There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge on Lake LeBarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
from “The Cremation of Sam McGee”
by Robert Service
It is the end of October 2015. I find myself on a ship in the East China Sea. With internet aboard, questions arrive about US war ships harassing Chinese sovereignty around man-made islands in the South China Sea, hundreds of miles away. On board we are discussing the World Series and what we’ll wear for Halloween. We are worlds away from anything going on back home. Some might say, reality.
And yet, this month started out differently. News came early to those in this industry. Familiar names began to appear on news feeds. Storms, islands, and ships were all mentioned in one breath. Armchair sailors were quick to postulate theories and blame. They have already drawn their conclusions, while the rest of us waited to hear evidence of what might have been our own fate.
It reminds me of a story.
In 2003, my life as a seaman was coming to an end. I had milked the Seafarers International Union for all they were worth. The Union had failed to give me all the classes necessary to sit for an Unlimited Tonnage license. But I had finished the classes elsewhere, with $10,000 coming out of my own pocket. By July the only thing I needed from SIU was 81 sailing days. That would qualify me for health benefits the next year while I searched for a Mate’s job.
The country was also rapping up Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Don’t get me started!) The consequence of this was a flurry of shipping jobs. Companies that had simply collected checks for years as participants in the Maritime Security Program, were now called upon to put their ships into service. One such ship was the SS Northern Lights. She belonged to TOTE Marine Services, and had previously run between Tacoma and Anchorage.
She was in Beaumont, Texas, stocking up for the round trip to Shuayba, Kuwait, to pick up gear. The permanent crew was taking vacation, almost to the man. As a result, the majority of jobs for this trip were filled in the Houston Hall. Some of the faces were familiar. Others, no.
Our first day out it was obvious that the air conditioning hadn’t been used in years. The compressors, just across the passageway from my cabin, short cycled the entire voyage. Despite their ceaseless running, however, cold air remained just a bedtime story.
I was a Day Man. It was a civil life, work hours from 8 to 5. I performed maintenance under the supervision of the Boatswain, a guy it turned out lived just down the street from me. During the TransAtlantic passage, I was chipping and painting on the bridgewing. The lookout pointed out an object and asked me what it was. It was almost a mile behind us before I saw it, and it disappeared with every swell. It had looked like a brown upturned boat hull. The Watch Officer called the Captain, who ordered the ship turned around. We spent 45 minutes backtracking just to find a lone Sei whale cruising slowly along the surface.
My nights were spent reading, playing cards, watching movies in the lounge. We had a contingent of Puerto Rican National Guardsmen on board for security. They were an endless source of songs, haircuts, and elicit alcohol. We got along very well.
The ship’s mess brought all of the personalities into close proximity three times a day. The electrician spent every hour bragging that he had never finished a tour on a ship. My fellow day man was trying to impress the Bosun with surf knowledge. A group of AB’s and Oilers discussed their pornography collections. The Steward’s Assistant was telling everyone who would listen that he had gotten a draw of over $1,000. The Chief Mate flashed around a letter of acceptance to some Pilot Association in Florida. And on and on.
We stopped for fuel in Crete, transited the Suez Canal, and continued on to Fujairah, just south of the Strait of Hormuz. We were going to take on more fuel at anchor, then stand off the coast until called. We were provided with a launch to take us to shore. There was a bar inside the harbor compound, and a town a short cab ride away. The Steward’s Assistant jumped in a cab for Dubai, quite a drive across the peninsula. Four of us went to town. But most just headed for the bar and stayed until the last launch would take them home.
I was back on the ship just after sunset. A second launch pulled up while I chatted at the gangway. The passenger list included the Chief Mate, the Electrician, and the Steward’s Assistant. An argument was already underway. The Electrician had gone into town after a short but studious stop at the bar. He had acquired some local garb and wore it back to the ship. The Chief Mate was yelling something about the bearded man resembling Jesus. The gangway watch radioed a request for the Watch Officer’s presence.
