Looking for a Ship (2 page)
Read Looking for a Ship Online
Authors: John McPhee
In 1988, the National Maritime Union sold its ninestory building at 346 West Seventeenth Street, Manhattan, which had medical facilities, a gymnasium, a sauna, a restaurant, a theatre, and a school, andâwith its porthole windowsâsuggested an upended ship. The N.M.U., of course, was a sailors' unionâthe once very powerful organization of the unlicensedâand now it had lost a leveraged sellout, was called M. E. B. A. /N. M. U. , and had been merged with a branch of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, an organization of engine-room officers. N.M.U. sailors who were looking for ships were reporting to a new address: 404 Lafayette Street, in the saddle of low structures that lie on the loose gravels between the high summits of midtown and Wall Street. The building looks like a warehouse that has seen its last ware. What doorway to use is not clear from the sidewalk and less so if someone is lying in it. Upstairs is a large low room where the bright polish of the maple floor does little to console the N.M. U. sailors for the lost symbol of their lovely hall. The job-call scene is much the same as it is elsewhere for the masters and mates. The board says “Killer Card Date: April 8,” or whatever it happens to be. An N. M. U. card accrues seniority for only two hundred and ten days, and then rolls over. Say a car carrier belonging to Central Gulf is the only ship
on the board, with two A.B. positionsâvacation relief. That's all. And a short run to bootâSan Juan. More than forty men are in the hall. Two jobs. It's a lively, noisy room, a hubbub of chatter, many styles of fits-all visored cap, leather jackets, running shoes, flannels, jeans. Any one of those present will know a good many of the others, having sailed with them across the years. While the men wait around to lose out and go home, they argue politics at the shouting level. Each one's picture of the President of the United States seems to be framed entirely by whatâas the sailor sees itâthe President might do to the Merchant Marine.
on the board, with two A.B. positionsâvacation relief. That's all. And a short run to bootâSan Juan. More than forty men are in the hall. Two jobs. It's a lively, noisy room, a hubbub of chatter, many styles of fits-all visored cap, leather jackets, running shoes, flannels, jeans. Any one of those present will know a good many of the others, having sailed with them across the years. While the men wait around to lose out and go home, they argue politics at the shouting level. Each one's picture of the President of the United States seems to be framed entirely by whatâas the sailor sees itâthe President might do to the Merchant Marine.
The N.M.U. hall in Savannah is a quarter the size of the one in the warehouse in New Yorkâa small freestanding building a few blocks from the Savannah River. You step in off the street and show your killer card. If a sailor doesn't have one, he may be in some difficulty. When I was there one time, Barbara Evans, the dispatcher, said, “Someday I'm going to be a social worker, because that is what I am now.” She mentioned sailors who came looking for ships and slept on park benches until they moved to the Inner City Night Shelter. She mentioned a sailor living
under
a house.
under
a house.
The Masters, Mates, and Pilots hall to which Andy and I reported in Charleston was considerably smaller than any other hall I have mentioned: second floor, no windows, three little roomsâan office for a dentist with a hand-medown drill. It was on Sam Rittenberg Boulevardâan elongate bazaarâand not far from the Truluck Chiropractic
Auto Accident Clinic. By the union's see-through door, a poster said “SHIP AMERICAN, IT COSTS No MORE.” On the first morning there,
we
looked through the sheaf of bygone jobs and noted the recent destinations: a Lykes Brothers ship to the Mediterranean, a Waterman ship to the Middle East, a Navieras ship to San Juan, a Sea-Land ship to Iceland, a Central Gulf ship to North Europe, a Lykes Brothers ship to the west coast of South America. That, at a glance, was the Charleston pattern, suggesting what might come. Musing over the possibilities, Andy had said that the three most likely were a Sea-Land ship, a Lykes Brothers ship, and a Navieras ship, and that his predilections ran strongly to Lykes Brothers and their run to South America, where he had never been. Least attractive to him was Navieras de Puerto Rico, with its roll-on/roll-off (Ro/Ro) shipsâin effect, truck ferriesâon a short domestic haul. Aboard a Navieras ship, he said, you would find “a different crowd of peopleâones that don't want to go overseas.” Not that he could expect to shop for adventure. There had been a time when he thought he would specialize in break-bulk ships with topping lifts and king postsâthe classical “stick ship,” the freighter with a forest of booms, carrying dry miscellaneous cargo that you could see and touch. He looked upon his preference as “the romantic way to go to sea.” Long ago, someone had told him that if he was choosy he would not last in the business, and now he knew that he would take anything. He would ship out on a tanker, a freighter, a container ship, a bulk carrier (ore and grain), an L.N.G. (liquid natural gas), a Ro/Ro, or a LASH (its
containers are hulls: they are lowered into the water and towed away).
