NEW WAVE:

Working a Passage (David Tanen, 26 Feb, 2003, Travel)

Monstrous walls of icy Tasman Sea water thirty feet high crash across the bow of the German freighter Columbus America. Sixty knot winds scream through the shipping containers stacked three tall on deck like mutant Lego blocks. 100,000 tons of steel rolls wildly side-to-side like a drunken bucking bronco as she beats her way east towards New Zealand and the red glow of the rising sun. Foamy green seawater sloshes across the deck and stinging salt spray fills the air. Five stories up the ship's master (captain) and a crewman brace themselves against the storm, sip their pre-breakfast coffee and complete their watch in relative comfort. I on the other hand, scuttle on hands and knees through the deepest bowels of the ship, beneath the lowest hold, approximately five stories below deck. I drag a shovel and a bucket, removing rust and flaked off paint chips from this troglodictic labyrinth. The ship's massive engines roar ceaselessly, pushing us forward through wind and sea. The deafening cacophony seeps through my ear protection interrupted only by the disturbing screeches and groans of twisting metal as the ship bucks and rolls. The smell of diesel fuel permeates the dank air and the pores of my skin as my appetite for breakfast rapidly fades. I am a work-away or, as it states on the contract I signed in Melbourne, Australia, a passage-worker.

It's seven am local time and I've been at this for sixty minutes. By the time I climb the steel ladders and stairs up to the main deck and my small cabin and slip out of my dirty coveralls and work boots for breakfast my head is spinning. I join the crew in their dining room, the "schwein messe", where I briefly borrow some scrambled eggs and fried potatoes and retreat to my berth, unable to stand and down for the count. The second officer, the acting medical expert aboard ship, visits my sick bed and declares me, in passable English, unfit for duty. My middle ear, he informs me, needs rest. This is only day ten of my passage, at least thirty more before I reach Philadelphia, my final destination. I think I've made a terrible mistake but what am I to do? I am lower than the most junior member of the ship's crew and I work the tasks assigned me. I have no choice.

I joined the ship in Melbourne and contracted to work for my passage for the 12,000-mile trip to the first U.S. stop, Philadelphia, located an hour from my family's home in New Jersey. It's like in the old black and white movies, hop a freighter and sail the seas, visit exotic lands, pure romance. By the third time I puked that stormy morning, bringing up only yellow bile, my stomach muscles cramping, it no longer seemed romantic.

And people say I wasted a Colgate education.... Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2003 1:43 PM