Mary Elting

“ The sea anchor floats ahead of the boat and keeps it pointed toward the wind,{46} while the oil drips slowly out and calms the waves. It’s important to be pointed into the wind, because a boat that bobs around sidewise can easily be tipped over by a wave. Long ago sailors discovered what a wonderful help oil can be in stormy weather, and that’s where the expression “oil on troubled waters” came from. It means to calm things down.
A blast from the ship’s whistle tells seamen when it’s time for lifeboat drill. Every man knows which boat he’s supposed to use. ”

“ But a ferry could never go to sea. She is built very broad, with very little of her under the water and a great deal above. Big ocean waves would tip her over.
Men have used ferries from the earliest times. Hundreds and even thousands of years ago people and animals were ferried across rivers on rafts. Even today there are raft-like ferries which men guide across our rivers by steel cables.
Train ferries take loaded freight cars across harbors where there are no railroad{80} bridges. In some harbors, the cars travel on flat-bottomed barges which tugboats shove along. ”

“ A tug is a vessel that looks small but has an enormously powerful engine—an engine almost as big as one that moves a cargo ship. In fact, the tugboat’s job is to push and pull cargo and passenger ships around. ”

“ The old-fashioned engines that used to explode are gone now. So are the candles and whale-oil lamps that lighted ships. All these caused fires in wooden vessels. But even today, when most ships are made of steel, with fireproofing equipment, there’s work for fireboats to do.
The seamen aboard fireboats belong to the Fire Department. They do deck work or engine work, and they also handle the pumps and nozzles that shoot enormous streams of water. The pumps suck in water through holes in the side of the boat and force it through hoses and nozzles that can be aimed like big guns. ”

“ Today the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey carries on the work Hassler started. Using many ships and small boats with marvellous equipment, the scientific men of the sea go about their important and often dangerous work. It’s their job to map the earth that lies under the oceans, rivers and harbors. ”

“ People supply the power for the propeller. They push handles back and forth. Even on this most modern ship in the world, there are boats that move in the oldest way—by muscle power.
The four propellers of the liner herself are each as tall as a two-storey house. They are turned by enormous steam turbine engines. Smoke from the boilers goes out through unusual-looking stacks. Inside each one are giant filters that take away most of the soot. Besides, there are wings called vanes at the top of the stacks to help keep the smoke from swirling down onto the deck. ”

“ The day a ship returns safely has always been important to seafaring men. It’s especially important if she has made a new record of some kind. All the seamen in New York harbor were excited when the passenger liner United States came in after crossing the Atlantic faster than any other liner had ever done. ”

“ Many towboats have all of the latest inventions for quick and safe travelling in water that is often more tricky than the open sea. There’s a lot of traffic to watch out for on the Mississippi, and the river sweeps around in many bends. ”

“ When Jim first went to sea, he found that seamen speak a language of their own. A floor is always a deck. A partition between rooms is a bulkhead. A ceiling is the overhead. Stairs are always a ladder. The opening onto a deck at the head of the steps is a companionway. Almost all ropes are called lines.
One day another seaman said to Jim: “The bosun wants you to break out the handy billy in the forepeak and take it aft to Chips. ”

“ He never calls a freighter or a tanker or any large vessel a boat. Only shoreside people who have never been to sea make the mistake of calling a ship a boat. And shoreside people never know the excitement and fun—and the long, hard work—that the skillful men of the sea know every day of their lives.{10}
STANDING WATCH
Jim is a sailor on a freighter carrying cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Every morning at half-past three, someone comes into the forecastle. That’s the seamen’s name for their sleeping quarters. ”

“ Rivers have channels marked with buoys, too, and men who belong to the United States Coast Guard Service have the job of placing and repairing them.
The Coast Guard also cares for lighthouses at dangerous points along the shore. Powerful lights and foghorns in the lighthouses warn ships away from rocks or shallow water and also help them find out exactly where they are. In some places, lightships anchored in the sea do this same job. A lightship is really a giant buoy. Seamen live aboard her to care for the safety equipment. ”

