Oil rigs and fishing boats as we head for Galveston and the Houston Channel. There’ve been a lot of fishing boats on this voyage. Presumably we don't have to worry about these.
The pilot boat makes a brave show.
Past a wreck from the 1930s and some happy feathered moochers.
Amber approaches the turning basin for the Houston terminal near where a tanker collided with a container ship about a week ago. Slices of Americana to starboard.
The Houston pilot - Mark - points out local landmarks and tells me St. Louis won the World Series.
Mark and the captain discuss our cargo, all those full containers from China and South Korea. Amber will be leaving most in Houston and then loading fifteen hundred empty 40-foot containers for the Far East.
After berthing, Mark kindly presents me with a Houston Pilots pocket knife, which is, other than memories and photos, my one souvenir of the trip. I open it up. Sure enough, the knife’s made in China.
Sixty-three days since departing Newark, which we left four days late because of Hurricane Irene. However, Amber's made up the time and is on schedule. The ship has taken me 23,932.1 nautical miles (27,540.6 miles or 44,322.3 kilometres).
Two hours later, I have a last glimpse of Amber. She may not be a thing of beauty but is a respectable, hardworking, blue-collar kind of a ship.
Well maintained, she might have a life of twenty-five years. But, at the end, there will be no mourning for Amber. Like an old pickup, she will be scrapped - they like to call it recycling nowadays - probably on the China coast, not far from where she was born. There will be no reunions of her officers and crew, no fond group memories of Amber's quirks and rollicking times ashore. Amber will have done her job and then be forgotten.
"Every ship is a romantic object, except the one you sail in,—embark, and the romance quits your vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon." (‘Experience,’ Essays, Second Series Ralph Waldo Emerson 1844)
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There is a final posting - part forty-six.
