It occurred only years after the horrendous pandemic, the Covid19, had paralyzed the entire world. The economy had been slowing down, and the disease – which we still do not understand completely - made many people face death, sorrow, hunger, and homelessness.
In November of this year, Rattner & Rattner, the renowned and prosperous London Shipping Agency, hired me as an officer onboard the Punjab, a Handysize Geared Bulk Carrier. Minutes after being appointed an officer at a visit to the Staff Employment Office, I set out to find my ship from Emmet Street, where the office building was situated. I was on foot, in light rain and some wind in the dusky remains of the Tuesday afternoon, out for the vessel, which was an immense one, lying at anchor outside the Northwest Pier of London Outer Harbor. I had been hired in an extreme hurry due to a mishap on a red London bus on the morning of the ship´s departure; the ordinary 3rd Mate – a man whose name I forgot - unprovoked got busted up by a drunkard, and, because of a broken arm, was brought to the hospital for surgery. The Company was in dire need of a replacement, and with a terse notice, I, who was then 1st Mate on another Carrier - the Swanee - of the same size but an oil carrier, decided to jump in.
It was a commotion to try to reach the area. My beloved Swanee lay by an anchor in a different port part. I went by subway and bus and, on my way, ended up on a small bridge, about a hundred yards tall, in one of the harbor areas, viewing a large portion of the London port from a distance. The harbor rested with thousands and thousands of ships, cranes, sheds, and piers in front of me. Stairs and viaducts, trains, and carriages were everywhere, and miles of rails in grey and blue nuances, covered by smoky fog, were spotted in all directions. How strange are the cities, man built out in the plane and by the outpour of rivers! But they were part of Work, of human endeavor.
Work, this rather primitive agreement between people, is often not entirely rational or logical, but still, the only meaningful agreement precisely because it, since primordial times, stay based on reciprocity. This small mutual agreement is quite fundamental. Since the earliest epochs, there was no other decency to be found in the world of humans than in the simple understanding of Work. Some say that slavery was born the day after Work was invented. I realize that. Maybe so… But that does not affect the nobility of Work itself.
The city, this immense organism, the actual big city, skyscraper City, was the predicament, the condition, and the very place of this decency and agreement, and in this decency, quite simply, marked by smoke, fog, and thousand smells, … marvelous. So this was the city of British righteousness, of the righteousness of civilization, I thought, as I folded my collar against the wind from the West, which came in, gust after gust on this evening.
“Of all the airts the wind can blow,
I dearly like the West,
Because there my lovely dearie lives,
The girl that I loe´ best.”
I silently hummed. I always loved Robert Burns. My father was from Edenborough. But as for myself, I have mostly been living in New York.
When I approached my future home, m/s Punjab, now by foot on a distant busy narrow pier, I noticed that my ship, a relatively modern and ingenious one, ( which my former ship, the tanker, was not ) with its 160000 deadweight tons was towering over far more modest and older vessels, which also were part of the London fleet of conventional general cargo ships. This fleet consisted solely of cargo compartments that could carry rare, sensitive, and expensive goods long-distance. These goods typically are famous cars, old aero planes, sculptures, racehorses, circus animals, and ready-made building elements to bridges, in short things that could not be taken across the globe by container ships.
When I was brought out to m/s Punjab by the Company extra ferry, it was already late in the day, 08.00 pm, and I was at the first real sight of her body, impressed by the size and beauty of the ship and, as I thought, the ingenuity with which it was built. In the shade of progress related to the money-intense internet and communication industry, the development of the ancient art of ship construction has been thriving too.
I escaped from the ferry to a steel ladder, on which I, with some effort, climbed up along the side of the vessel. Halfway up a small door, which was set on the side of the ship and had the door neatly shut behind me, when a small elevator in seconds brought me right to the main deck. The decks were perplexing, in light blue, and shining. Leaning towards the hatch of one of the large, square cargo holds, which all four of them were neatly covered with orange steel hoods, large as tennis courts, the Captain was standing, together with the 1st officer, to welcome the new 3rd officer, who so late at night was about to report himself to them.
The ship was magnificent, like a white castell. The Captain was a man in his sixties, thus 25 years my senior, by the name of Daniel H. Stork. He was Irish and born in Dublin. This was his second journey with the Punjab. He told me all this when we, after a walk around the remarkable wonder of a floating castle, which it seemed like to me, were sitting in the gunroom, one deck below, in the aft of the ship. He was a rather tall man, looked more like an American, with dark hair and a piercing look in his blue eyes. Stork had an air of seriousness about him but seemed, all the same, not entirely without vanity.