Auto Accident Clinic. By the union's see-through door, a poster said “SHIP AMERICAN, IT COSTS No MORE.” On the first morning there,
we
looked through the sheaf of bygone jobs and noted the recent destinations: a Lykes Brothers ship to the Mediterranean, a Waterman ship to the Middle East, a Navieras ship to San Juan, a Sea-Land ship to Iceland, a Central Gulf ship to North Europe, a Lykes Brothers ship to the west coast of South America. That, at a glance, was the Charleston pattern, suggesting what might come. Musing over the possibilities, Andy had said that the three most likely were a Sea-Land ship, a Lykes Brothers ship, and a Navieras ship, and that his predilections ran strongly to Lykes Brothers and their run to South America, where he had never been. Least attractive to him was Navieras de Puerto Rico, with its roll-on/roll-off (Ro/Ro) shipsâin effect, truck ferriesâon a short domestic haul. Aboard a Navieras ship, he said, you would find “a different crowd of peopleâones that don't want to go overseas.” Not that he could expect to shop for adventure. There had been a time when he thought he would specialize in break-bulk ships with topping lifts and king postsâthe classical “stick ship,” the freighter with a forest of booms, carrying dry miscellaneous cargo that you could see and touch. He looked upon his preference as “the romantic way to go to sea.” Long ago, someone had told him that if he was choosy he would not last in the business, and now he knew that he would take anything. He would ship out on a tanker, a freighter, a container ship, a bulk carrier (ore and grain), an L.N.G. (liquid natural gas), a Ro/Ro, or a LASH (its
containers are hulls: they are lowered into the water and towed away).
On that first day in Charleston, there was nothing on the board. Elise Silvers, the dispatcher, told Andy that the Cygnus, a Lykes Brothers Ro/Ro leaving in a few days for Antwerp and Rotterdam, would be replacing its second mate. She could also tell him that a Sea-Land ship needing a third mate would be sailing in about ten days from Jacksonville to Bremerhaven. And roughly two weeks hence the S.S. Stella Lykes would leave Charleston for South America with a new second mate. Andy Chase found all this “incredible”âthree openings in as many weeksâand, schooled to go for the earliest opportunity, focussed on the Cygnus.
The door opened, and Pete Pizzarelli came inâtrim as a nail, beardless, dark-olive skin. He was, as Andy soon found out, a second mate. “I just got off the Allison,” he said. “I'm sitting back and relaxing now. I'm night-mating. That's it.” It was Andy's turn, for the moment, to sit back and relax as well. Which he chose not to do. Before the moment when your shipping card is exercised and actually takes precedence over all others, you never know what may come through the door and keep you off a ship. In Charleston, there was one daily job callâat one-thirty. At one-twenty-nine on the crucial day, someone could walk in with a truly killer card. And Andy could kiss the Cygnus goodbye.
With Pizzarelli, he talked shipsâwhat else? Ships are all that people talk about in union halls, with the exception of politics as it relates to ships. This ship was built in Korea.
That ship was built in Germany. This one paid off in Houston. That one paid off in New Orleans. Where a ship pays off is where it most often changes crew members. Pizzarelli told a story from his last ocean voyage. Thousands of dollars' worth of ships' stores had been seized by pirates in Guayaquil.
