Aboard the Cho Yang Atlas. On to Rotterdam, London, and home . . . acg
Arbreux at sea Aboard the Cho Yang Atlas.
On to
Rotterdam, London, and home .
. . acg
Monday, September 27, 1999
We have puffy cotton-ball clouds this morning over the Mediterranean as we approach Sicily and Malta at the toe of Italy’s boot. The sea is quietly calm with only a hint of tiny white caps here and there. The Third Mate tells me that we are unlikely to see either of the islands as our route takes us through the Malta Strait. Out on the forecastle this morning I counted nine fishing trawlers, all painted white and easy to see on the horizon. There were several freighters, too, and one ferry ship, gleaming white on the horizon.
This afternoon the Mediterranean is as smooth as glass with hardly a ripple. It is still warm, but we are out of the tropics now so the sun does not seem so intense. The mornings are nippy, and in a couple of days we will be turning north into the Atlantic, thus ending the summer wardrobe. The sky has cleared and it should be a good night for watching the stars. I have been reading Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. Conrad was born in the Russian dominated area of Poland in 1857. The Russians punished his parents for their Polish nationalist activities and both died while Conrad was still a child. When he was just seventeen, he left Poland for France where he began his maritime career. He attempted suicide in 1878 but survived to join the British Merchant Navy where he spent nearly twenty years at sea before becoming a full-time novelist. In The Heart of Darkness he describes the fabled Thames River. In just ten days, the Cho Yang Atlas will dock at Felixstowe somewhere near the mount of the Thames. His description will help me view it from a different perspective:
"Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the pacific yet august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, ‘followed the sea’ with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames."
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your Presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there. If I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn If I settle on the far side of the sea Even there Your hand will guide me Your right hand will hold me fast. --Psalm 139:8-10
I awoke about 0300 this morning and realized we were going through a storm, with heavy rain and lightning. The rain continued until 0600 and the sky appears to be clearing somewhat here on the western end of the Mediterranean. We are just north of Algiers and south of Majorca and Barcelona. Captain Mahnke said we will pass through the Pillars of Hercules sometime early tomorrow morning. I made a brief foray out onto the forecastle this morning to "barometer" the weather. There’s a south wind blowing, but the temperature is definitely dropping. Well, shouldn’t it now that autumn has officially arrived five days ago? And tomorrow we will be heading northward in the higher latitudes. I have my winter wardrobe ready!
Among my favorite writers is Britain’s F. W. Boreham. Here is an edited essay about Abraham Lincoln that appears in his book The Temple of Topaz written a half century ago. Boreham compares Lincoln to Moses, saying Lincoln, too, metaphorically climbed Mt. Sinai.
The massive personality of Abraham Lincoln is like a granite boulder torn from a rugged hillside. Too gigantic to be localized he bursts all the bounds of nationality and takes his place in history as a huge cosmopolite. As Edward Stanton so finely exclaimed, in announcing that the last breath of the assassinated President had been drawn, "He belongs henceforth to the ages!" He was an immense human…Some men are far mightier than their achievement. What they do is great; but what they are is infinitely greater. Abraham Lincoln is the outstanding example of the men of this towering and gigantic cast. The world contains millions of people who know little of American history, and who have but the haziest notions as to the issues at stake in the Civil War, yet upon whose ears the name of Abraham Lincoln falls like an encrusted tradition, like a golden legend, like a brave, inspiring song. Lincoln climbed Mount Sinai with Moses... Abraham Lincoln’s young mother died when he was barely nine. Her husband had to nurse her, close her eyes, make her coffin, and dig her grave. Abraham helped him carry that melancholy burden from the desolated cabin to its lonely resting-place in the woods. He never forgot that mother of his. "All that I am," he used to say, "my angel-mother made me!" And the memory that lingered the longest was the thought of her as she sat in the old log-cabin teaching him the Ten Commandments. Many a time afterwards, when he was asked how he had found the courage to decline some tempting bribe, or to resist some particularly insidious suggestion, he said that, in the critical hour, he heard his mother’s voice repeating once more the old, old words: "I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before Me." He treasured all through life her last words: "I am going away from you, Abraham, and shall not return. I know that you will be a good boy, and you will be kind to your Father. I want you to live as I have taught you, to love your Heavenly Father and to keep His commandments."
