Looking for a Ship (11 page)
Read Looking for a Ship Online
Authors: John McPhee
B
elow the bridge deck is the boat deck, and on the boat deck is Captain Washburn's office. Nine A.M. I often sit here in the morning drinking coffee, reading manifests, and listening to him. “My house is your house,” he says, and the remark is especially amiable in this eight-deck tower called the house. During the night, a planned avalanche occurred in the office. From seaport to seaport, papers accumulate on the captain's desk. “Paperwork has become the bane of this job,” he says. “If a ship doesn't have a good copying machine, it isn't seaworthy. The more ports, the more papers. South American paperwork is worse than the paperwork anywhere else in the world but the Arab countries and Indonesia.” Deliberately, he allows the pile on his desk to rise until a deep roll on a Pacific swell throws it to the deck and scatters it from bulkhead to bulkhead. This he interprets as a signal that the time has come to do paperwork. The paper carpet may be an inch deep, but he leaves it
where it fell. Bending over, he picks up one sheet. He deals with it: makes an entry, writes a letterâdoes whatever it requires him to do. Then he bends over and picks up another sheet. This goes on for a few days until, literally, he has cleared his deck.
elow the bridge deck is the boat deck, and on the boat deck is Captain Washburn's office. Nine A.M. I often sit here in the morning drinking coffee, reading manifests, and listening to him. “My house is your house,” he says, and the remark is especially amiable in this eight-deck tower called the house. During the night, a planned avalanche occurred in the office. From seaport to seaport, papers accumulate on the captain's desk. “Paperwork has become the bane of this job,” he says. “If a ship doesn't have a good copying machine, it isn't seaworthy. The more ports, the more papers. South American paperwork is worse than the paperwork anywhere else in the world but the Arab countries and Indonesia.” Deliberately, he allows the pile on his desk to rise until a deep roll on a Pacific swell throws it to the deck and scatters it from bulkhead to bulkhead. This he interprets as a signal that the time has come to do paperwork. The paper carpet may be an inch deep, but he leaves it
where it fell. Bending over, he picks up one sheet. He deals with it: makes an entry, writes a letterâdoes whatever it requires him to do. Then he bends over and picks up another sheet. This goes on for a few days until, literally, he has cleared his deck.
The roll that set off last night's avalanche was probably close to thirty degrees. In a roll that is about the same, my tape recorder shoots across the office and picks up the captain with Doppler effect. Retrieving it, I ask him, “How many degrees will Stella roll?”
“She'll roll as much as she has to. She'd roll fifty degrees if you'd let herâif she was loaded wrongâbut normally she'll roll in the twenty-to-thirty-degree range. That's average for ships. It doesn't slow her down or hurt her. She is a deep-sea vessel, built for rough weather. We don't see much rough weather down here. We used to run this coast with the hatches open. That would be suicidal anywhere else. Every day, somewhere someone is getting it from weather. They're running aground. They're hitting each other. They're disappearing without a trace.” Once, in a great storm, Terrible Terry Harmon said to Washburn, “Do you know how to pray?” When Washburn nodded, Harmon said, “Then try that. That's the only thing that's going to save us now.”
Straightening up with a sheet of paper in his hand, Captain Washburn looks out a window past a lifeboat in its davits and over the blue sea. After a moment, he says, “I love going to sea. I do not love that sea out there. That is not my friend. That is my absolute twenty-four-hour-a-day
sworn enemy.” He shows me a map of maritime casualties. He also has back issues of the
Mariners Weather Log,
a publication of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that chronicles marine disasters throughout the world and features among its reported storms a “Monster of the Month.” Nautical charts, such as the ones in use in our chartroom, include a surprising number of symbols denoting partially submerged wrecks and completely submerged wrecks. Nearly all the ships that appear on modern charts have been wrecked in the past fifty years. “Here's a handsome ship went down,” the captain continues, with a finger on his map. “She just went out and was never heard from again. So it isn't just these little nondescript ships like In God We Trust that disappear. Almost every hour of every day someone is getting it. Right now someone is getting it somewhere.”
sworn enemy.” He shows me a map of maritime casualties. He also has back issues of the
Mariners Weather Log,
a publication of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that chronicles marine disasters throughout the world and features among its reported storms a “Monster of the Month.” Nautical charts, such as the ones in use in our chartroom, include a surprising number of symbols denoting partially submerged wrecks and completely submerged wrecks. Nearly all the ships that appear on modern charts have been wrecked in the past fifty years. “Here's a handsome ship went down,” the captain continues, with a finger on his map. “She just went out and was never heard from again. So it isn't just these little nondescript ships like In God We Trust that disappear. Almost every hour of every day someone is getting it. Right now someone is getting it somewhere.”