“ Jim watches the dark, heaving ocean for two hours. He’s glad when his coffee time comes. That’s ten minutes of rest he gets after standing watch for two hours. When another lookout comes to the crow’s nest to take his place, he warms up in the mess and then goes to the wheelhouse. There he works for two hours steering the ship. He stands his watch at the wheel.
The wheelhouse is dark, so that the mate can see through the big windows anything that the lookout reports. The only light comes from instruments, such as the compass. ”

“ On some ships there is a big piston, like the driving rod on railroad engine wheels. One end of it moves in a circle. The oiler has to squirt oil in a little cup at the end of the piston. Every time the cup swings up where he can reach it, he aims his oil can. He is very careful to aim straight. If he misses the cup, oil splashes all over.
No matter how careful he is, some oil does get spilled and spattered around. It is the job of the oiler{31} to wipe it up and to polish all the brass fixtures, which he calls the brightwork. On deck, ordinary seamen polish the brightwork. ”

“ Seamen sometimes call a pier a dock, but a dock is really the water between piers.
A hatch or hatchway is an opening in the deck of a vessel. People can go down a hatch, and so can cargo. Big strong poles called booms raise and lower cargo through hatches. ”

“ When the water is all out, there she stands, balanced and braced. Now men can work under her and all over her—and inside. They{51} scrape off the barnacles, paint the hull, and repair any parts that have begun to wear out. To reach some parts of the hull painters use long-handled brushes—really long. They’re often three times as tall as a man!
Experts go over the ship as carefully as doctors examine people. But many men work at top speed in shifts around the clock, and a ship often spends only twenty-four hours in drydock. ”

“ Machinery pulls the whale up the ramp and onto the deck. There men with knives that look like big hockey sticks cut up the blubber and throw it into vats where the whale oil is boiled out.{49}
Hour after hour the killer boats bring in whales, sometimes forty or fifty a day—or even more! Everybody works day and night, with very little time to eat and sleep. The oil tanks in the factory ship begin to fill up. Now an ordinary tanker comes alongside. The whale oil is pumped from the factory ship to the tanker which delivers it at some big port thousands of miles away. ”

“ Today almost five hundred modern cargo vessels{61} shuttle back and forth on the Lakes, carrying the wealth that the descendants of those pioneers have created.
A Great Lakes ship doesn’t look like any other. She is broad and low and very long—so long, in fact that she is less rigid than most ships. Seamen say she feels “willowy” if she steams along in heavy weather after her cargo is unloaded. The wheelhouse of a Lakes ship is forward in the bow, along with quarters for the officers and a few passengers. The engine and the crew’s quarters are away at the stern. ”

“ A delicate machine records the echoes made when the sound waves bounce back from the deep valleys and the high mountain tops that lie beneath the surface. Scientists know how fast sound travels in water, so they can tell exactly how deep it is. ”

“ Sometimes as she goes along, seamen on board toss money to ice cream sellers on shore, and catch the pop-sticks that are thrown back.
For eight months each year, the Lake ships keep hurrying back and forth between Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Chicago, Duluth and other port cities. There’s hardly a time when a man can’t see smoke from other vessels on the horizon. Then winter comes, and the Lakes freeze over. Lake sailors tie up their ships and go ashore. Most of them have been on the water day and night through the whole season. ”

“ Quickly the men lower a boat that sets a huge net called a purse-seine. At first the net is really a fence. Hundreds of floating corks at the top, and lead weights at the bottom, hold it in place, while the seine-boat draws it into a circle around the fish. ”