President McKinley has told us how, in that fateful hour (when he left Springfield to assume the Presidency), Lincoln received a flag... On its silken folds he read, beautifully worked, the words: "Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: For the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so shall I be with thee The greatest grief of his life was the death of his son.
As the boy lay dying, Lincoln’s reason seemed in peril. Miss Ida Tarbell has told the sad story with great delicacy and judgment. When the dread blow fell, the nurse and the father stood with bowed heads beside the dead boy, and then the nurse, out of her own deep experience of human sorrow and of divine comfort, pointed the weeping President to her Savior.
The work that this private sorrow began, the public sorrow completed. Lincoln had long yearned for a fuller, sweeter, more satisfying faith. "I have been reading the Beatitudes," he tells a friend, "and can at least claim the blessing that is pronounced upon those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." He was to hunger no longer. A few days before his death he told of the way in which the peace of heaven stole into his heart. "When I left Springfield," he said, not without a thought of the flag and its inscription, "I asked the people to pray for me; I was not a Christian. When I buried my son—the severest trial of my life—I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg, and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ."
From that moment, Dr. Hill says, the habitual attitude of his mind was expressed in the words: "God be merciful to me, a sinner!" With tears in his eyes he told his friends that he had found the faith that he had longed for. He realized, he said, that his heart was changed, and that he loved the Savior. The President was at the Cross! Happily, he lived to see the sunshine that followed the storm. He lived to see Peace and Union and Emancipation triumphant.
His last hours were spent amidst services of thanksgiving and festivals of rejoicing. One of these celebrations was being held in Ford’s Theater at Washington. The President was there, and attracted as much attention as the actors. But his mind was not on the play. Indeed, it was nearly over when he arrived.
He leaned forward, talking, under his breath, to Mrs. Lincoln. The war was over, he said, he would like to take her for a tour of the East. They would visit Palestine—would see Gethsemane and Calvary—would walk together the streets of Jeru___! But before the word was finished, a pistol shot - "the maddest pistol - shot in the history of the ages" - rang through the theater…
I’ve just returned from my evening hike on the main deck. The sky tonight is spotlessly clear and the ocean remains calm. We passed a lot of ships today in this main thoroughfare from Europe to Asia. Also, for the first time I saw the vapor trails of an airliner headed from Europe to Africa. I recalled flying that route from Paris and Geneva to such places as Nairobi, Bangui, Dakar, Monrovia, Abijan, Dar-es-Salaam, and I let my imagination run wild. Now comes word from Captain Mahnke that we will not be stopping in LeHavre because of a labor strike in France. That means an earlier arrival in Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Felixstowe. Tomorrow – the Atlantic Ocean!
Wednesday, September 29, 1999
Ursa Major with the Big Dipper’s handle pointing straight down on Gibraltar marked our passage this morning through the Pillars of Hercules. Greek mythology says that Hercules, patron Greek god of human labor, flung the Rock of Gibraltar down here on his journey to capture the Red Oxen of Geryones. Across the strait on the Morocco side he tossed another rock, Ceuta.
Together these two rocks form the bottleneck to the Mediterranean. It was not until the second century B. C. that the Romans sailed through these Pillars. Before then, Mediterranean people believed that beyond the Pillars was nothing except chaos, darkness, the Isles of the Hesperides, the lost continent of Atlantis, and a purple river of hellish waters. Amazingly, the perfect weather continues even here in the temperamental Atlantic Ocean. The sky is cloudless and the sea is calm as we begin our ascent up the Spanish-Portuguese coast toward Lisbon and the Bay of Biscay.
For some distance today we were in sight of the Portuguese coast. On one of the towering cliffs overlooking the Atlantic was a Moorish fortress castle, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Also, I saw the first American U. S. Navy ship on this voyage – a supply ship. Captain Mahnke said that earlier we had passed a U. S. aircraft carrier on the port side. All day long there have been small vessels along the continental shelf. One small yacht with sails hoisted was far enough off shore to possibly be headed for the Azores. I find myself wondering about the occupants of these small craft out so far from land, always with a bit of trepidation; I send up a wee plea to heaven for their safe landfall.