That ship was built in Germany. This one paid off in Houston. That one paid off in New Orleans. Where a ship pays off is where it most often changes crew members. Pizzarelli told a story from his last ocean voyage. Thousands of dollars' worth of ships' stores had been seized by pirates in Guayaquil.
That evening, while Andy and I were talking about something completely unrelated to the sea, he suddenly looked up and said, “It happens more often than you like to think. A nice fat job appears on the board. A guy strolls in off the street with a card that beats yours.”
Peninsular Charleston is a small antiquarian Manhattan, lying between confluent rivers and pointing south into a substantial harbor. As in Manhattan, there is a battery at the southern tip, in the oldest part of the city. When you drive about the region, you are frequently looking over water. On the way to the hall the second day, I noticed a ship that had come in and anchored in Charleston Harborâa freighter, indistinct in haze, at least three miles from the road.
I said, “Why don't we get on that one?”
Andy, who was driving, glanced to his left, and said, “It's a foreign ship.”
“How do you know that?”
“It has writing on the side. Lykes and American President have writing on the side and it doesn't look like either of them. It's a stick ship and the house is aft. We have plenty of ships with the house aft, but not stick ships. We don't have many stick ships left, period.”
Through the intervening water a long black shape was sliding, graceful as an alligator, and analogously fast. Andy noticed it first, out of the corner of his eye. He said it was a Trident-class submarine, five hundred and sixty feet long, and it could go at least fifty miles an hour; the exact figure was classified; the Navy would admit to twenty-three. Submarines can move rapidly because they are in a single fluid, he went on. There are no waves. Waves detain ordinary ships, which operate at the interface of two fluids. An idea that has been around for a long time is to make a very fast cargo ship consisting of two submarines with stems rising to a literal bridge connecting them, where the crew would be housed and the helmsman would stand. We weren't going to be shipping out on anything like that, either.
For the second consecutive day in the Masters, Mates, and Pilots hall, there was, as Andy expected, nothing on the boardâno surprises, no new developments, no unexpected ships, not so much as one night-mating job, nothing to learn that he didn't know already. He was present for the job call, thoughâand in plenty of time. Andy never misses a job call. If he is in a city to look for a ship, he goes to the hall every day, regardless of what he may know. “You're counting on luck,” he said. “A ship might come in a day early. A ship not on a schedule might come in.” A ship not on a schedule is a tramp steamer.
The hall opens at nine. We learned that a mate named Tony Tedmore had been waiting there at nine to register for a new shipping card, and when the office opened a little late and he was handed a card that said “9:04” he had
become furious and announced his intention to make a formal complaint to the union. Andy said, “When I paid off my ship last year, I hotfooted it to the union hall as fast as I could. Your former job ends. Your bargaining power begins. Every minute counts. At job calls, I've seen one person beat out another by as little as a minute on his shipping card.”
become furious and announced his intention to make a formal complaint to the union. Andy said, “When I paid off my ship last year, I hotfooted it to the union hall as fast as I could. Your former job ends. Your bargaining power begins. Every minute counts. At job calls, I've seen one person beat out another by as little as a minute on his shipping card.”
After the obligatory vacation period, which has lately settled back to fifteen days for every thirty at sea, there comes the moment when you are permitted to look for work again, but there's scarcely any point in trying until your shore time grows longer. As people sit in union halls, the grapevine will tell them how old a card has to be to get a job. One long job begets anotherâthe more sea time, the more vacation time, the older your card when you look again. You can get into a bind of short jobs. On the actual day when a ship you are hoping for is called, your card goes into a box on a table at the union hall. Anyone can look at it. This prevents “backdoor shipping.” There was once a day when a couple of hundred dollars tucked under a dispatcher's fingers could get you a ship.
Andy has never refused a job because of something he has heard about a ship from gossip in a union hall:
“The captain's a tyrant.”
“The captain's a creep.”
“The captain's a drunk.”
“It's a terrible run.”
“The ship is unsafe.”
