Down to the Sea in Ships Read Free Page A

would never be the kind of man whose work would allow him to make such an elision of ‘Best regards’ without seeming foolish.)
    The image of the true sea dog, the old salt, has something of the ultimate man, the first and last about it – for man is or aspires to be a voyager, a returning Odysseus, though our Scyllas now come as monthly bills and Charybdis as traffic jams. We do not see sea captains these days, since the decline of the British merchant marine. He has become a story-book figure, the Old Man retired to land; pictured living like Captain Cat in a religiously ordered house where small trophies hold incommunicable memories and dreams of foreign shores drift like motes in the silence. You imagine he is much admired by his neighbours, who find him cheery and always immaculate, and mock him lightly for the way he walks.
    You could not mock or mistake Captain Larsen. He is small and wide with narrow eyes, a short beard and thick grey-white hair. He would look like a child’s idea of a sea captain if he were not wearing shorts, sandals and a sweatshirt of uncertain colour. He smokes Marlboro Reds and scratches eczema on his leg. The scars and marks on his large hands and arms are not from eczema.
    His greeting is warm, fierce with humour and assessment. He and Graham snap through their drills, exchanging paperwork. He shows me my accommodation.
    â€˜Your cabin, Clare. Clare?’
    â€˜Horatio, Captain.’
    â€˜We will try to remember that.’
    â€˜You need gloves if you’re going out on deck,’ says Sorin, the chief officer. He is a tall, fair-haired Romanian, rangy-tough, with friendly and searching eyes behind rimless octagonal specs. ‘It’s dirty out there. But it’s good! Operational dirt.’
    In the days of sail the mate, now known as the chief officer, was his Captain’s fists. The chief is still our Captain’s hands: in an emergency the latter’s place is on the bridge, while the mate deals with the problem. Sorin is all competence and strength; there is a compactness about his movements that makes you doubt he has ever dithered. It takes something to carry it off in a sky-blue overall like a romper suit, though his has three gold braids on each shoulder.
    The Europeans look grey and tired. Their faces are pallid, their skin dry and flaked; everyone’s eyes are reddened. Inside the ship there is no sea air, only the dry air conditioning and the diesel seep of the engine. No one is saying why they are late. Graham, the agent, mentioned fog in Bremerhaven, their last port of call, but he sounded uncertain.
    Everyone works now. Only fog thick enough to blind crane operators, winds above sixty knots and Christmas Day stop the work at Felixstowe. Every minute of every other day and night cranes lift and lower, trucks line up to receive or deliver containers, stevedores fix and loosen lashing rods, agents arrive and depart, seafarers sign on and off, cargo planners board and disembark, officers supervise, crews from fifty countries work, dockers take or cast off lines, pilots climb or descend gangways and the big ships come and go. Under arc light, in the small hours, in summer dawns and winter darknesses, this never stops.
    We will leave at 6 a.m.
    â€˜Four on the gangway,’ the Captain says, over the top of his glasses.
    Departure times are subject to change; the first version is chalked on a board near the gangway. While we are alongside a constant watch is kept there by a seaman with a clipboard which visitors must sign. For most of the crew this is as much as they see of the nations of the world, very occasional shore leaves excepted. Container ports look broadly the same. The main differences are climate and the languages of stevedores.
    In his strip-lit office, the Captain prods his keyboard, muttering. He might be in a small meeting room in some chain motel were it not for the view. Beyond the portholes is the extraordinary. The body