Thursday, September 30, 1999
"The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and the stars differ from stars in splendor." --I Corinthians 15:41
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Such is today’s admonition as we leave the coast of Spain and head toward England and the Netherlands across the Bay of Biscay. The Third Mate informed me at breakfast that a low-pressure area to our west accounts for the heavy swells this morning. The ship tosses front to rear and side-to-side. Out my starboard window we have just passed two tankers in which the spray makes invisible their main decks.
The matter-of-fact attitude of our crew, all seasoned sailors, gives reassurance to this novice. This weather, I informed them at breakfast, gives the voyage adventure, and they smiled. "Don’t mind me", I tell them, "I’m a mental case." And they laugh with me. Overhead a canopy of threatening clouds lying low beneath large spots of blue sky make for a dramatic sunrise. The sun sends sprays of light through a prism of colors, with the tops of the clouds etched in gold and silver. Somewhere in poetic verse Kipling talked about the sun coming up like thunder; such is the dawn I am witnessing today and every second seems more dramatic than the moment before. Suddenly it breaks through in soaring power and disperses the clouds completely.
Over there beyond my eastern horizon, perhaps in Paris on the Champs d’Elyssee, Provence, Arles, or Normandy it is raining this morning. But at least for now, the clouds are gone and the ship bathes in the morning sunshine. All day long the Cho Yang Atlas has ridden the heavy swells. The morning sunshine was eclipsed with heavy clouds in the afternoon. We’ve passed a number of struggling smaller vessels and moments ago at dinner the Captain said there was a rescue operation underway nearby for a capsized sailboat. Another ship was closer and the sailor is safe. The white caps are the largest I’ve seen on this voyage. The wind whips spray off the top of each swell and the sun’s prism turns them into rainbows. Sometime in the night we will enter the English Channel and tomorrow evening will arrive in Rotterdam. September will have given way to October. Time passes at sea, too, slowly but surely.
Friday, October 1, 1999
I would hurry to my place of shelter far from the tempest and the storm. --Psalm 55:8
We have reached the English Channel this morning and from somewhere in England I heard British news broadcast: an earthquake in Mexico and a nuclear accident in Japan. The sea, although still choppy, is considerably more placid this morning, with mixed clouds. Our route today will take us past the Isle of Wight, Brighton, and Dover on the port (English) side and the Channel Islands, Cherbourg, and Calais on the starboard (French) side. We have a scheduled arrival time in Rotterdam of 2200. The fierce sea today gives me a better appreciation of the life of the sailor; they must take the bad and fair weather with equanimity; so must I for the short time remaining for me.
Saturday, October 2, 1999 - Rotterdam
Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as imposters; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. --II Cor. 6:4-10
A severe storm this morning in the North Sea delays our arrival at port. We are anchored near Rotterdam in swelling seas awaiting a pilot and a berth at the dock. The steward told me that sometimes the weather is too treacherous for pilot boats; sometimes the harbor pilot is flown by helicopter to the ship. Also, weather conditions are sometimes so dangerous that the pilot will remain on board and go to the ship’s next scheduled destination before returning to his homeport. Today blustery winds rock the ship and the swells lift and drop it with a noticeable thud. Rain lashes hard against the starboard windows of my cabin. Visibility is nil. It has been eighteen days since the ship left Singapore and the crew seems anxious for shore leave to make phone calls home. In due time the storm will abate and we will be docked. The sea teaches us patience.
I have spent most of the day editing the manuscript for this book and making minor changes. Now, the ship is moving toward the dock area and we will soon be at the berth. Today’s storm has passed and now the sky is blue with fluffy clouds. The wind is still brisk, reminding me that winter has arrived here in Holland. I think of the daffodils which came from here that are now buried at Arbreux, awaiting resurrection next spring, more than five thousand miles away. The times and seasons pass quickly, as do the seasons of our life. My passage on the Cho Yang Atlas will soon come to an end. This time next week, I’ll be packed to fly home from London’s Gatwick Airport. Yes, I’ve been there, too, long ago, in another passage. Longfellow put it in a poetic line: Nothing now is left but majesty memory. And I give thanks that most of my memories are majestic.
