Aboard the White Sea

ABOARD THE WHITE SEA — This will be a quickie, as I’m still in port and using my phone for Inter­net access, but I’m aboard the White Sea and will be set­ting sail in some hours.

The ride into Pasir Pan­jang Ter­mi­nal was unevent­ful, and the ship­ping com­pany made me use their own dri­ver, as pri­vate vehi­cles aren’t allowed in port for safety rea­sons. But as we approached, the necks of the idle cranes loomed over the trees sur­round­ing the area. With their green and yel­low paint jobs, they evoked strange, mechan­i­cal dinosaurs tow­er­ing over a primeval forest.

Once inside the port, it began to resem­ble a city. Ship­ping con­tain­ers bear­ing the names of Maersk, COSCO, Hyundai and oth­ers were pre­cisely stacked like zig­gu­rats on either side of the street we trav­eled. Let­ters and num­bers sten­ciled on their side, detail­ing the con­tents, ori­gin, des­ti­na­tion, were the “addresses” for the con­tainer in port. For an instant I felt I was back on Broad­way in New York, map­ping the sky­scrap­ers canyons of midtown

And then the ship her­self. Not as big as I imag­ined her, but big enough to stretch beyond my field of vision when I real­ized we were there. Sev­eral cranes were busily load­ing and unload­ing ship­ping con­tain­ers in a sprightly bal­let of steel, cables,  and elec­tro­mag­net­ism that dan­gled metal boxes in mid-​​air before the crane oper­a­tors nes­tled them into place in the hold of the ship with a soft thump, like a heavy door clos­ing sev­eral rooms away.

It worked liked this: The crane loomed over the ship, at least 50 meters or more above me. The cab con­tain­ing the oper­a­tor moved back and forth on oiled rails, and had expan­sive glass win­dows angled down so he could place his cargo. Below him hung a plat­form from steel cables that attached to the top of the ship­ping con­tainer. He moved back, forth, a lit­tle to the left, a bit to the right, and … right there. The con­tainer was snared and quickly lifted and, then, just as pre­cisely, low­ered into the hull. A sin­gle load­ing took less than a minute. I don’t know how many ship­ping con­tain­ers the White Sea will ulti­mately load and unload, but I’m sure it’s more than I expect.

I’ve not met any of the crew yet. They’re quite busy with the cargo. But I had lunch in the offi­cers mess, and a cou­ple of the Philip­pine deck hands came up to say hello and wel­come me on board. One crusty old crab walker looked me up and down as I walked into the mess with a look of intense dis­ap­proval. I deserved it: untucked shirt, flip-​​flops, jeans and unshaven. But he warmed up con­sid­er­ably when he real­ized I was a pas­sen­ger and not crew.

Speak­ing of the crew. Most of them are, I believe, from the Philip­pines, with a Ger­man offi­cer corps. The guy who met me and showed me to my cabin — which is quite nice and has an unob­structed star­board view — seemed vaguely East­ern Euro­pean, but didn’t much feel like talk­ing. A quick dash to drop my bags, a lead to the mess hall, and then he was gone. Who was he? No idea. I guess I’ll find out at some point.

And now, I sit in my cabin, which is two rooms and con­sists of a sit­ting and TV area with a sep­a­rate bed­room and bath­room, wait­ing for the cap­tain to sum­mon me and immi­gra­tion paper­work to be filed. When the ship’s busi­ness is done tonight, I sus­pect I’ll get a safety brief­ing and meet some of the offi­cers. In the mean­time, the White Sea some­times shifts and shud­ders in her berth, as con­tain­ers are loaded and unloaded. While I was eat­ing, the soft thrum of the engine started. Even now, I can sense it rather than hear it, a slight vibra­tion that has taken up res­i­dence behind my sternum.

I’m now going over the exten­sive safety brief­ing the ship­ping com­pany sent me. It makes air­line safety brief­ings seem so cav­a­lier that they might have been drafted by Evel Knievel. My favorite safety warn­ing is this one, however:

Please never enter the bridge from the wing of the nav­i­gat­ing bridge at night, as this can cause poten­tially dan­ger­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings with the bridge crew mem­bers, who may also fear a pirate attack in some areas.

You don’t often get safety warn­ings… about the crew. I won­der if that old guy who didn’t like me at first would shoot me. Think­ing on that, yeah. Definitely.

So this is it: the real last post­ing for 10 days. Oh, Inter­net, I’m going to miss you. But if you love some­thing set it free, blah blah and all that. Don’t let the world end while I’m gone.

Posted from Singapore.