A likely place is a foul sea about eight hundred miles north of Hawaii that is known to merchant seamen as the Graveyard of the North Pacific. “You can pick it up on the shortwave,” Washburn says. “You hear, âSOS. We're taking on water. SOS. We're taking on water.' Then you don't hear the SOS anymore.” There are weather-routing services that help merchant ships figure out where to go. Washburn suggests that they are in business not to provide maximum safety or comfort but to shave as close as they dare to vicious weather and thus save time and fuel. He happened to be visiting the home office of one of these services when it had a client in the Graveyard of the North Pacific and was guiding it between two storm systems. He wondered what
might happen if the storms coalesced. He asked why such ships did not go past Hawaii on a route that has proved safe for four hundred years. The weather-routers said, “Then who would need
us
?”
might happen if the storms coalesced. He asked why such ships did not go past Hawaii on a route that has proved safe for four hundred years. The weather-routers said, “Then who would need
us
?”
When Washburn was a teen-age ordinary seaman, he sailed with a master who had written what Washburn describes as “a big sign inside the logbook”:
TAKE CARE OF THE SHIP AND
THE SHIP WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU
THE SHIP WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU
The sign now hangs in Washburn's head. In his unending dialogue with the ship, the ship tells him things that its instruments do not. There is no Weatherfax map on the Stella Lykesâonly the barometer, the barographs, the teletypes from NOAA. The radar can see a storm, but that is like seeing a fist just before it hits you. When a storm is out there, somewhere, beyond the visible sky, the ship will let him know.
“When you get close to a big storm, you can feel it. For some reason, the ship takes on almost a little uncertainty. She's almost like a live thingâlike they say animals can sense bad weather coming. Sometimes I almost believe a ship can. I know that doesn't make sense, because she's steel and wood and metal, but she picks up a little uncertainty, probably something that is being transmitted through the water. It's hard to define. It's just a tiny little different motion, a little hesitancy, a little tremble from time to time.”
Off Hatteras, things can be really hesitant. A lashed-down crane will pull a pad eye out of the deck. A pad eye is a D ring made of steel two inches thick. “This ship is very strongly built,” Washburn says. “She's sturdy and reliable. There's lots of horsepower down there. She will answer the rudder. She will respond. She's a capable and trustworthy ship. You know what she'll do and you know her limitations. They aren't crucial, but you can't expect her to do things where you know she's a little short. You can't suddenly demand that of her and expect to get it. It isn't there. She's American-built. There's good steel in the hull. Those frames are close together. She'll roll on a following sea, but she's got a high-raised fo'c'sle head and a sharp bow. She's built for rough weather. She's built for rough handling. She's built to take seas and fight back. You cannot overpower seas. But she can deal with what's out there. She was built to go to Scandinavia in the middle of winter.”
To make the North Europe run in winter is something that many American sailors do everything they can to avoid and others just refuse to do. No matter how straitened they may be and hungry for work, they will pass up the winter North Atlantic. Having grown up near this ocean and knowing no other, I was surprised to learn this. Years ago, when I was a student for a time in Europe and went back and forth on ships in winter, I thought it was normal for the keel to come out of water as the hull prepared to smash the sea. I didn't know anything about load linesâPlimsoll marksâor classification societies. For a ship to thud like a
ton of bricks and roll at least forty degrees seemed a basic and expectable standard condition. I had no idea that this ocean in winter was in a category of its own. On various ships on the North Europe run, Captain Washburn has stayed awake for as much as seventy-two hours, catnapping in a chair on the bridge. “You're tacking into weather,” he explains. “Winds and seas can become so strong that you can't always go in the direction you want to.” For more than four years, he was the skipper of the Ro/Ro Cygnus and most of its runs were to North Europe. In the early weeks of 1983, he was trying to make his way north into the English Channel, but the Cygnus's big diesels were overmatched, overwhelmed. Washburn tacked back and forth almost helplessly, and the shipâfive hundred and sixty feet, fourteen thousand deadweight tonsâwas blown sideways into the Bay of Biscay. “We couldn't get out. We ended up near Bilbao.”
