FROM The New Yorker
CALL HIM ISHMAEL. Call me Insane. Some time ago, I had a hankering: Wouldn’t it be lovely to take a break from the hurly-burly of landlubber life and the oppressive, never-ending connecting with everybody and everything? What could be more restorative than to voyage across the Atlantic aboard a merchant vessel, and, as Melville said, see the watery part of the world? How great would it be to have the time to read Moby-Dick instead of just talking about it? Oh, really? Now that I am about to board the Rickmers Seoul freighter (Chinese-built, German-managed, Marshall Islands–registered), being a passenger on a cargo ship seems a lot like being an inmate in a prison, except that on a ship you can’t tunnel yourself out. Please try to imagine the privations I will brave for three weeks on this 632-foot-long, 30,000-ton hunk of steel as it galumphs across the sea from Philadelphia to Hamburg, with brief stops in Norfolk (Virginia) and Antwerp. There will be no Internet, no e-mail, no telephones, no organized entertainments, no Stewart or Colbert, no doctor, no anyone-I-know, and no Diet Coke. There will be 27 crew members, most from the Philippines, including a captain and a handful of officers from Romania, and, piled high on deck and deep in the holds, an assortment of cargo consignments from the world over that might include yachts, submarines, airplane fuselages, generators, turbines—everything, in short, that would elate a boy of five. There are no freighters that haul vats of sushi or Yonah Schimmel knishes, but somewhere out there is a vessel that carries La Mer face cream, and I hope the Rickmers Seoul collides with it.
After checking in at the Philadelphia Tioga Marine Terminal with a stevedore named Rhino, I teetered up a steep gangway to the main deck, where I was greeted by a broad-shouldered, doughy Romanian (age 32) with a handsome face and a clipboard. In his orange jumpsuit, he looked like a giant Teletubby. “I am Paul,” he said. “I am chief man.”
“What does the chief man do?” I asked.
“Chief mate,” said the Romanian fellow (age 29) by his side, a Sean Penn look-alike with a ponytail and false front teeth, the consequence of tripping on the ship last year, not far from where we were standing. “Chief mate is first mate. I am third mate. I am Raul. You could say I am safety officer.”
“Can I look at the cargo sometime?” I asked.
“You must get permission of captain, which is dangerous, of course,” Raul said.
“The captain is dangerous, or the cargo?” I said. We laughed, and I still don’t know the answer. Before disappearing into one of the many recesses on deck, Raul handed me a list of rules. (“It is absolutely forbidden to bring any weapons on board of the vessel”; “In Islamic countries possession of alcohol and/or sex magazines could lead to heavy fines”; “Do not drink excessively, neither on board nor ashore.”) A couple of OSes (ordinary seamen, or entry-level mariners) showed up and wordlessly ushered me and my cumbersome luggage up four flights of stairs to my cabin. In the fluorescent-lit hallway, a merry Filipino AB (able-bodied seaman, one rung up from OS) passed us and enthusiastically informed me, “We are going to have a party with a band and we all dance to Beatles music!”
“OK,” I said, because what do you say?
I was pretty sure I had an outfit for the occasion. Here is some of what I brought: a poncho for rain, a down vest for snow, dental putty in case a crown fell out, art supplies in the event that I acquired talent, a shortwave radio for lonely nights, and hair dye for the other nights. Other supplies included 1,000 packets of Splenda, 50 protein bars, an electric kettle, powdered lemonade, tuna fish (which I don’t like but was inspired to throw in upon hearing that Mike Tyson subsisted on it in jail), hundreds of books loaded onto two Kindles (one might break—Noah knew what he was doing), a USB drive with more movies than are watchable in a year, a monocular that can serve as a telescope or a microscope, and a box of 100 monitor wipes for my laptop. I ignored the advice of friends who insisted that I could not last without whey powder, incense, Mace (recommended by two people), limes to prevent scurvy, and a shark cage.
