Trains and boats and planes ... and the odd bus: Around the world - parting thoughts

You now know that, while no longer a boy, I am still fascinated by ships. A hint of superstructure on the horizon summons the same questions a distant sail did in the days of galleons and East Indiamen. ‘What ship? Where bound?’ There may be little romance at sea nowadays – or ever – but there is still food for the imagination.

Ship terminals – especially for containers - can be depressingly automated and anonymous. But many ports still offer interest, even tantalizing hints of the bawdy ‘sailortowns’ of old. And stepping onto another continent from a plane does not come close to approaching one of the world’s fabled harbours after weeks at sea.

From my diary:

‘Just before sunrise, on the nineteenth day out from London, I was welcomed on the early morning deck by one of the crew. He gestured theatrically and proclaimed, “Africa!” It was our first sight of land since the Canaries. We had followed in the vanished wakes of those lovely, lavender-hulled, Union-Castle passenger ships that sailed one of the most important of the imperial maritime routes. And, like them, we paused under Table Mountain, took on supplies and mail, and a few hours later had the Cape of Good Hope, the ‘Cape of Storms’, astern.’

Here we are coming into Cape Town. Table Mountain is the flat ridge more or less in the centre of the picture.

Not from a cargo ship, but a tall ship having crossed much of the Pacific, this is our approach to Tahiti. I include the picture for it seems to illustrate the weary sailor’s age-old longing for the land.

In 1839, Charles Darwin wrote:

'At daylight, Tahiti, an island which must for ever [sic] remain classical to the voyager in the South Sea, was in view… the wildest and most precipitous peaks showed themselves towards the centre of the island.’

The view hasn’t changed. Well, bar the buildings, it hasn't changed.

Manaus, Brazil, a thousand miles up the Amazon. I shot these riverboats from an ocean-going ship that had come all the way from the Atlantic.

This is an isolated port on the Philippines island of Leyte.

I found an inter-island chicken roost. Click for a better view of the poultry.

One of the dockers was taking a break.

Cargo ships provide opportunities no passenger vessel could offer. One young engineer officer invited me to join him on his watch and fitted me out with a boiler suit, work gloves, safety boots and ear protectors. We descended by ladders into the depths of a gigantic, clangorous, metal cavern. While I may have little understanding of things technical, even I can appreciate a piston as tall as a man.

Bent double, we entered tunnels where the two shafts vanished beyond the hull and, just beyond, joined the propellers driving us around the world at ninety-two revolutions per minute.

We then squeezed down a narrow shaft.

At the base, faint lights vanished into the distance. This was the duct tunnel, just above the keel. We knelt on a little trolley. Like prisoners of war in The Great Escape, we pulled ourselves by hand virtually the length of the ship, at times through clouds of steam.

On land most of us are constantly seeing new faces. A walk to the supermarket or stop at a coffee shop mean interacting, sometimes with familiar people, often with strangers. If only in passing, there is usually something new. On a ship for weeks, even months, the boundaries and those you with whom you share those boundaries are always the same. The work is the same, too, and done seven days a week. The confined setting, people, routine, are the same.

Sailors adjust to this and there is a camaraderie. There is friction, but, sailors mostly learn how to get along. They have to. When possible, the routine is broken.

Barbecues are popular, too.

The next picture was taken at a party in the Palliser Bay officers’ lounge. The captain and chief engineer were preparing a whiskey bottle with a message.

The next day in the Great Southern Ocean, I threw the bottle from the stern. We were close to what is said to be the remotest spot from land on the planet – 1502 nautical miles from (take your pick) Pitcairn, Easter Island and Peter the First Island.