“No problem, Martin. I’ll have the head cook get the stateroom ready.”
“We don’t run to people like stewards on freighters,” Bledsoe explained to me. “The head cook takes responsibility for the captain’s and the guest quarters. Everyone else fends for himself … What time do you figure to sail, John?”
The captain looked at his watch. “We’ve got about eleven more hours of loading, and Tri-State doesn’t want to pay overtime unless it’s just an hour or two. So anytime after nineteen hundred hours tomorrow.”
Bledsoe offered to give me a tour of the ship, if Bemis didn’t object. The captain gave his permission with a tolerant smile. Sheridan followed us down the narrow wooden stairs. “I get to show off the engine room,” he explained.
The bridge was perched on top of the pilothouse. There were four levels above deck, each smaller than the one below it. The captain and the chief engineer had their quarters on the third story, directly below the bridge. Sheridan opened his door so I could take a quick look inside.
I was surprised. “I thought everyone slept in narrow bunk beds with a tiny sink.” The chief engineer had a three-room suite, with an outsize bed in the bedroom, and an office cluttered with paper and tools.
Bledsoe laughed. “That was true in Dana’s day, but times have changed. The crew sleep six to a room but they have a big recreational lounge. They even have a Ping-Pong table, which provides its amusing moments in a high sea.”
The other officers and the head cook shared the second floor with the stateroom. The galley and the dining rooms—the captain’s dining room and crew’s mess—were on the deck floor and the crew’s quarters on the first floor below deck.
“We should have put the officers’ quarters over the stern,” Sheridan told Bledsoe as we went down below the water level to the engine room. “Even up where John and I are the engines throb horribly all night long. I can’t think why we let them build the whole caboodle into the pilothouse.”
We climbed narrow steel rungs set into the wall down to the belly of the ship where the engines lay. Bledsoe disappeared for this part of the tour. “Once the chief gets started on engines he keeps going for a month or two. I’ll see you on deck before you leave.”
“Engine room” was really a misnomer. The engines themselves were in the bottom of the ship, each the size of a small building, say a garage. Moving parts were installed around them on three floors—drive shafts two feet in diameter, foot-wide piston heads, giant valves. Everything was controlled from a small room at the entrance to the holds. A panel some six feet wide and three feet deep was covered with switches and buttons. Transformers, sewage disposal, ballast, as well as the engines themselves, were all operated from there.
Sheridan showed me the controls that could be used for moving the ship. “Remember when the Leif Ericsson ran into the dock the other day? I was telling you about the controls in the engine room. This one is for the port engine, this for the starboard.” They were large metal sticks, easy to move, with clearly marked grooves—“Full ahead, Half ahead, Half astern, Full astern.”
He looked at his watch and laughed. It was after five. “Martin’s right—I’d stay down here all day. I keep forgetting not everyone shares my love of moving parts.”
I assured him I’d found it fascinating. It was hard to figure out on one visit, but interesting. The engines were laid out sort of like a giant car engine, with every piece exposed so it could be cared for quickly. If you were a Lilliputian you would climb up and down a car engine just this way. Every piece would be laid out neatly, easy to get at, just impossible to move.
I went back up to the bridge to pick up my papers. While we’d been down with the engines, the loading had stopped for the day. I watched while a couple of small deck cranes lifted covers over the hatches.
“We won’t bolt ’em down,” Bemis said. “It’s supposed to be clear tonight, for a miracle. I just don’t want to take any chances with four million dollars’ worth of barley.”
Bledsoe came up to us. “Oh, there you are.… Look—I feel I owe you an apology for running lunch the other day. I wondered if I could persuade you to eat dinner with me. There’s a good French restaurant about twenty minutes from here in Crown Point, Indiana.”
I’d worn a black corduroy pantsuit that day and it was covered with fine particles of barley. Bledsoe saw me eye it doubtfully.
“It’s not that formal a place—and there’s some kind of clothesbrush in the stateroom, if you want to brush your suit. You look great, though.”
11
Grounded