WIND-LASHED WORKERS WHO BATTLE THE ATLANTIC IN WINTER
Even at this stormy time of year in Britain there are thousands of oil workers and fishermen
offshore,
as well as a scattering of seafarers manning the container ships and tankers that bring us
almost
everything we need. So it was that in the depths of bitter winter, hoping to learn what modern
sailors’
lives are like, I joined the Maersk Pembroke, a container freighter, on her regular run from
Europe to
Montreal. She looked so dreadful when I found her in Antwerp that I hoped I had the wrong
ship.
1: ______________
Trade between Europe and North America is a footnote to the great west-east and north-south
runs:
companies leave it to older vessels. Pembroke is battered and rusty, reeking of diesel and fishy
chemicals. She is noisy, her bridge and stairwells patrolled by whistling drafts which rise to
howls at
sea. Her paintwork is wretched. The Atlantic has stripped her bow back to a rusted steel snarl.
2: ______________
It felt like a desperate enterprise on a winter night, as the tide raced us down the Scheldt
estuary and
spat us out into the North Sea. According to the weather satellites, the Atlantic was storms
from coast
to coast, two systems meeting in the middle of our course. On the far side, ice awaited. We
were behind
schedule, the captain desperate for speed. “Six-metre waves are OK; any bigger you have to
slow down
or you kill your ship” he said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky!”
3: ______________
Soon enough, we were in the midst of those feared storms. A nightmare in darkness, a north
Atlantic
storm is like a wild dream by day, a region of racing elements and livid colour, bursting
turquoise foam,
violent sunlight, and darkening magenta waves. There is little you can do once committed
except lash
everything down and enjoy what sleep you can before it becomes impossible. Pembroke is
more than
200 m long and weighs more than 38,000 tons, but the swells threw her about like a tin toy.
4: ______________
When they hit us squarely, the whole ship reared, groaning and staggering, shuddered by
shocking force.
We plunged and tottered for three days before there was a lull. But even then, an ordinary day
involved
unpleasant jobs in extreme conditions. I joined a welding party that descended to the hold: a
dripping,
tilting cathedral composed of vast tanks of toxins and organophosphates, where a rusted hatch
cover
defied a cheap grinder blade in a fountain of sparks. As we continued west, the wind
thickened with
sleet, then snow as the next storm arrived.
5: ______________
All was well in that regard and, after the storms, we were relieved to enter the St Lawrence
River. The
ice was not thick enough to hinder us; we passed Quebec City in a glittering blue dawn and
made
Montreal after sunset, its downtown towers rising out of the tundra night. Huge trucks came
for our
containers.
6: ______________
But without them and their combined defiance of the elements there could be nothing like
what we call
‘life’ at all. Seafarers are not sentimental, but some are quite romantic. They would like to
think we
thought of them, particularly when the forecast says storms at sea.
A. Others felt the same. We were ‘the only idiots out here’, as several men remarked. We felt
our
isolation like vulnerability; proof that we had chosen obscure, quixotic lives.
В. Going out on deck in such conditions tempted death. Nevertheless, the ship’s electrician
climbed a
ladder out there every four hours to check that the milk, cheese and well-travelled Argentine
beef we
carried were still frozen in refrigerated containers.
C. But it does not take long to develop affection for a ship, even the Pembroke — the time it
takes her
to carry you beyond swimming distance from land, in fact. When I learnt what was waiting
for us mid-
ocean I became her ardent fan, despite all those deficiencies.
D. There were Dutch bulbs, seaweed fertilizer from Tanzania, Iranian dates for Colombia, Sri
Lankan
tea bags, Polish glue, Hungarian tyres, Indian seeds, and much besides. The sailors are not
told what
they carry. They just keep the ships going.
E. Hoping so, we slipped down the Channel in darkness, with the Dover coastguard wishing
us, “Good
watch, and a safe passage to your destination.” The following evening we left the light of
Bishop Rock
on the Scilly Isles behind. “When we see that again we know we’re home” said the second
mate.
F. Huge black monsters marched at us out of the north-west, striped with white streaks of
foam running
out of the wind’s mouth. The ocean moved in all directions at once and the waves became
enormous,
charging giants of liquid emerald, each demanding its own reckoning.
G. That feeling must have been obvious to the Captain. “She’s been all over the world”, proud
Captain
Koop, a grey-bristled Dutchman, as quick and confident as a Master Mariner must be, told
me. “She
was designed for the South Pacific” he said, wistfully.