“ In his time off, he may listen to radio or even watch television on board the towboat. In the old days, he would have caught fish and fried them over a fire built in a pile of sand on the keelboat deck. Today the cook takes food from a freezer, prepares it on an electric range, and stows the dirty dishes in an automatic dishwasher.
In the old days, the river was the quickest way for{60} passengers to travel, and for freight, too. People now go faster by bus or train or plane. But there’s more and more cargo for the barges to carry on the Mississippi and the other rivers that flow into it. ”

“ The sun is shining, and it is warm out on deck. Jim has all afternoon until four o’clock to himself. This is how he spends it: First he gets a bucket of cold water and puts it under a little faucet that brings up steam from the engine room. He runs steam into the water, and it’s hot in a few seconds. Out on the afterdeck, sailors have rigged up a washboard.
Jim spreads his dirty clothes on the board and scrubs them with a brush and soap and his steam-heated water. Seamen do a lot of washing. They like to keep their clothes clean. Often they do their own mending, too. ”

“ Lars’s tanker looks very different from a freighter. She is long and low and has two houses. One is midships, and the officers’ quarters and wheelhouse are there. The crew lives in the other house at the stern.
Between the two houses the deck is so low that{38} waves often wash over it, and so there has to be a high bridge called a walkaway or a catwalk.
Lars says his particular tanker carries “clean” oil. By that he means oil that has been refined into different grades of gasoline. “Dirty” oil is crude oil just the way it comes out of the wells. Lars is a tankerman and a seaman. ”

“ A sailor knows how to do many things besides stand lookout and steer. If a line breaks, he can mend it by splicing the ends together with a tool called a marlinspike. If lines wear thin, he puts in new ones—and lines are needed in a great many places on even the most modern ships. ”

“ Actually, they aren’t boats, although they do carry bananas. They are refrigerator ships. Seamen call them reefers—just as railroad men call a refrigerator car a reefer. Everything about a banana boat is arranged to keep her cargo cool. She is even painted white, because white things reflect some of the sun’s rays into the air{44} instead of absorbing their heat. Inside the ship, blowers send cool air circulating around the bananas all the time. It isn’t enough just to chill them once and leave them there. Bananas actually make heat themselves. ”

“ The rudder is so big that often a dozen men have to work on it. Many junks have colored sails.
WEGIAN SHIPS. Old Viking ships that sailed from Norway had both oars and brightly decorated sails. Vikings were such good seamen they crossed the Atlantic in their open ships. Norwegians are still seafarers. Boys who want to be sailors get training on a sailing ship.
{40}
Lars used to work on a tanker that brought oil from the Persian Gulf. When he went ashore there, he saw boats just like the earliest ones that men invented thousands of years ago. ”

“ In a real emergency, the boats would be lowered into the sea, and the men would scramble down rope ladders which are kept ready on deck. But in a drill, seamen just test the davits and lines.
Most lifeboats are double-enders. This means that the bow and stern are rounded and look just alike. The rounded shape helps keep waves from tumbling in at either end. Lifeboats are modeled after the old-time boats in which sailors rowed away from sailing vessels when they went out to harpoon whales.{47} ”

“ Using a special gun, men on the cutter shoot a lifeline across to the sinking ship, and a breeches buoy is rigged on it. This is a canvas seat, made like a pair of short pants. The seat hangs from a wheel called a block which runs along the line. One by one the seamen sit in the seat and are pulled along to safety.
CHARTS FOR SAFETY
In the days when the United States was still a very new country, many people in Europe longed for the freedom they were sure they could find here. One of them was Ferdinand Hassler, a young Swiss mathematician. ”

“ Tides are very different at different places along our enormous coastline, and they change from one day to another. The Coast and Geodetic Survey has worked out a wonderful way of telling ships about tides in advance. Every day, records pour into Washington from all along the seacoast. ”

“ All of these things interest Lars. He grew up by the sea in Norway, and his people have been seamen since the days of the Vikings. But best of all he likes the clean, modern, comfortable tankers. He is not only going somewhere himself when he is on a tanker. He is also helping to carry a cargo that helps other people to go places. ”