Agree with you fully. I would have never read a Western if it weren’t for being trapped at sea in the pre-internet/pre-satelite days. It was hard for me to say I read a bad book. We didn’t have any current politics to talk about so we talked about the books, movies & whatever else we brought with us or had planned. Some guys would listen to the shortwave in the bridge but Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey & Art Bell were the only syndicated talk shows that I remember. Art & Paul were fun to listen to.
Concerning “liberal arts education of sorts” & Westerns. Did you ever read this one? He was a former mariner, wrote thousands of books & described the education that you referred to in his memoir. This is his best book IMO.
Yes I did read that one and many of his other books. He’s a legend. Jack London is another of my favorites among the former mariners. Bob Kaufman and Joseph Conrad were also great writers who spent years at sea. Time at sea in those days gave one time for reflection. Great writers resulted.
Langston Hughes, James Michener & many more. The list of great writers who spent stents at sea is long. I think it’s a skill they acquired or a a way they trained their brains while dealing with our solitary lifestyle. Perhaps their attention spans to write such great pieces of literature was honed at sea? Today, the nonstop external connection to the world via electronics is changing us, mariners & land people the same.
Books were the ultimate relaxation even the westerns that featured cowboys dashing hither and yon waving lassos. My grandfather was a drover and his horse never got above a slow trot. He had a rifle, a super loud piercing whistle and an impressive, even by mariners standards, vocabulary of profane language. Dogs hurdled hither and yon snapping at the heels of straying cattle in the dust while he rolled a cigarette.
I didn’t think the books were that bad, though not what I would normally pick from the library at home, of course this was 30 odd years later.
I’m glad my library fits in my pocket these days, able to travel back to the ship hand luggage only (which always makes for funny looks from the ground staff checking in for a Australia-South America flight, “are you sure you have nothing else?”)
The book chest contents had mainly a Christian signature probably because it was a service of the Mission for Seaman, at least during the time I was at sea. It didnot stand for very exciting reading, all sweet and dull, hence the pocket books.
Hand luggage only on the long haul is pretty suspicious, something is very wrong. I would have left you at the gate, too risky to take you along…
Other activities for relaxation were playing cards, mainly Bridge and Jass and for me also, my favorite game, chess.
Some ships have a huge collection of ebooks. But I found out my local libary can get you access to Overdrive as well as Flipster for books and magazines respectively. It’s free lol If you read Bloomberg Businessweek it is much cheaper than the 39.95 a month.
Forget discussing politics rationally. Not these days. It won’t happen. And letting people know who you support could seriously impact your career when it comes down to promotions and disciplinary action. I won’t be specific except to say that I have seen it happen.
Our fleet has very good entertainment setups and wifi/TV is available in every room, the lounges and the mess. Most sensible stewards will shut off the TV during mealtimes, but there are some who keep the damn thing on all day and you are treated to whatever sewage they are currently spewing.
I have noticed (thankfully) that over the past few years politics is spoken about less and less aboard the ships. It seems to be understood by most crew, with America increasingly polarized and each side clinging to it’s camp that there is not much to debate. I find it refreshing to work and live cooperatively with a wide variety of people with opposing views that don’t feel compelled to express them over and over like the parroting extension of cable news that permeates life ashore. The ships give us a chance to live and listen outside our bubbles, very few Americans get a similar opportunity. We have a much better grip on civility than society ashore. As a whole we are an interesting lot and there are far better topics of discussion that occupy our space.
Very true. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I started sailing with a primarily USA crew at the last of my career. The cult will ostracize you or send you into purgatory if you are not careful. Didn’t affect me but it did give some younger crew members pause.
i never was aboard where live tv was available except in port … can’t a captain determinne which channels are available? they do it with porn right? i’d limit it to just a very few channels and make more books available.
Those are the types of shipmates that you drop your friendship with as soon as sign off. I have had several shipmates become lifelong friends who were righties, lefties & don’t-give-a-damn’ers. As mentioned above, most of my current American officers shipmates are more conservative but one of the two from California is left of center. We call him undercover hippy some times but no one has ever gave him a hard time because of his political opinions. Only a bunch duochebags would do that.
Also, some times discussing politics can be constructive if people are reasonable. In 2019 a conservative shipmate from Massachusetts was bitching about his state giving driver licenses to illegal immigrants. He thought I would agree with him because I come from a red state. Instead I told him I wish my state would do the same so more of them would get insurance & register their address, picture & thumb prints with the government. Right now many people who don’t have driver licenses in my state run off after an accident because they’re not insured, don’t want to go to jail over a simple fender bender & we don’t have any evidence tieing them to the vehicle anyways. In my state, we don’t know anything about these people while his state does. He said he changed his opinion on it a few days later. Take a picture of them, get some fingerprints & charge them some money because they are going to drive regardless. Intelligent people should be able to discuss their different political views. The stupid, emotional & drama queens are the problem.
I haven’t read that one. From what I recall about Louis, he also used to book voyages as a passenger on merchant ships to write his novels. I know that John D. McDonald did that, too.
Yup, one of my best friends from my sailing years (who recently passed last year) was completely on the opposite spectrum when it came to politics. That did not prevent us at all from being friends. He is one of the few that I sailed with that has been to my house, as I was to his. Personally, I don’t consider a differing political opinion a deal breaker when it comes to friendship.
If you get time & like real life Forrest Gump type biographies without the celebrity stuff that is your book. It’s a short fast read. L’Amour didn’t graduate college but was obviously smarter than most men & had a head filled with all types of trivia due to his extensive reading & traveling. Below is a paragraph from wikipedia about his life.
“Making his way as a mine assessment worker, professional boxer and merchant seaman, Louis traveled the country and the world, sometimes with his family, sometimes not. He visited all of the western states plus England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama, finally moving with his parents to Choctaw, Oklahoma in the early 1930s. There, he changed his name to Louis L’Amour and settled down to try to make something of himself as a writer.”
From your time sailing with those people, do you think they might “learn something from repentant insurrectionists” if repentant insurrections had to give public apologies to meet a requirement for parole or probation? Or do you think it would feed their insanity & paranoia that causes them to be conspiracy theorists?