Sunday, October 3, 1999
Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus is my meditation this Sunday morning in Holland. His admonition to the Ephesians 2000 years ago is still contemporary.
"…to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on a new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. --Ephesians 4:23-24
It is chilly and overcast this morning in Rotterdam, but the rain and strong winds have ceased and the loading operation is well underway. Rotterdam’s port facility here is designed to handle the new super-container ships with state-of-the-art computers for loading and unloading. Overhead cranes here appear to identical to those at all the other ports. However, here containers are lifted onto a trains of wagons pulled by a tractor/truck. Each tractor pulls five loader wagons. The tractor/truck is equipped with a computer that tells the driver exactly where to park the wagon beneath the crane’s loading dolly. Smaller mobile cranes unload the wagons and stack the containers in numbered rows along painted lines in precision formation like military soldiers mustered for a parade.
A master computer bank tracks each container’s location at all times, whether it is stored awaiting shipment, on a loading dolly, a trailer, a crane, or a ship as well as the origin and final destination For a casual observer, it all seems somewhat miraculous. We’ve had mixed weather today and even a few snowflakes this afternoon. Now we’re having a thunderstorm and strong winds. But the ship is in port and I will sleep well tonight. The only video in the ship’s library that I cared to watch was Ben Hur. So I’ve been watching it tonight. It won eleven Oscars at the Academy Awards in 1959, forty long years ago, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Charlston Heston), and Best Director (William Wyler). It’s too long, so I’ll watch the last half tomorrow night.
Monday, October 4, 1999
"…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe, as you hold out the word of life." --Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi (2:13-16).
I am still reading Paul’s epistles and when I read that verse last night, I thought — Wow! Shining like stars in the universe? That has a new meaning for me now, having gazed at the canopy of heaven several nights at sea when the sky was cloudless and there were no sounds except the waves of the ocean. But, oh, what a magnificence…and obligation! And contrasted with the darkness of the world, surely for many struggling with depression, looking for the light of a smile, for any glint of joy and laughter, for any hint of love that may be left in the world. No wonder Jesus said "Love one another…" C. S. Lewis wrote that we are commanded to love even the most unlovable because in Eternity they may appear as a being so dazzling we cannot look upon them – shining like stars?
Loading at the Rotterdam dock has been delayed because of heavy rainstorms overnight. Each compartment’s hold on the ship will store almost as many containers as the area above it on the main deck. Normally, when the hold is filled, a gigantic lid seals the hold. When the heavy rains came, several holds were still exposed and filled with water. All but one have now been pumped dry and sealed. So we hope to be underway to Hamburg by noon.
The ten hour trek to Hamburg takes us along the coast of Holland to the west of the Frisian Islands that form the outer banks of the Zuider Zee, famous in folklore. We will enter the Elbe River and go inland a few miles past Bremerhaven to Hamburg. The port of Bremerhaven is familiar to almost any veteran who may have been posted in Belgium, Germany, France, or Holland. It was this port to and from which all military posts were supplied and all household goods and personal vehicles were shipped.
The Karmann-Ghia Volkswagen that took me all over Germany was shipped home to America from Bremerhaven. I named her Gretchen and fell passionately in love with her. She was faithful and never once refused to take me where I wanted or needed to go. Alas, she had an ignominious end. I traded her for a Volkswagen Beetle but a friend bought her from the dealer. She had increased in value to more than I had paid for her four years earlier. On a fateful afternoon in 1975, she was smashed from the sky as an airborne sixteen-wheeler left a freeway in Little Rock , Arkansas and capsized on top of her in a parking lot. More majesty memories flood in as I recall the good times with her in Deutschland with dear friends, Wiesbaden where I lived, Bavaria, Octoberfests, schnitzel, wurst, hanchen mit essig und pommes frites (chicken with vinegar and French fries), and the magic of castles on the Rhine. I thought of myself as poor then but how rich I was then — and now, with memories!
