My Ship


The port agent drove me through the container terminal, which looked just like the one in Osaka. After so many months and so much anticipation, just seeing the lurking ship on the quay was like a milestone.


I think most people see such ships at a distance, where it's difficult to really feel their size. Being next to one, it looms up above you like a skyscraper. The smoothness and lack of windows in the hull makes it seem monolithic.


The MV Hanjin Madrid was built in 2003. It is 278 meters long and 40 meters wide, with a displacement of 68,800 tons. I think it can carry a maximum of 4000 containers or so.
Despite the enormous size of the ship, its actual habitable area is comparatively small. This superstructure here, called the 'house', contains all the cabins, offices, recreation and meal space. On our ship the engine room starts directly below the house and stretches aft a ways toward the stern, and there are a few other storage rooms, for things such as paint, in other areas of the ship, but mainly the house is it.
Topside, there are 9 levels: the 'Upper Deck', which is like ground floor, A (spoken as 'Alpha'), B, C, D, E, F, and G decks, and the Bridge. There is also a walkable space above the bridge, where the view is great but there is no protection from the weather. Here's a brief tour:






Upper Deck:
Gangway, Tool storage, Entrance to Engine room, Laundry Room
A Deck:
Security Office, Stores
B Deck:
Officers' & Crew's mess hall, galley, Crew's rec room
C Deck:
Exercise room, pool, sauna
D Deck:
living quarters
E Deck:
My cabin, Officers' rec room		    
F Deck:
living quarters

G Deck:
living quarters, command office

But the only place worth being is the bridge. If you're not on the bridge, you need to reexamine your life.


There were 22 men on the ship: 1 captain, 4 officers, 3 engineers, and 14 crew. Most of the officers were German, and all but one of the crew were Filipino, and they self-segregated themselves completely along European/Asian lines, with the Filipino 3rd officer choosing to dine with the crew and use the crew's rec room, while the German mechanic (crew) joined the officers and engineers in the officers' mess. I never saw anyone using the officers' rec room, but the crew's was always a hive of activity. I attended a birthday party there for the Polish 2nd engineer, where the Filipinos were passing around a bottle of Fundador, a harsh brandy they loved.

The mechanic was always surly and confrontational, at least to me, but it felt right to have at least one grouchy sailor. The first time I bumped into him, while we were still in port in Yokohama, he scowled and barked "Departure at 17-hundred, jah?". Everyone else was really nice, though. The officers mostly spoke german amongst themselves, but all spoke English to some degree, and would often lapse into it naturally if they entered a room where I or one of the crew were.

The captain was not what I expected. He seemed more like a trucker- he smoked a lot, had a pot-belly, and wore white-and-blue plaid flannel shirts. But he was very friendly. As we were getting ready to leave port that first night, I was in my cabin, not sure what the extent of my freedom was, and the phone in my cabin rang. I had to wrench the receiver out of the cradle- not only was it secured by a powerful magnet, but it must have also had a heavy metal bar inside it. It was Captain Schmeling, with his heavy german accent: "Hello, your captain speaks", he greeted me. I loved that. He invited me up to the bridge to drink coffee and watch the departure, and from then on I was basically a permanent fixture on the bridge. It's where everything's happening. There's radar and binoculars and maps to constantly check. The 2nd officer gave me a tour of it my 2nd day, even letting me steer the ship (very briefly). "It is the most important piece of equipment on the bridge", he said, indicating the coffee maker. The lights are always kept off up there- they have to have their eyes adjusted to whatever the outside light level is, so if you go up at night, it'll be completely dark, except for in the map or radio rooms, which have blackout curtains around them.

Ports

Approaching a port is when everything comes alive. Suddenly, in contrast to the monotony of being at sea, everyone has something to do. Everywhere is busy. I try to stay out of people's way.

One thing I didn't know is that the ship's own personnel never steer the ship into the port. A pilot who is specialized for each particular harbor meets the ship at the beginning of the approach. In the cases I saw, it was between two and 6 hours outside of the port. The pilot is brought out on a small speedboat or tug, and harrowingly boards the ship on a retractable ladder. Then he takes over to navigate the ship the final leg of the way until it is docked. Same thing in reverse for leaving a port.