By the time the Watch Officer arrived from the Bridge, the altercation had gotten physical. The launch driver was demanding they both climb onboard the ship so he could be rid of them. The Chief Mate, three sheets to the wind himself, claimed the Electrician was drunk and should be arrested and taken ashore. To punctuate his statement, he picked up the backpack at the Electrician’s feet and hurled it towards the beach, maybe ten feet, and into the harbor. The Steward’s Assistant suddenly lit up. He clawed at the launch driver to retrieve the back. HIS bag. Filled with over $1,000 in gold. The Watch Officer shook his head and called the Captain.
While the launch driver fished out the SA’s bag with a boathook, the Captain barred the Electrician from the ship, remanding him into the custody of the ship’s agent. The Chief Mate was taken directly to the Captain’s cabin. We later found that he had been given a breathalyzer test and the results sealed in an envelope. The Chief Mate’s relief was due in Kuwait. If he couldn’t keep it together that long, the Captain had threatened, the envelope with the results would be forwarded to the US Coast Guard.
Once underway, the threat was a moot point. We would have no more shore leave. The Chief Mate had a newfound freedom. He divvied out as much overtime as we wanted, this being before the advent of Work/Rest hour enforcement. The entire deck gang turned to painting the cargo holds until 2000 every night. We were told to write in to 2300. We were never redlined. Northern Lights turned into the highest paying AB job I’d ever had.
We were finally called into the Gulf. We raced to our berth a couple days away. Arrival was 0Dark30. The temperature was over 100 degrees. Not a lick of breeze was blowing. We waited to position the cargo ramp, praying that some breeze would relieve us of this heat. Well, the sun came up and with it the light morning air. We prayed for it to stop! It felt like a hair drier. As the sun got higher, the temperature neared 120. The humidity was less than 50%.
Not a hundred yards away sat pallet upon pallet of bottled water, in the shade of a conveyor belt. Much nearer was a dumpster overflowing with water bottles still half full, the water deemed much too hot to drink. Indian longshoremen in white kafkans lay in the shade under the same conveyor. American soldiers wondered back and forth between air conditioned insulated tents. A young lieutenant with a true thousand yard stare, talked to us about loading his vehicles. These were the images from Conrad’s modern Heart of Darkness.
After a few days, we were loaded, lashed, and ready to go. We marveled at the damage our cargo had sustained: bullet holes, RPG burns, but mostly collision damage. Most of the casualties, someone told us, were from vehicle accidents. We didn’t care. We were going home.
The trip home was largely uneventful. Our last fuel stop in Crete brought news to the permanent TOTE employees that their ship was being transferred to the Sea Star Line on the Puerto Rico run. It also brought news of a 20% pay cut to the AMO Deck Officers. They were none too happy. I could only imagine the reaction of the crew returning in Savannah.
Leaving the Med also brought news of a hurricane developing south of our trackline. It was slow moving, not well developed yet, and predicted to strengthen and start a North Atlantic curve. The question was, when?
Messages flew fast and furious between the ship and our weather routing service. The Captain, on this his first command, started declaring his knowledge of the weather and his disdain for the routers in their stuffy little cubicles. Their recommendation was to slow down and wait for the storm to turn north, then alter course to the south and put on steam for our destination. The Captain wanted to pour on the coals now and attempt the top of the storm, hoping to outrun it and make Savannah a couple days early.
The crew didn’t care. Getting in early meant an earlier start to vacation. Getting in later meant more money and more sea time. We were going to bitch about it one way or the other. But the Captain took it as a personal challenge. He drafted up an email letting the company know his plans to ignore the routing service and bring the ship in early. Before sending it off, however, he paraded it around the ship so everyone would know how big his balls were. That made it all the more embarrassing when he received the company’s reply. We pulled back on the stick and waited.
We made Savannah not far from schedule and turned things over to the permanent crew. In their eyes, the ship was wrecked and tainted from the hot weather. No small part of their sentiment came from the fact that their homes were now 3000 miles away from work. I’m sure many of them left the ship and went back to the Pacific Northwest, leaving the jobs to be taken up by the SIU Hall in Jacksonville, Florida.
The Bosun told me that the ship made one more run to Kuwait before settling in to the Puerto Rico trade. We figured that’s when the last of the Alaska sailors left. And somewhere in there it changed names, sometimes considered bad luck if not done with the proper respect and ceremony. We didn’t speak Spanish, so the new name didn’t mean much to us. It was El Faro.
Selkirk's Ghost 