Feeling as neglected as a stowed anchor, I surveyed my cabin. It was 14 feet square, including a small bathroom with a tiny shower stall. A college freshman would regard it as a plum room assignment, especially since the metal walls, which were varnished to look like beige oilcloth, seemed indestructible. In an alcove, there was a built-in queen-sized bed on which had been placed a small towel folded into the shape of a peacock. A madras curtain could be drawn to separate this berth from the sitting area (or to put on a marionette play). There was a wooden desk containing a multilingual Bible, a coffee table bolted to the blue floral carpet, an L-shaped sofa in a mauve-and-blue tweed, a nonfunctioning mini-refrigerator, and a clunky TV, which, along with CD and DVD players, was strapped to the credenza—for an understandable reason, but still, it didn’t make one feel like family.
From my dirt-speckled porthole, I could see the water and a fire-hose box (location, location, location!). Hanging near a print of Renoir’s Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette was a placard indicating that the signal for “Abandon ship” is a repeating sequence on the ship’s horn of one short blast and one long blast. According to an accompanying chart, in the event of a disaster I was designated to be in Seat 24, next to the steward, in the free-fall boat. This is a neon-orange enclosed lifeboat that looks like a ride at a Soviet-era water park. Lodged on precipitately slanted tracks for easy launch into the water, the boat contains flares, rations, and tools for fishing, but no Netflix streaming.
As I took in the aroma of my room, which can best be described as a base of l’eau de diesel and cigarette smoke, with top notes of rotten nectarine and hamster (perhaps a result of Rule No. 4: always keep your windows closed in port and at sea), an alarm sounded—a loud, unbroken tone. “Attention, attention, attention!” a man’s voice boomed over the PA. “Crew proceed to the Muster Station. Passengers remain in cabins.” I dutifully stayed put for what seemed like hours and then, failing to hear any all-clear signal, ventured out to explore. My cabin was in the Accommodation, a seven-story, elevatorless box that juts up like a billboard from the main deck of the ship’s stern. It was the color of provolone cheese, and pockmarked with rust. The Accommodation houses the living quarters, which include not only the cabins but the kitchen, two mess halls (one for the officers and passengers, the other for the crew), laundry facilities, a rec room (with a drum kit, some guitars, a dartboard, and two old Nautilus exercise machines), a passenger lounge containing a lot of Louis L’Amour paperbacks and scratched DVDs, an unfilled swimming pool not roomy enough to satisfy even a trout, and, next to it, a place called the Blue Bar. This pine-planked party room featured a Ping-Pong table, Christmas lights, and a curved wooden bar with sides of sea-foam-green leather. Perched at the very top of the Accommodation is the bridge, a large control room with panoramic windows from which the captain and the officers helm the ship (I hoped).
On a lower deck, there is a “hospital,” a white room with a hospital bed and a bathroom worth getting sick for (porcelain tub). The hospital is stocked with everything from prednisone to tetanus immunoglobulin, from oil of cloves (for toothaches) to condoms (don’t ask me). Morphine is locked in the captain’s room. The second mate, who took a one-week first-aid course in the Philippines, serves as doctor. I didn’t see any of this until later, however, because in the stairwell I ran into Raul. “No, you did not ever have to stay in your room, of course,” he said with amusement. “Now we have Familiarization in five minutes with other passengers.”
You (though not I) can skip Familiarization, unless you care to put on your life preserver, grab your immersion suit, and dash over to the Muster Station—the gathering site in case of emergency—to hear more about the free-fall boat. How about we advance the clock slightly and repair to the officers’ dining room, where, on this inaugural night, my three fellow passengers and I became acquainted over a meal of, well, let’s call it meat simulacrum camouflaged by mucilaginous faux gravy and accompanied by a hillock of rice and a diced vegetable that was to turn
up frequently and which we passengers labeled kohlrabi because we knew it was nothing else. The dining room has green industrial flooring and fake wood paneling, like the other public rooms. Each of two round tables—one reserved for the officers and the other for us passengers—was set for six with Christmas-tree place mats. Intertable chat was generally restricted to this:
OFFICER (entering): Bon appétit.
US: Thank you.
“Bonne chance” would have been more apt, especially when the dish was Hawaiian Breakfast (pineapple slices and cheese and ham on toast), chile con carne laced with cornflakes (which we surreptitiously flushed down the toilet), or estofado de lengua (hint: this long piece of flesh is found in a cow’s mouth). The grub, allegedly Romanian, was prepared by a sweet Filipino man with no culinary training and a fervent attachment to salt and his new deep fryer. The food budget, he told me, was about $7 per person per day.
