Looking for a Ship Read Online Free

In the Strait of Malacca, they attack moving ships. Crewmen line the rails with pressure-charged fire hoses to drive the pirates off the sides. Low-freeboard ships are especially vulnerable to pirates.
    None of this interested Andy a ten-thousandth as much as the age of Whalen’s card. Whalen eventually mentioned what it was. Andy had him beat to death.
    The door opened, a new face came in—blond, heavyset, linebacker man. Even a little cherubic. Curl across the forehead. Beard that could have been panned in a stream. Without a glance around, he walked right over to the desk to sign in for a job. He had just arrived in Charleston from his home, in Montana, and he didn’t need to look for anything. This was, after all, the union of masters as well as mates. The paperwork he quickly completed is known as “clearing for a ship.” Captain of the Sea-Land Performance, he would take over the ship when it arrived in Charleston. Captains and most chief mates are “permanent.” They take
enforced vacations like everybody else, but—at the owners’ behest—they return to their specific ships. With rare exceptions, no second mates or third mates are permanent. Many unlicensed personnel have permanent jobs; most do not.
    In the afternoon, we went to a couple of ship chandlers’. We talked with a fisherman about the fish he was not catching from the battery. We sat on a park bench under the deep shade of live oaks and squinted into the glare of the harbor. Andy said that he had begun to develop second thoughts about the Cygnus. He was unaccustomed to having any kind of choice. His experience instructed him to take the first open ship and risk nothing. Unfortunately, though, the desirability of the jobs before him seemed to rise from one to the next. He needed sea time. Second mates become chief mates not only by passing examinations but also by accumulating sea time. The Cygnus job was significantly short on sea time. For that matter, the Sea-Land trip out of Jacksonville was not what you would call an odyssey. Also, his daily wage and overtime pay would be lower with Sea-Land, because he’d be sailing as third mate. Jacksonville was something of a long shot in any case. And if he went down there he risked losing out on anything that might come up in Charleston in his absence.
    The Stella Lykes was the most appealing ship. Second mate. Interesting run. All the sea time he wanted and needed. But to wait for the Stella Lykes meant weeks, not days, multiplying the possibility that something could go wrong. “It’s a bit of a gamble,” he said. “You never know
if someone’s going to come walking into the hall that day and take it away from you.”
    In less than a day, though, he made up his mind. He would break his own rules. He would pass up the Cygnus and Sea-Land. He would narrow the field and raise the risk. He would wait for the Stella Lykes. In the Merchant Marine, there is an expression that describes what he was doing. He was laying for a ship.

A couple of “PORT RELIEF OFFICER JOBS” were posted on the board. Andy chose to night-mate the Sea-Land Performance from 1600 to 2400. On the same watch, Pizzarelli would night-mate the Cygnus. The two ships were ten miles apart. At midnight, Andy would drive the ten miles in nothing flat, and, further exercising the seniority of his shipping card, relieve Pizzarelli and work the Cygnus until eight in the morning. He would be paid twenty-three dollars an hour. He bought a pack of cigarettes. “If I have cigarettes and a cup of coffee, I’ll feel so rancid I can’t fall asleep,” he said. At home in Maine, he almost never smokes. Night-mating, he has worked sixteen-hour nights back to back and gone to the union hall during the day. There, with his head on a table, he sleeps. Just before the job call, he lifts his head. Night-mating in Charleston, he would make a thousand dollars in less than a