We had another slight delay when one of the containers was misplaced and locked sideways. I watched with empathy for the crane operators and loaders atop the containers as they struggled with unlocking the miscreant. Finally, the container slipped loose and was able to be reloaded and locked properly in place. The Third Mate told me that containers are packed for safety so that contents are properly secured from the elements and balanced to prevent movement and friction while at sea. According to Peter Nichols writing in Sea Change, sometimes containers are thrown while in rough seas. However, from my observation, I believe this is a rare event because of the precautions taken while loading and the evident danger for small vessels. We departed Rotterdam at 1200. Ships I listed in the harbor were the Trein Maersk, Lindo Maersk, Sealand Atlantic New York, HMS Portugal, Sten Tor, Elbe, Hanjin Washington, Courage, the ferry Rosebay, and tankers Margaron, Vlumen, Veghel, and Hein. Leaving the harbor, I counted fourteen large ships at anchor offshore awaiting berths; a busy seaport is Rotterdam!
A ships’ agent in Rotterdam brought aboard current issues of the Wall Street Journal and London’s Financial Times. This was the first newspaper I had read for a month and a half. I was surprised to find that there’s not a peep of news in either one of them about the United States. However, the Financial Times had a lead story covering a full page that examines the world’s supply of water and states that the world is dangerously short, predicting a global crisis in just twenty years.
According to Philip Ball, water is a liquid far more valuable than oil and is likely to run out sooner. After all the water I’ve seen for the past six weeks, imagine my incredulity! According to Ball, fresh water is constantly renewed by nature’s cycles, but at any instant less than 100th of 1 percent of the planet’s surface water is suitable and available for human use. Seawater is of virtually no value for direct human use and its salt content makes it toxic to living organisms. To remove the salt is almost prohibitively expensive and only wealthy countries conduct large-scale desalinization to obtain fresh water. Meanwhile, available sources of fresh water are shrinking because of pollution. Ball’s alarmist views are sure to help sell his book H²0, A Biography of Water. The comments that got my attention were
"The bitter irony is that our planet is two thirds blue" and "We need to learn to value water, to see it not as a repository for waste or a limitless commodity that can be flushed down the pan, but as a kind of blue gold."
I’ve had another several moments of serendipity! From the forward windows of the library and officers’ dayroom just below the bridge, I watched as the ship headed directly into a storm with blue sky and sunshine to our aft. A rainbow with the most intensive colors arched directly over the Cho Yang Atlas and became more brilliant as we neared the storm. It remained for a full fifteen minutes, terminating directly on either side of the ship and magnifying itself into a double rainbow. I lamented that my camera has malfunctioned; the scene is permanently implanted on my memory.
We are being pushed by a strong aft wind up the European coast toward Hamburg. The pilot who came onboard to help us negotiate the Elbe River into Hamburg said this would speed our arrival time. Again we have very choppy seas. Looking out the cabin windows toward the horizon you sense that the ship is in a canyon and you are looking uphill. In good weather at sea, you sense that you are looking downhill to the horizon’s jumping off place. We are near enough to the offshore islands to see them while buoys mark the edge of the continental shelf for safety of large vessels.
After dinner tonight I watched the last half of Ben Hur. I had forgotten how it ended. Miriam and Tirzah, the mother and sister of Judah Ben Hur, are healed of their leprosy just at the moment of Jesus’ death upon the Cross. The movie faithfully reproduces the storm that took place at the moment of His death and as I watched this scene, we were going through a real storm at sea. It made the ending of the movie even more dramatic.
Tuesday, October 5, 1999 - Hamburg
"Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go." --James 3:4
James compared a ship’s rudder with the tongue, with emphasis on taming it. Yesterday afternoon the ship was driven by strong winds for sure. And all along I kept wondering, with the strong winds and turbulent seas, why I had not left the ship in Rotterdam and boarded a ferry to Felixstowe, thus an extra day in London. But then I thought: "I would have missed that magnificent rainbow!" There was my pot of gold! We docked in Hamburg this morning at 0600. The cranes are on the port side of the ship this time and so I can watch the harbor traffic from my cabin window. Another change in schedule. Captain Mahnke informed me that we will go to LeHavre before Felixstowe. It means an extra two days on the ship with only one day in London. The turnaround in LeHavre will be a short 15 hours, subject to change!