Last five years, he had been with Rattner &Rattner, mostly on container vessels. He had been the boss on many a tugboat, cargo ship, and ferry and had enjoyed it. The grave but very talkative Irishman said that he had often been flattered by being entrusted as a captain by the Rattners on still more modern, still more expensive, and still more beautiful ships. The executive director of the Amsterdam office had asked him to take on the “Punjab” on a trip with to Surabaya, Java, he thought it was a tough job, and he was looking for a crew, and – through connections, I had been recommended to him as a reliable chap, he said.
The reason the ship too was in a hurry was, though the Captain did not tell me until many weeks later when we had become friends, was that it first-hand was bound to Cherbourg when it should pick up the manager´s daughter. The latter had a yearning to be with the ship on its journey, this time to the exceptional destination it had. The Captain had protested against this, claiming that he was hired to take responsibility for the ship, managed by a company, who was to be governed on reasonable grounds. He could not act in his profession for a company run on grounds such as “not waiting for crew, because the need to pick up the CEO´s daughter.”
Mr. Kaminsky then simply retorted that the Rattner& Rattner Company always had a multitude of agendas, of which getting the cargo out for delivery was the main one. The other reasons were of less importance but had to be waged in, he said. They always said things like that. Miss Kaminsky should be picked up on the 22nd.
The Captain had not in turn answered to this, he recalled but simply told Mr. Kaminsky that as soon as they had left London harbor, he was the Captain. He merely hoped they would reach Cherbourg and Rachel Kaminsky, he had added in a casual tone. “Ultimately, the Ocean decides.”
The Captain was a man of strong will.
The ship was painted white, the hull and deckhouses, hatches, masts, and rafters. The decks were blue. She was enormously big, rectangular in shape, as modern ships are, very high, sturdy, deep, and comprehensive. We were twenty-five people on board, twenty in the crew, and eight passengers, when the two animal tenders, Linda and Dorothy, were included. On this trip, the Captain also brought his young wife, Ruth.
It was now October, the month of storms on the North Sea, and “Punjab” had in the afternoon just haply gotten underway from Amsterdam, via Le Havre, carrying lots of wheat, a couple of cars, and some horses as well as some other animals, amongst them a lion. Then they added more cargo here in London, more machines, an old airplane, parts of a submarine, and more animals, while they unloaded the wheat. The lion was a lioness, brought aboard, of course, in a cage. She was dressed in a suit, a green one, made of thinnest tarp, and, although I just spotted her very casually, as I was inspecting “my new backyard,” I felt sorry for her. To take a lioness from Amsterdam all the way to Java in Indonesia seemed to me on the brink of animal cruelty.
All cargo was stuffed in the big four compartments by experts on loading these things and experts on airplanes and animals. The animals were held in hatch No.1, closest to the main deckhouse and the bridge, amidships.
Like most general cargo bulk carriers have some 4 or 5 holds covered by metal hatch covers, Geared bulk carriers - as the Punjab - are mainly in the giant size range. All ships nowadays are too big. They often have several cranes mounted that allow them to load and discharge cargo everywhere without shore-based equipment in foreign harbors. A typical General Cargo Carrier of the geared bulk type has a crew ship has a crew of somewhere around 13-35. There is a Captain; the Captain is in charge of everything. We always have 3-4 deck Mates, and the 1st Mate’s in charge of the cargo. Chief Engineer, The Chief Engineer, is of course, in charge of the engine and systems. 3 to 4 other Engineers, 1st and 2nd Oiler, 2 to 4 deck crew, and 2 to 3 galley crew, plus Radio-Electronics officer, one Bosun, one Electrician, and a Cook, a Steward, and 2 Steward’s assistants. Some ships house a couple of deck-engine utility men extra.
The Punjab also carried a few passengers: two doctors who were also veterinarians, who mainly were there to look after the horses and the other animals, one author of novels, Mr. Contour, and Mr. Schultz, a banker, probably an acquaintance of the Rattner family or something. Initially, all passengers were told they would have to reside by themselves since captain Stork was busy taking command of a ship that was entirely new for him. The company representative onboard, finally, was Geronimo Weichsel, a supercargo clerk.
Stork wandered around the ship, and one could see it on him that he thought it was way too big by the way he watched his craft. Even I thought it was not wise to build ships of this size. These ships are made in Japan, and the Japanese know what they are doing, of course. Only I wouldn´t say I like these seafaring monsters.
The doctors were a middle-aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson. The writer, who was a tiny, slender boy from Texas, USA, by the name of Paul Contour, claimed he had written a novel set in Baltimore. We were later not able to find it on Amazon or elsewhere, though.
Since it turned out that the only reason Punjab was anchored up in this part of the London harbor was to wait for me, we, as soon as I had accepted to be a member of the crew on this ship, which was set for Surabaya, we raised the anchor, after having telephoned for a tugboat and navigation aid. Then we were sailing out through the Thames and into the English Channel.
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