“You never get any port time.”
“They carry dangerous cargo.”
Andy said, “You may find that the creepy old captain is a neat guy. Or he may be a recluse, but when all hell breaks loose he turns out to be a great seaman. That's why the company goes along with the guy.”
Many dry-cargo mates fear tankers. When a dry-cargo ship ties up at a dock, longshoremen come aboard and unload her. When a tanker is in port, her own mates load and discharge the ship. The work is hazardous, and most dry-cargo mates don't know how to do it. “I still get trepidation when I go on a tanker,” Andy said. “You're lining up a hundred valves. You're operating under the assumption that all valves leak. They usually do. We had oil in the pump room on the Spray. We calculated that to get there the oil had to go through six closed valves. It was an old ship. The fumes on a tanker are sometimes so thick you can see them rise like fountains. They spread in the air. They flow over the deck. You can see them go down the sides.”
The door opened. In came a man with a sharp face, a sportive mustache, bowl-cut bangs the color of light straw. Andy had never seen him before. In this situation, two people who are unfamiliar will sniff each other out in seconds. This was Gene Whalen, second mate, out of Cape Canaveral, looking for a ship. He said, “I just go from port to port: Jacksonville, Port Evergladesâsmall places.” In the continuing conversation, he mentioned that he was a graduate of the New York Maritime College, at Throgs Neck, in the Bronx, that he enjoyed shipping with Lykes when
he could, because “they're in a time warp, they're an easygoing company with break-bulk ships that stop in lots of ports.” Dreamily, he spoke of Penang, of Borneo, of the mountain springs of Mindanao. He said that pirates had shot at his ship “in the Gulf of Thigh Land.” He said, “Ping. Ping. You'd hear bullets hit the mast. You just duck.” Piracy, one gathered, is heavy in the Strait of Malacca, in Guayaquil, on the whole West African coast. Pirates usually board ships in port. They come in boats to the seaward side of the ship. They throw a hook over the rail and shinny. They tie people up. They go for safes. In the Strait of Malacca, they attack moving ships. Crewmen line the rails with pressure-charged fire hoses to drive the pirates off the sides. Low-freeboard ships are especially vulnerable to pirates.
he could, because “they're in a time warp, they're an easygoing company with break-bulk ships that stop in lots of ports.” Dreamily, he spoke of Penang, of Borneo, of the mountain springs of Mindanao. He said that pirates had shot at his ship “in the Gulf of Thigh Land.” He said, “Ping. Ping. You'd hear bullets hit the mast. You just duck.” Piracy, one gathered, is heavy in the Strait of Malacca, in Guayaquil, on the whole West African coast. Pirates usually board ships in port. They come in boats to the seaward side of the ship. They throw a hook over the rail and shinny. They tie people up. They go for safes. In the Strait of Malacca, they attack moving ships. Crewmen line the rails with pressure-charged fire hoses to drive the pirates off the sides. Low-freeboard ships are especially vulnerable to pirates.
None of this interested Andy a ten-thousandth as much as the age of Whalen's card. Whalen eventually mentioned what it was. Andy had him beat to death.
The door opened, a new face came inâblond, heavyset, linebacker man. Even a little cherubic. Curl across the forehead. Beard that could have been panned in a stream. Without a glance around, he walked right over to the desk to sign in for a job. He had just arrived in Charleston from his home, in Montana, and he didn't need to look for anything. This was, after all, the union of masters as well as mates. The paperwork he quickly completed is known as “clearing for a ship.” Captain of the Sea-Land Performance, he would take over the ship when it arrived in Charleston. Captains and most chief mates are “permanent.” They take
enforced vacations like everybody else, butâat the owners' behestâthey return to their specific ships. With rare exceptions, no second mates or third mates are permanent. Many unlicensed personnel have permanent jobs; most do not.
enforced vacations like everybody else, butâat the owners' behestâthey return to their specific ships. With rare exceptions, no second mates or third mates are permanent. Many unlicensed personnel have permanent jobs; most do not.
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