Meanwhile, more adventure at sea! The first thing I noticed this morning when I looked over the skyline of Hamburg with my binoculars was the number of church steeples in this industrial city. I counted eleven from my cabin windows. Those steeples make a powerful statement, just by being there still. No matter that perhaps only a handful of faithful believers still worship there, Christianity survives. These few are the remnant Jesus called the salt of the earth that gives it flavor and the light of the world, reflecting the glow of His light.
When I focus my binoculars at the top of the steeples of these churches, I see that each one is capped with a Cross. I rack my brain to express my reaction to seeing them, but nothing fills the space in my mind but the Cross itself, and the Cross is all I need. Malcolm Muggeridge, looking back over his long life, saw the Cross as the symbol of significance for human pain and affliction and in the end, the one thing that gave his life meaning:
"Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful. I now look back on them with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness whether pursued or attained. In other words, I say this, if it were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo-jumbo, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the cross signifies and it is the cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ."
Muggeridge’s testimony reminds me of the apostle Paul’s words to the church at Rome which have always reverberated with meaning for me:
"Not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us."--Romans 5:3-5.
It has been a sunny, delightful day in Hamburg. There’s been more hustle and bustle around and aboard the ship than usual because this is where the ship is provisioned for the entire round-trip trek to Asia and America. A crane lifted a huge load of food, gas canisters, diesel oil, and other supplies onto the platform aft of the cooking galley. The crew hustled to stow it. Two of the German crew will remain here for home leave, and their replacements were welcomed aboard.
The Captain is welcoming and hosting his family tonight. Tomorrow the ship will begin another long round trip three quarters of the way around the world. I admire and salute their dedication, sacrifice, and professionalism. The Captain said today that few professions "on the ground" allowed such teamwork and esprit-de-corps for the professional. I agree. And the work they do is important and needed. Theirs is a very necessary link in the chain of commerce that feeds, clothes, and provisions the whole world and everybody in it. They have justifiable reason to be proud indeed. And I feel very privileged to have been an observer for these few weeks aboard.
Wednesday, October 6, 1999
"But in your hearts set about Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. --I Peter 3:5; 4:11
Clear skies and sunshine this morning to begin our trek to LeHavre, pulling away from the dock at 0830. But windy! The sailing time to LeHavre is about twenty hours. We came into Hamburg on the Elbe River in darkness. Leaving now by daylight in splendid weather permits excellent views of the German countryside and the small villages with pastoral scenes and sheep grazing on the dikes, recalling memories of my years living in Deutschland.
Two passengers joined us in Hamburg, so I will have brief opportunity to make new friends! They come from Stuttgart and Munich. We passed the German welcome center and was invited on the bridge where a sound system on shore played the last stanza of the German national anthem. Captain Mahnke explained that singing or playing the first two stanzas of the national anthem after the war was unacceptable to Americans who misinterpreted the nationalistic theme to mean "Germany above all others" and was consequently forbidden.
Hamburg’s harbor is approximately 100 miles inland from the sea, so the going is slow with small pleasure craft, fishing trawlers, pilot boats, and ferries along the river. A cloud of gulls trailed one of the fishing trawlers, culling for fish, recalling similar scenes when I lived near the sea at Wakkanai, Japan. Also, we passed a tall-mast sailing ship named Fryderyk Chopin, no doubt a national ship of Poland. What national pride in a native genius who gave the world Nocturnes and Polonaise to summon angels. The ship was spectacular and worthy of his name. Still later, another very large yacht under full sail with three masts was on my starboard side, but it was too far away to detect the name.
