Yesterday I authorized my bank to wire a deposit reserving a
cabin on a container ship, Rickmers
Shanghai, “or [a] sister vessel,” for my Atlantic passage. Departure from
Philadelphia, enchantingly imprecise, is listed as “on about [sic] early
January 2013.” Apparently we still sail, rather, by the seat of our pants when
once we flew. I emailed as well some personal information to the marine
contractor. The form requires that travelers be able-bodied, given that, unlike
cruise ships, no doctor is aboard; “Passengers must be able to walk and care
for themselves unaided.” Check. They do not transport exiles over the age of
75. Understandable, no problem. Their stipulation that “[h]ealth/accident insurance is
mandatory for the duration of the entire freighter voyage” as well as
“insurance covering international emergency medical evacuation” reminds one how
fragile life can seem on the high seas and how effing expensive it must be to
preserve it in extremis. The total
cost, thus, of ocean-going one-way amounts to almost double the cost of
round-trip airfare, so that tramp-steaming is not for tramps anymore. Freighter
travel caters to the more upscale vagabond.
I was charmed to learn that my port of destination will be
Antwerp, in Belgium. Initial discussions had me leaving Charleston, North
Carolina, and arriving in either Hamburg or Bremerhaven, which is closer, I
suppose, to Poland, but much less poetic. You see, when my grandfather
emigrated from Europe in 1902, he departed from Antwerp and landed in
Philadelphia. Forth and back.
And of course, ironically, the headline from today’s
Polskieradio: Kontenerowiec Huelin
Renouf zderzył
się ze skała
u wybrzeży Alderney, jedną z Wysp Normandskich. “The container
ship Huelin Renouf collided with a rock near the shore of Alderney, one of the Channel
Isles off Normandy.” One's Polish is always just good enough to read headlines like that.