ton of bricks and roll at least forty degrees seemed a basic and expectable standard condition. I had no idea that this ocean in winter was in a category of its own. On various ships on the North Europe run, Captain Washburn has stayed awake for as much as seventy-two hours, catnapping in a chair on the bridge. “You're tacking into weather,” he explains. “Winds and seas can become so strong that you can't always go in the direction you want to.” For more than four years, he was the skipper of the Ro/Ro Cygnus and most of its runs were to North Europe. In the early weeks of 1983, he was trying to make his way north into the English Channel, but the Cygnus's big diesels were overmatched, overwhelmed. Washburn tacked back and forth almost helplessly, and the shipâfive hundred and sixty feet, fourteen thousand deadweight tonsâwas blown sideways into the Bay of Biscay. “We couldn't get out. We ended up near Bilbao.”
On the side of a merchant ship is a painted circle, a foot in diameter, with a horizontal line running through it marking the depth to which the ship can be safely loaded in summer. Near it are shorter horizontal lines, more or less like the rungs of a ladder. They indicate the depth to which the ship can be safely loaded in various seasons and places. The highest line, representing the heaviest permissible load, is marked “TF.” Tropical fresh. This means that you can go up a river in the tropics to a place like Guayaquil, load yourself down to the TF line, and go back to the ocean, where the density of the water will lift the ship to another line, marked “T.” That is as deeply loaded as you are per-,
mitted to be in a tropical ocean. These levels, worked out specifically for each ship, “take into consideration the details of length, breadth, depth, structural strength and design, extent of superstructure, sheer, and round of beam,” and are collectively called the Plimsoll mark, after Samuel Plimsoll, a member of Parliament who, in the eighteen-seventies, wrote the act creating them in order to outlaw the greed-driven excessive loading that was the primary factor in the sinking of ships. When British people call rubber-soled deck and tennis shoes plimsolls, they are referring to him. The United States adopted the Plimsoll mark more than fifty years later. Load lines are set by classification societies, which are private companies that play a checking, testing, and supervisory role in ship constructionâservices that are optional in the sense that if you don't sign up for them no one will insure your ship. Society initials appear on the hull of a ship as a part of the Plimsoll mark: the American Bureau of Shipping (AB), Lloyd's Register (LR), Bureau Veritas (BV), Germanischer Lloyd (GL), Norske Veritas (NV). Below the summer load line is a line marked “W.” It marks the depth to which the ship can be safely loaded in winter. Some distance below that is the lowest line of all. It is marked “WNA.” To burden a ship only to that line is to give it the lightest load in the whole Plimsoll series. The WNA line marks the maximum depth to which the ship can be safely loaded in the winter North Atlantic. Andy has remarked about a company that runs to Iceland, “If you get a ship on that line in the winter, you're going to get creamed and you know it.” The North Sea, the Cape
of Good Hope, Cape Horn, and the Gulf of Alaska are the stormiest waters in the shipping world after the winter North Atlantic.
mitted to be in a tropical ocean. These levels, worked out specifically for each ship, “take into consideration the details of length, breadth, depth, structural strength and design, extent of superstructure, sheer, and round of beam,” and are collectively called the Plimsoll mark, after Samuel Plimsoll, a member of Parliament who, in the eighteen-seventies, wrote the act creating them in order to outlaw the greed-driven excessive loading that was the primary factor in the sinking of ships. When British people call rubber-soled deck and tennis shoes plimsolls, they are referring to him. The United States adopted the Plimsoll mark more than fifty years later. Load lines are set by classification societies, which are private companies that play a checking, testing, and supervisory role in ship constructionâservices that are optional in the sense that if you don't sign up for them no one will insure your ship. Society initials appear on the hull of a ship as a part of the Plimsoll mark: the American Bureau of Shipping (AB), Lloyd's Register (LR), Bureau Veritas (BV), Germanischer Lloyd (GL), Norske Veritas (NV). Below the summer load line is a line marked “W.” It marks the depth to which the ship can be safely loaded in winter. Some distance below that is the lowest line of all. It is marked “WNA.” To burden a ship only to that line is to give it the lightest load in the whole Plimsoll series. The WNA line marks the maximum depth to which the ship can be safely loaded in the winter North Atlantic. Andy has remarked about a company that runs to Iceland, “If you get a ship on that line in the winter, you're going to get creamed and you know it.” The North Sea, the Cape
of Good Hope, Cape Horn, and the Gulf of Alaska are the stormiest waters in the shipping world after the winter North Atlantic.
