I. Read the article and grasp its main idea.In extremely generalized terms, what makes or breaks a trip to sea? What makes a trip to sea good or bad, and how, in a few simple sentences or words, can such a trip be described as being different from the last? I ask these questions, merely to spark conversation. I know the answer yet I would be hard put to divulge it in a concise and easily understood manner! As I sit here, having only just started what might be my fortieth or fiftieth trip to sea I’m pondering over the life of a seafarer, looking back over the last twenty years and wondering if all my trips have had the same structure, the same cohesive points that make them flow. Or is each individual trip as different from the next as a day trip on the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow is to a hike up Everest! To encapsulate a trip within set boundaries in an attempt to give it structure, all start from the point that the front door is shut of the house! The clamber into the taxi, the emotional farewells at the airport or the simple “see ya’ll later” in the pub the night before are not relevant, simple window dressing scenarios to the physical departure. The trip starts from the point that the first foot is placed in front of the other in the direction of the vessel and whether it is a plane, train or taxi, a three day journey or a saunter down the road it matters not! At the other end of the haul; the trip finishes when the trailing foot arrives inside the home and the front door is once again shut! Many seafarers might like to suggest that the trip starts and ends at the gangway, the travelling to and from the vessel mere time-wasting periods that bear no relation or connection to the trip itself but, simply put, without the travel the trip could not start or for that matter draw to a conclusion. Thus in this respect all trips, regardless of vessel type, length of trip or location, are all the same, they start at the front door of the home. In all actuality every trip can be read like a book! Each trip has a beginning, middle and an end! The travel to the ship in all probability would be the introduction or the forward, the travel back home the summary or appendix, seemingly tagged on at the end as an afterthought to pad the story out but necessary to compliment the book as a whole. It is a seafarer’s nature to wish that he were back home however well the trip flows and so upon joining a vessel the trip stretches out like a long road over the horizon, the middle of a trip is seen as a period of no-change or hump and the end of a trip is the downhill slide, a loosening of the reigns as the number of days completed outweighs those still to do. In most cases the beginning of a trip could be seen as the slog up the hill of an especially large ski-slope, the middle a trek to the edge of the slope and the end the rapid ski downhill to the finish post. Whilst the travel to and from a vessel is in-basis unemotional, the body of the trip is where vast differences might exist, hatred of the vessel and an eagerness to see the experience drawing to a close might compete with an ever increasing love and tenderness towards the ship and a wish that the trip would never end. In all cases these emotions will vary as the days tick onwards from the first to the last! Trip lengths vary from company to company and vessel to vessel! Those on offshore vessels have in some instances come to view anything longer than two months as an extremely long trip whilst others sailing on tankers might say the same after six months have lapsed! A fly on the wall in the mess room might come to the conclusion that all seafarers are extremely unhappy in their work, that they hate any member of the crew that is not currently with them in the bar, that they dislike their work immensely and that they can’t wait to get off! The same fly might be very wrong in his conclusions drawn from the grumbling around him! Most seafarers grumble, it is second nature and comes before civilized conversation; communal disagreement with life and the company, the vessel and the world draws people closer, gives them a point through which to co-exist and seafarers are no different than any other grouping. They grumble from sunrise to sunset and should a beer or two be downed then the grumbles might continue all through the night! The fly on the wall might also surmise that most seafarers spend their trip ticking days off the calendar, wishing silently that it was not the 15th but the 16th whilst wondering continuously why the days never seem to pass quick enough! Seafarers do tend to place emphasis on day-watching, often when waking up their eyes shoot immediately to the large calendar with a sexy lady on it to check that another day has, in fact, been breached! At some later point of the day great satisfaction will be obtained from drawing a large black line through yesterday’s date, as if a milestone has been passed or a large obstacle has been hurdled. The fly on the ship will combine the noted facts that seafarers grumble and that they spend a lot of time wishing they were elsewhere but he would be wrong to surmise that these conclusions mean much if anything at all! All seafarers grumble and tick off the days, in fact many seafarers grumble at home and wish they were at sea to get away from the wife and their life; therefore every trip possesses those features and thus this description cannot be used to describe an individual trip to sea. The main reason for any seafarer to be on a ship is to work! They are hired by a company to perform duties according to guidelines and job descriptions set! Certainly, the actual work that a seafarer ends up doing can vary wildly from the written, can differ greatly from trip to trip despite the same rank being held and can be extremely physical, deadly boring, brain straining or dirty and it can even be a surprising combination of two or more of the above during different periods of the trip. One day the seafarer is scratching his brain over a mighty technical problem that even the manufacturers have given up on, the next he might be mucking-out a scavenger space covered head to toe in black soot and with the prospect of another three days of the sweaty toil before respite will appear. A seafarer may join his ship under the impression that he is to be an engineering officer in charge of a watch only to find that he will be purely entering stores and spares into a new computer for the two-month stint, a supposed navigating