Ships
There is something special about being on a big ship, no land in sight. Takes a special type of person too.
Last week I wrote about trains while on a high-speed bullet train. This week, I’m writing about ships while on the Queen Mary, out on the open sea.
It’s romantic, a big ship. You rock, you roll and you feel the slow power of natural forces at work. There is a rumble that goes through your feet and up your body. The coast goes by slowly, slowly until it doesn’t, disappearing like a dot in the distance.
I’m not much of a ship or boat lover. Don’t have the stomach for it. But a large ship like this, I can take for a day or two. Then, I’ll be panicking and want my feet on dry land.
Thinking back on history – hard to imagine in the smaller ships of the time, how people managed to last months out of sight of land, rolling along the waves and wrapped up in nature’s immensity. Must have been disorienting, I imagine it’s why most sailors turned to drink. Or was that because it was the only safe water to drink? Here on this ship, I have a fine restaurant, karaoke rooms and some convenience stores and it isn’t that much different from on land – an apartment building that floats.
Literature owes a huge debt to those that wrote about the sea and life at sea. We can start back as far as the Odyssey and then it is onward to Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick and then Old Man And The Sea and Joshua Slocum. Slocum is a fantastic read and as good as travel writing gets. He went everywhere, alone on his small boat, at home in a field of seawater. A true hero.
People have used boats and ships to discover new lands for 1,000s of years. Everyone is familiar with the pantheon of explorers drilled into our heads during history lessons. The Marco Polo’s of the sea – Cook, Magellan, Columbus, Shackleton. Now, that’s pretty much gone out of business – we can look down from our big telescopes in the sky and see everything, just as it is and was laid out. No need to go exploring from a ship.
Today, most passenger ships are huge cruise ships. Never been on a cruise and not ever gonna go on one. I imagine hell is a cruise ship filled with people you detest. And that’s the rub about them, there is no escape from the crowds, the conforming crowds of people on them. I’d probably end up throwing myself overboard, just to get away or just for some excitement.
Ships are still going strong though. Mostly for transporting goods. Planes are just too costly and can’t carry enough. So most of our goods traded and on our shelves arrive by the slow elephants of the sea bringing cargo. And we act like the cargo cults of old, worshipping this miracle through the rites of credit and purchasing everything we can get our hands on.
I’m a poker player and my favorite saying at the table is “Ship it”. So appropriate.
And that’s a curious thing about ships and ocean-faring life. It’s without a doubt, the greatest source affecting our English language. So much vocabulary, so many idiomatic expressions stem from sailors and those captive on a ship for days on end. I guess, language flourished there … not much else to do but talk and talk and talk and invent words. Ships are creative places. There is a suggestion, a mere guess by linguists that over 5,000 words and expressions stem from nautical origins. Loose cannon, high and dry, batten down the hatches and on and on … And let’s also mention how sailors also borrowed so many words and stuffed the English language full of these exotic gems – loan words (when are we going to give them back?) like shish kabab, pistachio, caravan, kiwi, bungalow …..
As I mentioned, my own seafaring life is scant. A few voyages between ports of call but that’s it. Fortunately, my reading has taken me on many a long sea journey. Today, I’m heading to Jeju Island, off the southern tip of Korea. It’s a pearl drop, volcanic island that is the Hawaii of Korea. I’m going to spend a few days hiking up the highest peak in S. Korea – the volcanic mountain, Halla San, Halla Mountain. Perfect time of year to do it. Few on the trails, and cool temperatures. I’ll be reporting back about the hike, stay tuned.
For now, going to enjoy my ship journey. The land now disappearing in the distance. Alas, alone on a shipful of strangers. Guess I’ll go check out the karaoke room …
I’ll leave you as usual, with a poem. Not one of my own but one I’ve used often when talking about education – how ALL students as precious and the ones we might think of as stupid are actually just seeing the world differently, like a genius. I also agree and have felt the same as this young boy, regarding the ocean.
I Met A Genius
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.
it was the first time I'd
realized
that.
Charles Bukowski
Love getting on an overnight ferry!
I love the English language. The words, the grammar, the expressions, the slang and the history. Nautical stuff even better. I am reading a book now on "apostrophes". Seriously. But someone should take that abstract, and write a book from it. Something readable. Or start a fire with it. What a self-important scholarly bunch of drivel. Ban the Abstract!