I paid $2,010 for my passage. For $399 I could have booked a last-minute discounted luxury cruise from Copenhagen to Miami on the Norwegian Star, which has 10 restaurants, a shopping center, a video arcade, and an outdoor beer garden.
“You have to be slightly bonkers to go on a freighter,” Andrew Neaums, an Anglican priest, one of my fellow travelers, told me at dinner. He was accompanied by his wife, Diana Neaums, a landscape architect. The couple, in their sixties, were wrapping up a two-month freighter expedition (“Wouldn’t touch a commercial cruise!” Andrew said) from their home in Australia to their new one in England, where Andrew was to begin work in a country parish. Born in England but brought up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he is lanky and hale, tan and partly bald, and looks like someone who once won the America’s Cup. She, originally from England, has a cordial, puckish face and an outstanding white bob. Roland Gueffroy, 58, a Swiss travel writer with tousled hair and a perpetual stubble, was en route from Zurich to Bern, but not the ho-hum, 80-mile westbound way. He headed east and, two and a half months later, was on the final arc of a circle around the globe that involved trains, boats, buses, and trucks. Roland is laconic, with a dry wit that lapsed only when he insisted on trotting out one of his poop-deck jokes. (A poop deck, from the Latin word puppis, meaning “stern,” was originally intended as a buffer at the rear of a ship to protect it from waves, but today it refers to the aft deck above the main deck.)
We four were the first passengers who had crossed the ocean on the Rickmers Seoul in a year and a half. Until the early 1960s, hopping onboard a tramp steamer or hitching a ride on a banana boat was not unlike taking the Bolt bus to Boston. OK, it was not exactly like that, but the point is that it was not so unusual—and it was cheap. Jonnie Greene, a New York dance and opera critic, remembers crossing the Atlantic on a Dutch cargo ship for about $75 in 1952, when a first-class passage on an ocean liner could have cost about 10 times that. Writers used to favor freighters for the price and the solitude. Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, and Paul Bowles were devotees. In 1958, airlines began to offer regular flights to Europe, which challenged the supremacy of ocean liners. To lure customers, many cruise lines upped their role as impresarios of fun (Baked Alaska parades! Miniature golf! Pastel Night!), promoting the cruise as the vacation rather than the way to get to the vacation. Unable to compete, freighter lines by and large got out of the house guest racket.
Why would shipping lines even consider taking passengers nowadays? At the Rickmers headquarters, in Hamburg, Sabina Pech, the general manager of corporate communications, told me, “It is a matter of entertainment for our crews.” Perhaps. Although many crew members were gregarious, they were mainly busy with the operation of the ship. When keeping company with the crew, therefore, I often felt as if I’d shown up at the wrong office for Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
At dusk on the first evening, we peered over the rail of an upper deck, watching two tugboats, the Reid McAllister on our starboard and the Teresa McAllister on our port (such a pushy family!), maneuver us into takeoff position in Philadelphia harbor, readying us to motor down the Delaware River. We were on our way to Virginia to pick up six locomotives and, for me, a box of gingersnaps. From there we would mosey across the Atlantic at an average speed of 13 knots—14.96 miles an hour—reaching Antwerp in about 12 days. This is the pace that a not-so-schlumpy bicyclist can pedal on flat terra firma. If pirates were chasing us, the ship could hightail itself to safety at 20 or 21 knots, but that kind of velocity would tax the engine, squander fuel, and increase pollution.
I remarked to my companions that 115 years earlier, my paternal grandfather had made almost the reverse trip at approximately the same speed, except that he traveled steerage, from Antwerp to Philadelphia, whereas my cabin was next to the laundry room on the officers’ floor (KILO OF WASHING POWDER INSIDE IS NOT MEANING OF VERY CLEAN CLOTHES, a sign on the machine stated). Also, my grandfather was seven years old and accompanied by his mother and five brothers and sisters. His younger brother Jack was absent because he’d fallen off the train from Romania while the kids were horsing around on the platform between two cars. (“Don’t tell Mother,” my grandfather instructed his siblings after the accident.) My disaster? I electrocuted my hair dryer later that night by neglecting to switch it from 120 volts to 220. Luckily, my cabin was across the corridor from the electrician’s.