The great-circle route between North Europe and New York bucks the storms of the upper latitudes. Captain Washburn likes to say that if you were to take two new ships and run one to North Europe via the Azores and the other to North Europe on the great circle, after a year you would have one new ship and one “damaged, beat-up ship.” He continues, “If you go south and the weather comes after you, you can go on going south. If you go north and the weather comes after you, you have containers over the side and the crew in the hold chasing loose cargo. Youâyou are going nowhere.”
While Vernon McLaughlin was on the American Legacy, her skipper tried to run to the north of a storm and ended up against Newfoundland in a Force 12 gale.
“For two days, the ship pounded as it pitched, and rolled forty; you looked out the sides in a trough, and it looked as if you were underwater. There was a great crack in the superstructure in front of the house. Containers were lost over the side. Others were stood against each other like swords when a marine gets married. One that broke open âshoes fell out of it for the rest of the voyage. On other ships, I have seen seamen fall on their knees and pray, they were so afraid.”
While Andy was night-mating the Sea-Land Performance in Charleston, Captain Crook told me about a January crossing he had made years before on the great-circle
route from the Virginia capes to the Strait of Gibraltar. “We hit the worst sea storm to hit the North Atlantic ocean in two hundred years,” he said. “For fifty-two hours, the captain was on the bridge trying to save the ship. Speeding up in the trough to maintain control, slowing up just before the crest so he wouldn't pound the ship too hard. Waves tore the mast off. The bridge was a hundred and fifteen feet off the water. Waves went over us. The decks were solid ice. Whole tractor-trailers were washed over the side. A forty-five-ton truck-crane was loose on the deck like a battering ram. House trailers on the second deck were completely demolished. I was truly afraid.” An ordinary seaman was on lookout on the bridge when the ship lurched and hurled him through the wheelhouse door onto the port-side bridge wing, where he slid on his back across ice and went through the railing. He grabbed the railing, hung on, and dangled above the monstrous sea. Crook went out and pulled him back.
route from the Virginia capes to the Strait of Gibraltar. “We hit the worst sea storm to hit the North Atlantic ocean in two hundred years,” he said. “For fifty-two hours, the captain was on the bridge trying to save the ship. Speeding up in the trough to maintain control, slowing up just before the crest so he wouldn't pound the ship too hard. Waves tore the mast off. The bridge was a hundred and fifteen feet off the water. Waves went over us. The decks were solid ice. Whole tractor-trailers were washed over the side. A forty-five-ton truck-crane was loose on the deck like a battering ram. House trailers on the second deck were completely demolished. I was truly afraid.” An ordinary seaman was on lookout on the bridge when the ship lurched and hurled him through the wheelhouse door onto the port-side bridge wing, where he slid on his back across ice and went through the railing. He grabbed the railing, hung on, and dangled above the monstrous sea. Crook went out and pulled him back.
Andy once said to me, “I love being up on the bridge when it's rough. I enjoy being on watch in rough weather. It's so impressive. It's spectacular. Huge seas. Strong winds. At some point, you cross from awe to terror. I haven't been at that point yetâthe ultimate storm. It could change my attitude.” Andy hasn't seen anything worse than a fifty-five-foot sea breaking over him when he was running coastwise on the Spray in the winter North Atlantic. “My height of eye was fifty-two feet off the water, and the water broke over the bridge and hit the radar mast. Water went down stacks
into the engine room.” Not enough water to change his attitude.
into the engine room.” Not enough water to change his attitude.
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