Containerized shipping allows for much faster loading and unloading than used to be possible, and one consequence of that is a greatly reduced shoreleave period for the ship's crew. In some cases, particularly when the port is a distance from the city proper, it's not even worthwhile to go ashore. When they do go ashore, it's typically only for a few hours, or in some cases overnight.

Before we can depart, Bjorn (the 2nd officer) and Raffi (the steward) search the ship for stowaways and drugs. It seems a comic ritual to them: after every deck, Bjorn asks Raffi, "Did you find any stowaways?" 'No, sir.' "Any drugs?" 'No, sir.' Bjorn looks long at Raffi, as though disappointed. Then they both laugh and continue to the next deck. Bjorn tells me it's useless. "If I was going to hide anything on this ship, I'd put it in one of those" - he gestures out to the thousands of containers stacked on the deck.


Loading Cargo


In Yokohama, I get to see the cargo procedure for the first of several times. I'd seen these 40' standardized container boxes on trucks on the road my whole life; here was another part of that system. The majority of space at the port grounds was taken up by stacks of these boxes. Gantries or giant forklifts are used to take a box from a stack and put it on an empty flatbed truck, then the truck drives over to the ship where another, much larger gantry picks up the box with a rectangular claw and stacks it in or on the ship. The deck crew then secures the box to those around it with long metal stanchions. It seemed there was a range of skill among the 'stevedores', as the cargo loaders are called- in Yokohama, the gantry operator would pick up a box in a few seconds, whisk it to the target spot, and drop it into place like an expert Tetris player. In the American ports, especially Seattle, the operator seemed much less skilled, and would bang the container hard into adjacent ones when setting it down, as though using this hard physical contact deliberately to guide his work.

In the ports, they remove the heavy hatches that cover the hold, so they can access the containers below the top deck.

Ships seen

I had a good pair of binoculars with me that I had bought in Japan, and I spent a lot of time on the ship looking through them. The radar had a range much farther than human sight, and when a triangle-shaped blip appeared I would train my eyes in its direction as soon as there was any hope of seeing it. At first all you could see was an indistinct shadow, or a single point of light at night. As they got closer you could start to see the silhouette, and I came to recognize the basic types of ship from their shape.


There were:

Meals


As a vegetarian, I'm usually apprehensive about getting food in unknown places. The brochure from NSB addressed this directly (emphasis mine):

Meals
- Passengers take their meals with the ship's command in the officers' mess. Please note the following meal times (subject to change):
Breakfast 07.30-08.30
Lunch 11.30-12.30
Dinner 17.30-18.30
European and Asian home cooking is provided by the Philippine cook. In other words, passengers can expect hearty seamen's fare, which the cook prepares for passengers and the entire crew without making any distinctions. Apart from bread, jam, cheese and sausage, a warm dish is nearly always served in the morning and evenings. The drinks usually provided with meals (tea, coffee) are included in the travel price. Other drinks cost extra. It is not possible to prepare special dishes for diabetics or vegetarians.
The cook has to make do with the provisions available up to the next replenishment. You should therefore not insist on the cook meeting any additional requirements.


Nevertheless, I felt sure I could at least get bread or cereal or something at each meal, and subsist on that for the 12 days of the voyage. As it turned out, I had no problems. Although the meals were always centered on a meat entree, there was almost always salad available, rice or potatoes, some sort of boiled or steamed vegetable, and bread & butter. The steward was very helpful once he learned what I didn't eat, and apart from the soups, which were definitely made from a meat broth, he set me up right. Here are the menus from the weeks I was on board.


The first lunch I had in the officers' mess was (for me) sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. It was exactly what I had hoped ship food would be like.

If I wasn't fairly easy to please as far as food goes, though, the repetitiveness might have gotten to me:



I definitely got tired of the recurring flavors and the lack of variety, but it in no way spoiled my trip.

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