Looking for a Ship Quotes

“There is no Weatherfax map on the Stella Lykes—only the barometer, the barographs, the teletypes from NOAA. The radar can see a storm, but that is like seeing a fist just before it hits you. When a storm is out there, somewhere, beyond the visible sky, the ship will let him know. “When you get close to a big storm, you can feel it. For some reason, the ship takes on almost a little uncertainty. She’s almost like a live thing—like they say animals can sense bad weather coming. Sometimes I almost believe a ship can. I know that doesn’t make sense, because she’s steel and wood and metal, but she picks up a little uncertainty, probably something that is being transmitted through the water. It’s hard to define. It’s just a tiny little different motion, a little hesitancy, a little tremble from time to time.” Off”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship

“From seaport to seaport, papers accumulate on the captain’s desk. “Paperwork has become the bane of this job,” he says. “If a ship doesn’t have a good copying machine, it isn’t seaworthy. The more ports, the more papers. South American paperwork is worse than the paperwork anywhere else in the world but the Arab countries and Indonesia.” Deliberately, he allows the pile on his desk to rise until a deep roll on a Pacific swell throws it to the deck and scatters it from bulkhead to bulkhead. This he interprets as a signal that the time has come to do paperwork. The paper carpet may be an inch deep, but he leaves it where it fell. Bending over, he picks up one sheet. He deals with it: makes an entry, writes a letter—does whatever it requires him to do. Then he bends over and picks up another sheet. This goes on for a few days until, literally, he has cleared his deck. The”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship

“A seagoing lieutenant in the United States Navy once asked me if merchant ships have radar. After learning that they do, he asked if the mates use grease pencils. He seemed surprised. Merchant mariners, for their part, tend to characterize Navy people as green and earnest. They joke about the redundant multitudes that inhabit a Navy-ship bridge. There is a story much told by Navy people and yachtsmen about a merchant ship steaming somewhere at nineteen knots with a dog on the bridge, alone on watch. Andy and I call a tale like that an asmut: an apocryphal story much told. One such yarn, which he told that morning, led up to a question that was supposedly put to a merchant skipper as he arrived in port: “Captain, have you seen any sailboats recently?” “No.” “Well, you should have. There’s a mast and rigging hanging from your anchor.” Without”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship

“I wouldn’t have a person around that wanted to hold on to a crossing or passing situation in which a chance of collision was prevalent,” he continued. “The old rule was that the privileged vessel held its course, the burdened vessel had to give way. They followed that rule for a hundred years and piled up one ship after another. The privileged vessel was required to maintain course and speed until such time that only action by both vessels would prevent collision. You had to hang on so long that even if only you took action it was too late. I myself never hung on to a situation that long, even though that was the court interpretation of the rules, and I didn’t abide my officers’ hanging on to it that long. We were out of there before the situation got that close. The rule has been changed now. You are not required to do that. You have more leeway to play with. It’s more a question of prudence and good seamanship now. When I see certain ships, I seem to have some kind of an instinct that says, ‘Hey, give this guy a little more room.’ In ship channels and rivers, you pass fifty feet apart all the time, but that don’t mean it’s apropos to do it in the middle of an ocean. Hey, it’s just like driving, out here. You sail defensively. You cannot depend on that other fella to always stop at the stop sign or not change lanes or give you the right of way or use his blinker signal. You can’t count on him to do anything. Hey, the only way I’m going to get hit is in the stern. Somebody faster who is really after me is going to have to run me down and hit me in the stern.” In”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship