My near circumnavigation - one time zone short - ends tomorrow. The Gulf of Mexico is providing a rocky farewell. Amber shudders as she ploughs into the waves. Trying to keep steady and camera focused, a shot so far back from the bow is difficult. Tons of exploding water mean, even high on the wing, I feel a slight spray. To port, a tanker gives an idea of conditions.
Later, things improve and I take a final walk on the main deck.
I'm suffering a touch of 'Channel Fever', a term once used by British seamen returning home after months, even years, away. Packing, final meals (Jayson touchingly insists he'll miss me), swapping of email addresses, preparations for the misery of air travel.
In the later days of sail, circumnavigating (with time in ports) took about a year under the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. Suez and Panama, and steam propulsion, greatly improved times. Circumnavigation was reduced to about a hundred days at the start of the 20th century and sixty on fast ships after the Great War. Amber, economizing on fuel, normally takes seventy-six from New York to New York.
The first passenger cruise to almost circle the world was Hamburg America Line’s Cleveland in 1909. The nearly four month voyage, from New York via Suez to San Francisco, cost up to $650. Advertisements promoted a ship “with elevator, grill room, gymnasium, deck swimming pool … princely traveling in balmy climates. Entertainment, lectures, card parties and chaperonage for ladies.”
Cunard’s Laconia left New York in 1922 on the first complete world cruise and, bar wartime, shipping companies have never looked back. I checked some around the world brochure (as opposed to actual) prices for next January. These are Canadian dollars per person in the least expensive, double inside cabin: $23,621 on Holland America's Amsterdam and $24,907 on Cunard's Queen Mary 2. That’s before drinks, laundry, tours in port, tips and so on. By comparison, Amber is bargain basement.
The freighter option isn't new. People used cargo vessels for personal travel long before there were ships specifically for passengers. After the Apostle Paul invoked his right to appeal to Caesar, he journeyed on trading ships, a voyage interrupted by shipwreck.
In the 1930s, the Barber Line freighter Greystoke Castle could take you from New York to New York for $550 on a circumnavigation of about 135 days. By the Second World War, freighter holidays had become quite popular as a cheap, informal alternative to pricey, stuffy passenger liners. But, faster and less expensive airline travel did in the liners, and cargo ships, too, carried fewer passengers.
Watching a freighter on the Thames in the 1970s, I vaguely wondered about working a passage to some exotic destination. The different flags and distant ports of registry could arouse a yearning in even the most practical individual. I know one person, then a university student, who worked his way across the Atlantic in the Sixties.
A few (very few by comparison with the world's merchant fleet) cargo ships still carry passengers. One goes - as you have read in this blog - for the voyage, not for extended stays and rip-roaring nights in out-of-the-way ports of youthful imagination.
Amber has no stabilizers and in the North Pacific rolled like a pig - for days. Her comforts are basic. But, unlike Queen Mary, you can wander onto Amber's bridge anytime or into the officers' pantry to make yourself toast. And, alone at the bow, you can remove your hardhat and watch for flotsam and flying fish.
