Stew, don’t get fresh with me. You know where that got you on your last ship.”

  The steward took a deep breath. “Captain, I am trying to mind my own business. All I wanna did this morning is watch Dirty Harry but between the electrician running his yap and the phone ringing—”

  “That electrician’s running his yap again?”

  “Yeah, but it’s the phone in the purser’s office that’s—”

  “You tell that electrician I said to get back to work,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “Alright stew, go back to your movie.”

  Captain Tannenbaume had no sooner hung up the phone than it rang again. He clearly was not going to get the sleep he needed.

  “Sonny, I’m trying to ring—”

  “Good morning, Mother,” Captain Tannenbaume said.

  “Good morning, Sonny. I’m trying to ring the purser’s office but it’s been busy for the last ten minutes.”

  “We don’t carry a purser, Mother.”

  It took Mrs. Tannenbaume a minute for that to sink in. “No purser? But my friend Roz said if I had any complaints not to bother you but to call the purser’s office instead.”

  “Which would be good advice if we actually had a purser,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “If you have a complaint, I’ll call whichever department head can best handle it. Now, what exactly is wrong?”

  “Nevermind,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said. “I’ll handle it myself. But you should really look into why the purser’s office phone is busy.”

  “I told you we don’t have a purser, Mother.”

  “Oh yeah?” Mrs. Tannenbaume said. “Then why is his phone busy?”

  Captain Tannenbaume had to admit he didn’t have an answer for that one. He hung up and rested his head on his pillow.

  Sylvia saw him thinking hard and asked him what was going on.

  “We’ve got a crank caller,” he said. “I’ve heard of this happening on other ships before. We’ve got a deranged crew member on board.” Captain Tannenbaume picked up the phone and dialed the purser’s office. It was still busy.

  “Yup.” He swung his legs over the side of the bunk and got out of bed.

  “Wow,” Sylvia said. “A deranged crew member!”

  Captain Tannenbaume got dressed and then called the chief engineer. Unlike most chief engineers, the chief was a late sleeper, which meant Captain Tannenbaume had the pleasure of waking him. An added benefit. “Maggie, we’ve got someone on board with a loose screw. Get someone in that storeroom of yours to answer that phone.”

  “What storeroom?” the chief said.

  “The purser’s office storeroom, that’s what storeroom.”

  “Someone’s calling the old purser’s phone?”

  “That’s right,” Captain Tannenbaume said.

  “Oh boy.” Captain Tannenbaume heard him groan. “We’ve got an awful lot of bee—uh, lube oil—to move
.”

  “Well, start moving it.”

  The chief put the entire engine department on it. The men complained that it was a Sunday and that they’d better get paid double time for it. The chief said since they were moving—air quotes—“lube oil,” he’d consider it hazardous work and give them all hazardous pay. When the deck department found out that their counterparts were getting haz pay for moving beer, they wanted in on the deal, but the chief mate said, “Haz pay my ass. If anybody puts in for haz pay I’m redlining it.” The mate was so stingy with overtime that the deck gang figured they might as well take what they could get but they’d be god-damned if they were going to bust their asses for it. Especially since it wasn’t even their beer.

  So when the boatswain, the foreman of the deck gang, saw Tibby grab two cases at once, he nearly had a conniption. The bosun told the OS, “Safety first, son, safety first.” He wasn’t going to have any back injuries in his department, he said. He turned and winked at the older seamen in the deck department. “Take it one case at a time, son,” he said. “And bend those knees,” the bosun said. The older seamen showed the bosun just how safe they could be by moving the beer, not one case at a time, but one six pack at a time.

  By the time Captain Tannenbaume came down to see how things were going, the engine department had followed the deck department’s lead, and they, too, were moving the beer one six-pack at a time. Captain Tannenbaume stood next to his chief mate and watched. He was all too familiar with how the unlicensed crew manipulated the union pay scale: the higher the hourly rate, the slower they worked.

  The mate read his mind. “This thing would have to happen on a Sunday.”

  Captain Tannenbaume was watching the electrician whispering to one of the oilers. The oiler glanced over at Captain Tannenbaume and whispered back to the electrician. Then the electrician removed a can of beer from the plastic ring and walked out of the purser’s office. He was about to place it alongside the rest of the beer being staged in the passageway when Captain Tannenbaume ran over to him and grabbed the can of beer out of his hand. “knock off.”