I have a new appreciation for the skills it must take to take a vessel of this size under full sail out to sea. The ship looked so vulnerable and I felt so safe and secure aboard the Cho Yang Atlas! I must admit to myself a bit of disappointment that the ship was not going directly from Hamburg to Felixstowe as planned. As it is we will go now to LeHavre and back to Felixstowe which will leave only one day in London. But perhaps it will be long enough for me to find the books I’m hoping to find, then set my mind on flying home, ending this odyssey. So comes the end of another day at sea with a spectacular sunset. I give thanks and close down my laptop and say to myself "schlafen gute" (sleep well)!
Thursday, October 7, 1999
"Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon ten thousands. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever! --Revelation 5: 11-13Today was the day I was scheduled to depart the ship but I am on my way to LeHavre. With the earlier schedule, having bypassed LeHavre, I would have been in London yesterday. But then late yesterday came word of a serious train accident in London. I may have been spared much anxiety and stress with transportation disruptions. I give thanks for delays and I learn patience. "All things work together for good…" wrote the apostle Paul. For more than an hour now, I have been seeing the lights of the coast of Dover, directly opposite Calais, on the French coast, as we make our way again into the English Channel. Directly below us somewhere is that infamous tunnel that joins Britain and France.
This morning we were given a tour of the Diesel plant that is the heartbeat of this ship. You descend multiple stairways from the hospital-clean computerized control room past the massive diesel engines to the mammoth propeller to the steering operation center that controls the rudder. Along the way are the water treatment plant that sterilizes water taken from the sea, an incinerator for garbage and trash disposal, and an electric generating plant. A tunnel track beneath the outside walkway of the main deck provides access to the water, electrical, and communications equipment completely around the ship. The whole complex is scrupulously clean.
Well, I’m packing my bags for departure in a couple of hours. I will leave the Cho Yang Atlas because the labor strike in France may delay the ship’s departure for Felixstowe further. I will go to Calais and take the train through the Euro-tunnel to London. So another adventure! So the journal will be continued with an Epilogue in London or at Arbreux.
Saturday, October 9, 1999
Yesterday I said Bon Voyage to my friends on the Cho Yang Atlas and flew to London-Gatwick via Air France from LeHavre. I arrived in London at 0745 after a flight through heavy clouds and turbulent winds nearly all the way. It was exhilarating to discover that I was only a short distance from The Rennaisance Gatwick Hotel where I had made reservations three months ago. After I had a hearty English breakfast, I set out for London on the Gatwick Express.
The first place I wanted to go was Charing Cross Road to find out of print books. The Charing Cross tube station brought me up immediately in front of Lord Nelson’s lions. I recalled that Isac Dinesan in Out of Africa wrote of hearing that lions came to the grave of Denys Fitch Hatton on a hill near the farm in Kenya every afternoon. "Even Lord Nelson doesn’t have live lions…" she wrote. I also went to Harrod’s to buy Christmas gifts and also have lunch in the famous food halls.
Today, I went back to Sir Christopher Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the courtyard is memorial to the Old St. Paul’s Cross. I sat down on the pavement and copied these engraved words:
On this plot of ground stood of old St Paul’s Cross where amid such scenes of good and evil as make up human affairs the conscience of the church and nation though five centuries found public utterance.
While I was copying this, John Martin, a professor at Cambridge University, walked by and stopped to say that just a short while before he had sat and copied those same words himself. For the millennium celebration, he is giving walking tours of London and he shared with me some materials that he had collected about London in his research. I reminded him that the millennium does not come to an end until December 31, 2000. He commented that his wife tells him the same thing and said, "Oh well, give or take a year or two!"
I went to Skoob’s Bookstore because it advertises itself as the "Best Secondhand Bookstore in London." I didn’t find the books I had hoped to find, but added a couple of new old books to my collection. Then I set out to stroll down Bond Street and Savile Row, where Daddy Warbucks got his wardrobe in the hit play and musical, Annie. But the crushing mobs of people sent me scurrying underground and back to Victoria Station to catch the Gatwick Express and to return to my hotel.
Tomorrow, I will fly home to America. After two days of rubbing elbows with thousands of people on the streets of London and in the Underground, I look forward to the peace and solitude of Arbreux, whence I will try to distill this journey into something my mind can contain.
I will have a lot of sorting to do.