Trouble is a communal creature and it has found a pleasant place to roost right here these past two weeks.
There have been two major fuel leaks on the main engine and multiple mechanical failures in the unloading gear which have made for lengthy delays. As if that weren’t enough, just a few days ago our auto-pilot and gyro compass gave up the ghost northbound on Lake Huron. Had this occurred at night, in fog or elsewhere it could have had catastrophic consequences, but by day it only made steering a challenge and caused the vessels in our vicinity to wonder what the hell we were up to as we fish-tailed our way up the lake.
“We’ve got a month of stone,” I heard the captain say on the phone not long after I returned to work. This means limestone, dolomite and granite are the order of the day here on the M____. We collect it mainly, in gravel and sand form, from docks in Northern Lake Huron, the North Channel and Lake Michigan. The docks themselves tend to be isolated places surrounded tightly by trees and dense wilderness, unlike where we deposit the loads south, industrial areas on the outskirts of big cities or yards in the midst of suburban residential sprawl. The cargo bound for construction sites and roads all over the continent. Tight turnaround times and short distances between docks means that the stone trade is rough on the ship and its gear and tiring for the crew.
“These aren’t problems”, says the captain sagely on the bridge one day. “They’re challenges.” He has seen it all and remains as ever unfazed by all fortune throws our way.
In the absence of wind, a stolid haze descends on the lakes in the summer months. The heat hums and is still and heavy. Often, late in the day, violent thunder squalls will roll through and we’ll be lashed with torrential rain, lightning and strong gusts for a few minutes, after which the air will feel briefly clear, only for it to congeal and quickly become oppressive again.
The thick heat, combined with our mechanical issues and busy schedule, causes tempers to fray. I relieve the watch from Al who is broad and tall as an alp. He expresses to me his frustration with some of the new hands. Unlike previous seasons there is a lot of new blood in our crew, which means that things don’t always tick over with the quiet efficiency we have become used to.
‘It’s like nobody knows what they’re doing anymore,’ he says. Al is a conscientious worker and seems to take it personally when things don’t go to plan. While he can be a generous crew mate, he does not suffer fools gladly, which is refreshing, unless of course you happen to be the fool.
It consistently amazes me how in some of the squalid places we load and unload cargo nature still finds its way. At the Sandusky coal dock, swallows build their mud nests beneath the steel trestles of the dark, Satanic load rig. Amidst the clamor, squeal and clash of railcars and pulleys they frantically busy the air at dusk and dawn in search of food. Below on the dock large black snakes slither in the coal dust and feast on rats and birds eggs. A few days ago in Thunder Bay I watched an otter forage in the tall grass ashore. I thought, how beautiful this creature is; its sleek form, the oily glisten of its pelt.
“Where’s my 12 gauge when I need it,’ said a young engineer from Newfoundland standing next to me as he took aim with an imaginary shotgun and pulled the trigger, a smile smeared from ear to ear.
On Lake Erie I was with Denver the third mate at the midship rail as a seagull hovered a stones throw away and cast its caustic eye upon us.
‘They’re a protected species you know,’ he says, which is news to me given their prolific numbers and propensity to cause trouble. But then why would you want to kill a seagull? They’re not good eating, I reason, and aren’t they supposed to be the souls of sailors lost at sea? At least that’s what my mother told me. Even so, I have always admired them their irascibility and the lonely skirl of their cry. They must be the most human of birds given their rapacious greed and endless capacity for murder.
So it is business as usual here on the lakes. The cargo moves. It does not stop. And through it all the swallows still titter and hunt beneath the load rig in Sandusky, Ohio and seagulls everywhere endlessly squabble for their dibs while all over the world wars are waged, won and lost, money changes hands, governments are deposed and terrible crimes are uncovered. This is the way of nature. This is the way of men.
“You never know what’s in store for you each day when you wake up on the M______”, says T.L in surprisingly good humour. He is our beleaguered head cargo man who has had by any standard, one hell of a week. He is familiar as we all are, with the petrous quality of time when, despite how much we all may like our jobs, sometimes there are places you would much rather be. He knows how it is to observe the viscous passage of days as the month lollygags along, its minutes measured in the endless stream of cargo that passes through our holds. At the end of each unload he goes to bed having rolled a boulder up a mountain, only to get up the next day and find it has rolled back down again.