Somewhere between Philadelphia and Norfolk, I visited the bridge, where night and day you could bother whichever two crew members were on duty monitoring the ship’s vital signs. This involves various gauges and electronic charts and apparently can be performed while kicking back in what looks like a dentist’s chair. (The ship runs largely on autopilot, except when it must be navigated through narrow passageways.) It’s like playing a very boring video game, I said to Raul, who covers the eight-to-twelve shift, both a.m. and p.m. “Yes, except you have to stay away from target,” he responded. A woman’s voice was heard fuzzily over the radio. “All ships, all ships, all ships,” she said, adding, “Smeterljdrt fifillsgfdter tere twenty-four oik.” Raul translated: she was from the U.S. military, and there was a warship conducting exercises in the vicinity. (We never saw so much as a smoke signal on the horizon.) Also on the bridge are several pairs of binoculars that afford one superb views of nothing. The seven seas are, I discovered, as interesting to look at as an unplugged lava lamp. No fish in sight, no birds overhead, not even the briny tang you associate with a beach. The ocean becomes oceany only as you approach the shoreline, where seaweed, plankton, and other things that appear to have escaped from a Japanese restaurant attract larger marine creatures and stink up the place as they decay.
At about six the next night, we pulled into Norfolk, the prow of our high-rise ship aligned with a tiny sign on the quay that said STOP SHIP HERE. Crew members tossed tag lines down to a team of stevedores onshore, who lassoed turquoise ropes around four bollards. There were anchors aboard, but they remained tucked away. Now the loading began—and continued until the wee hours of the morning. Transferring a locomotive from land to ship is as simple as depositing luggage into the trunk of a car, except that instead of oomph you need a few winches, cranes, and lashing slings. Your job might be to attach the harnesses to the cargo, maneuver one of the four deck-mounted cranes from inside the operator’s cab, or figure out where each piece of cargo should be placed so that the ship doesn’t tip over. (This is the responsibility of the chief officer.) Or, if you are a crane instead of a person, you will work in tandem, knitting-needle style, with another crane, one of you hooking the harness at the front of the locomotive, the other handling the back end, and then both synchronously lifting your haul 50 feet in the air, swanning it over the open hatch, and lowering it into a capacious hold. The locomotives were stacked in two layers, three to a layer. “This is the most excitement we’re going to have for a while,” Roland said as we watched the goings-on from the deck. “After this, it’s just another day and another day and another day.”
Crew members on cargo ships like to say, “It’s always Monday or Saturday,” to describe their binary
schedule. If you are a seaman, for most of the year you are schlepping cargo on and off the boat, painting the crane, derusting the crane, repainting the crane, overhauling the generator, and, after dinner (chicken and rice again), watching Fast & Furious 6 on your laptop (unless you are Leo Rubio, a 35-year-old able-bodied seaman who has no laptop and thus passes the time at night by weaving rope hammocks). Finally, after a nine-month stint, you hang up your hard hat and go home and sit on your La-Z-Boy until you find another assignment.
“What’s the appeal?” I asked some fellows gathered in the crew’s mess, smoking cigarettes (nearly everyone smokes) during their morning break. Felito Balde, the bosun, a brawny 56-year-old from the Philippines, whose arm is tattooed with a clipper ship, said, “It’s simple: money.” For supervising the deck crew, he earns $2,000 a month, four times what he says he could make on land and enough to support his five children. (He has a BS in marine transportation and has been a sailor for 29 years.) According to Balde, an ordinary seaman makes $1,400 a month, an able-bodied seaman $1,760. “To give you an idea about how much this is,” the ship’s fitter, Valentino Ramos, told me, “a manager in a bank in the Philippines earns a thousand dollars a month, and he must pay room and board. A teller gets five hundred dollars.” Nevertheless, this is not a career with high job satisfaction. OS Mark Ryan Miranda Bautista told me, “It’s a hard life. You go away and your kid is a baby. Come home, he’s working.”
“They’re not paying us for the work,” OS Emerson Tibayan said. “They’re paying us for the homesick.”
At night, the rocking of the ship made me feel as if I were on a water bed, which I suppose I was—big-time. In my cabin, every hinge and lock rattled, and I could hear what sounded like the rhythmic wheeze of an emphysema sufferer. Some sleuthing revealed it to be the shower curtain sliding back and forth on its rod.
The Best American Travel Writing 2015 Page 21