officer might find himself in charge of cadet training, a surprise posting that sends shivers of dread up his spine! Work though is something that all seafarers have to do! It is not a choice! Most seafarers join a vessel with an open mind, ready for anything that will be placed in their path and for the most part will take onboard the work that is prescribed upon joining! If it is mucking out the stables, then so be it! The idea of work being a major contributor towards how a trip pans out is therefore not to be seriously considered. Of course, the uninitiated might think that the place, the location of work will make or break a trip! Certainly, working out of Aberdeen, a home port for many and with a pub around every corner, might be considered ideal whilst a spot in Nigeria might be viewed as a second cousin to torture! An oil tanker that never actually gets to touch dry land might be considered a far worse option than a ship berthed in Singapore that never quite manages to leave port! There are always sides to each of these scenarios though, sides that break down the benefits or advantages of one and boosts those of another! The oil tanker that never gets to port can be an easy job, the Aberdeen supply vessel expensive on the bank account and damaging to the liver. The ship in Singapore deadly boring, the Nigerian contract a pleasure as it is on a brand new state-of-the-art vessel. To curtail this digging into the subject and to prevent any further tangents being made; people make a trip, fellow seafarers, those that are onboard and those that will arrive all combine to make or break a trip! It is the culture that is formed through the individuals sailing on any vessel that ultimately decide whether the trip is a good one or a bad one! The atmosphere that prevails and the feelings that are received can so easily turn a great ship into a miserable existence and a rusty tin-can into a forum for hilarity and happiness! Whether the ship is in Nigeria, Singapore or Timbuktu and regardless of the contract, the time in port or the days spent fighting the seas or the state of the vessel itself nothing can influence the outcome of a trip more than the characters found within. An abusive Chief Engineer or a hysterical Captain, are definite candidates for making life miserable for all onboard. The Chief Mate or the Second Engineer could also fit into this category for the junior ranks under their command! But anybody can make life miserable for others, especially in these days of minimum manning when each and every crew member is integral to the satisfactory running of the vessel. A Second Mate who is more than useless in his job produces an unsafe environment in which to work, others cannot sleep as they worry over whether this guy will smack a rig, run the vessel aground or discharge oil to the sea instead of topping up the lifeboat engines fuel tank! An engineer who is grumpy, who likes to play dangerous practical jokes or who tampers with equipment to make sure that the boat remains alongside so that he can go ashore again can ultimately produce a very unhappy vessel! Even the cook, whose task is easily summed up as to provide three daily meals for the crew, can turn a happy ship into one filled with antagonism and anger! Simply by producing three insufficient and bland tasting meals every day automatically leads to a hungry and discontented bunch of seafarers, whose grumbling stomachs feed anger to the brain! It is the people onboard a vessel that gives most input into how a trip pans out! To take for example a ship that is working in one particular spot in the world; a certain seafarer might enjoy life onboard with the current crew that he is working with! Take the next trip, on the same ship and in the same place, all factors exactly the same except for the fact that there is a completely different crew onboard. In the first scenario; maybe the seafarer had lots to talk about and discuss with others, maybe a hobby shared or a political viewpoint agreed! And then the next trip, with a whole new set of people there never seems to be anything worth while to share, the evenings passing like a snail on tour! Maybe the first trip was a series of spurts of work interspaced by high humor and frequent trips ashore to get drunk and the second trip one of silence and abstinence because nobody else liked to drink! It is not always the individual that can ruin or make a trip! The prevailing culture onboard can be made up of a million and one tiny little aspects yet all combining to produce one of two results, a positive culture or a negative one! It might also be noted that where one seafarer thinks the culture is negative another might find it positive; the seafarer who loves to party the night away might find a culture borne of abstinence a bit restrictive, whilst a God-loving Bible-basher might find the affair between the second mate and the oiler a bit hard to swallow! It must be remembered that countries, ships and work are all knowns; work is something to be experienced, countries are there to be explored and ships to be mollycoddled and treated with iron fists! These are solid objects that are always part and parcel of being at sea. It is the seafarers, the individuals; each and every one arriving onboard with their very own feelings, views and thoughts on what they would like life on the ship to be like. They are individuals and when they are thrown together they produce a culture that not even the cleverest psychologist, the most educated councilor or experienced seafarer could have predicted. Cultures are borne from individuals and it is this culture that will eventually give back to the individual a sense of having had a good trip and one worth repeating or a disaster that they would not like to repeat in a million years. By Ieuan Dolby II. Answer the questions.1. Did the author manage to answer the questions “What makes or breaks a trip to sea”? 2. How does a trip start and finish in accord with the author’s ideas? 3. Why does the author compare a trip with reading a book? 4. What does the attitude of a seafarer to the ship depend on? 5. What impression do seafarers make on the author at first sight? 6. Can the location of the ship make a trip? Good or bad? 7. What gives most input into how a trip pans out? 8. What is the prevailing culture on board made up of? Compiled by Galina Goumovskaya
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The twenty-sixth day of May
Mother likes the country best;
I. Read the text.