A Ship Of Memories

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

A Ship Of Memories

WE were strolling on the water- , front the other day, and I 1 was taking almost my last look at the ship that carries the most cherished of my travel memories. My companion pointed to her and said: "Look at that old tub!" Well, perhaps, she was an old tub—relatively. Among the ships in the exceptionally full port were several modern ships in the English trade, and my ship was old and had a coal hulk alongside. In these days, of course, coal is a fellow of the baser sort in shipping society. You are either oil or motor, if you are anything important, and a coal-burner is regarded much as' an East Ender is in Mayfair or a lover of Tennyson who happened to stray into a Bloomsbury party. "She's a fine ship," I replied. I knew, what he didn't, that the Tainui was about to make her last voyage. When she sailed a few days ago, she took the same trail as the lonic did two years ago. She is to be sold, perhaps j under a foreign flag, or ' to go to the shipbreakers. I may be hopelessly sentimental, but I think 1 would rather see her dissolved into her elements than trading under another flag. Sea Travelling There are numbers of people who don't like sea travelling. Some of them are debarred from this enjoyment by physical rebellion. I have heard of men and women who were never well one day on the voyage from New Zealand to England. They are to be pitied. Yet even poor sailors can be fond of the sea. Only the other day I found that a woman friend who shared my affection for ships was not always happy in them. Then there is the man who is really too busy to appreciate the glorious idleness of a long voyage. Bernard

Sliaw resented the time spent coming out here and returning. H. G. Wells flew to Australia. Bishop Cleary told me he hated travelling; on his last visit to Europe he flew whenever he could. But to those who like loafing and can afford to do it (or perhaps we should say think they can afford), and love the sea, there is the strongest appeal in a voyage. There is first of all the ship itself. I never cease to wonder that a great ship floats and proceeds on her lawful occasions; that she goes unerringly where she points: that after a fortnight's traverse of a pathless and landless ocean, you are told that at a certain hour such and such a light will be seen ahead, and there it is; that she carries so many people and so much cargo safely and regularly against the blind fury of sea and wind.

By Cyrano

Then there is the infinite variety of sea and sky as the days pass. Romance is a much over-worked word, but I simply cannot dissociate it from $hips. One of the most romantic lines ever written is Masefield's "And seen strange lands from under arched white sails of ships." It is a line we should remember in our centennial year, for our fathers saw a strange land from under sails when they founded New Zealand. We see strange lands from the lofty decks of high-powered liners, but that is no reason why romance should not beckon to us. It is true our sense of wonder is in danger of being dulled by the relatively cushioned ease of to-day's travel. The sea is further away than" it used to be; ships are faster and steadier; we can telephone to our friends and g to the cinema; and the gleam of shipboaid luxury is positively dazzling. However, Marcus Aurelius said that even in a palace life might be lived well, and even on a luxury liner one may get a tang of the sea, and exercise that sense of wonder without which one should stay at home. I once met a man who said of travel exactly what was in my mind. He never took a train or ship journey without feeling that the whole

thing was being done (or his special benefit. I still feel like that—childish though it may seem—and I believe if we lose this feeling entirely we lose the true flavour of travel. As for doing nothing, how delightful it may be for a time. Chesterton refers to people who, "when actually presented with some beautiful blank hours or days," grumble at their blankness. "When given the gift of loneliness, which is the gift of liberty, they will cast it away; they will destroy it deliberately with some dreadful game with cards or a little ball .... For my part I can never get enough nothing to do." Memories of Ships Then there are memories of ships. We keep memories of houses, of armchairs, of horses and dogs, but not of trains or motor cars. Ships are like houses; they have very special memories. The bell of an historic coaster hangs in my porch. She was a little ship as ships go now, but a noble ship in those days; had she not cabins off the saloon? That bell brings back all sorts of things to my mind —holiday runs on the coast; the excitements of being off the chain after the school.year; the mystery of the whistle sounding in a midnight fog; the lifting of a harbour in the early morning; the mingled hot smells of engines, rubber and cooking, with a cool flavour of sea water. "Smells are surer than sounds or sights to make your heat strings crack." They are indeed. But the Tainui was roses with a difference. She took me to England, as she took many of my generation. What I remember is remembered by many— the great achievement of departure, the weeks at sea, so restful and yet so exciting in themselves and so vibrant with anticipation. Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells When shadows pass gigantic on the sand. And softly through the silence beat the bells

Along the Golden Road to Samarkand. Just as sweet, I think, though 1 haven't ridden to Samarkand, to wake at night and feel the tremor of the ship and see the first of dawn framed in the round of the port, to stand on the boatdeck on a starlit night and watch t he

ship float through loveliness like a leaf on the wings of a soft wind, and hear the bell make music of time's passing. She was a homely and comfortable ship, but with a history. She had been torpedoed in the war and taken to port 80 miles stern first. Before the war she had been kissed with disastrous results by a tramp in a fog off the coast of Spain. The blundering bow made a sad mess of refrigerating pipes in her holds, and she limped into Vigo with a meat cargo that soon smelt to heaven. The story of the disposal of that cargo, told in racy sea language, was worth hearing. She witnessed a revolution in Rio, when shells screamed over her. Those were the pie-Panama days, when you went Home by the Horn and saw the loveliest. harbour in the world, and came out by the other cape, and d:i the long run from Capetown to Hobart. And the gnarled old sailor who set out the deck games told tales of the Panama zone in the days before the Americans cleaned it, when out of a sailing ship's company he was almost the only one not stricken by yellow fever. And a steward gave us his opinion of the Mauretania from the point of view of one who had worked in her. It was an interesting set-off to the justified panegyrics on her steaming. Landfall It was from the Tainui's deck that 1 saw the Bishop Light standing out ot the water on a cold spring morning, the Irst sight of England. It was from there that I looked with misty eyes on the patterned loveliness of the English coast, while brown-sailed fishing boats shouted greetings to us. I might, of course, have got my first sight of England from one of many ships, but it happened to be this one, so she is speciallv dear to mc, as others are to other travellers. Such association is a lifelong bond. We follow the fortunes of such a ship, watch her comings and goings. We stroll down and look at her, and perhaps go on board and see if any of the old crowd are there. We try to recapture the contentment of those carefree days. There is a time when ehe comes no more and this time has arrived for the Tainui. Uood-bve. There was a Tainui before this one, and let us hope that, like Arawa, this historic name will be preserved in our shipping. What better names for ships serving Xew Zealand than those o' the twe oaroes Iwt