The most dangerous thing on a 25-hour sea crossing is the failure to pace yourself. Our ship, the Princess of Scandinavia, had limited facilities, but with proper planning and organisation the time should have flown by. In practice, the only thing to have flown by were Ryanair planes en route to the same destination in a twentieth of the time. Everyone knows that the key to a long journey is to bide your time, but all the sandwiches had been eaten and we were on our second game of Canasta before we had even pulled away from the quayside. I decided to go on deck and look meaningfully at the sea, or at least, the murky waters of the Tyne.
Tynemouth is a great port to leave from; on reflection, I was surprised that there weren’t hundreds of Geordies simply throwing themselves into the water and swimming for their lives.
My points of reference for all things ship-shape are extremely limited: Melville’s Moby Dick, Titanic and the seminal 1962 work, Carry on Cruising. Admittedly, a sea passage that starts in such depressing surroundings will never have the glitz of a cruise in the Aegean, but I still wanted to wave off the crowds with my white hanky and then ask a gurning Kenneth Williams the way to the Poop Deck. With only the off-white sheets hanging from a balcony on a council estate as a send off and a cheery Danish crew whose idea of a double entendre is Health and Safety, we sailed away from England towards the High Seas: Steady as she goes!
Back inside with my family I set about killing the next 24 and a half hours. We started with the ship’s Bingo, hosted by Stoffer, the entertainment officer. Judging by the amount of gold braid stripes on his epaulettes he ranked somewhere between Rear Admiral and Vice Commodore. As entertainment goes, he started well, delivering the rules of Bingo in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and English - as usual the Finns were excluded. As soon as he started calling the numbers, he lost the crowd. My advice to him would be not to translate ‘Clickety Click’ and ‘Two Little Ducks’. Pirate Konrad was introduced to entertain the kiddies. He had a patch over one eye and teeth blacked out. At the sight of the sour-faced Konrad, most of the under-tens clung to their parents for dear life.
“There will be a children’s disco in Heaven Eleven – Everyone welcome”
The children clung tighter and a couple of lorry drivers stood up.
Stoffer tried again.
“Tonight’s band Tivoli Dub has come all the way from Copenhagen”
A Danish Reggae band. Oh joy! I look at my watch and we still have another 24 hours to go. Considering all the options, I suggest doing the journey the Swedish way and just getting drunk, but this is not, as I am told in no uncertain terms by my girlfriend, conducive to childcare on a boat. Even my son even gives me a disapproving stare. I was simply trying to immerse myself in the culture. Nevertheless, alcohol is not required as being on a ship is very much like being drunk – stumbling around, lurching into furniture, throwing up and being unable to remember where your cabin is. Telling the Swedes from the sober passengers became increasingly hard as night set in and the North Sea began to swell.
Eventually, we decided that sleep was the only option left to us. Our cabin on Deck 2, was an airless, windowless cabin below sea level - the steerage if you will. To all intents and purposes, this was the second cheapest place to berth. Below us, on Deck 1, the rats and the Irish, ankle deep in bilge, occupied the cheapest cabins. They sang, danced and cavorted late into the night, despite being firmly locked in and regularly beaten by the crew. They were having a good time in a way that only abject poverty and blissful rural ignorance can teach you – It’s true, just watch Titanic.
All At Sea
Ben Kersley on the long route from England to Sweden
Refreshed by one of the best night’s sleep of my life, rocked gently by the pitch and roll of the North Sea, I went back on deck to see the sun rise. Out on open water, the wind blowing me squarely in the face, reddening my cheeks, I felt exhilarated by the expanse of the horizon, uninterrupted by land. Looking around, other men were also leaning on railings occupied by what Melville describes as Ocean Reveries, dreaming of Piracy on the Spanish Main, dusky Tahitian maidens or sea monsters dragging sailors to a watery grave. And this is on the North Sea Ferry to Gothenburg. Imagine if I ever go anywhere interesting by boat!
My soul renewed and any cynicism blown away by the chill North wind, I hunt out some capricious adventure, starting with the bows of the ship, which Kenneth Williams would have described as the pointy end. Predictably, a couple were standing as close as the DANGER - No Entry signs allowed them, sharing a moment.
“I’m the king of the world,” she shouted
I became the three who is a crowd by tapping them on the shoulder and telling them that that was Leonardo’s line. After all, it is an epic, and like many men, watching Kate Winslet in Titanic, I have often wondered what she would have been like to have gone down on.
The pool on the top deck was where I inevitably found myself, a rectangle of bright blue punctuating the drizzly grey, the water lapping over the sides mimicking the waves below. A group were already in the pool. Using my cultural radar, I knew they had to be Eastern European: Leopard skin Speedos, one-handed press-ups and raucous laughter are all tell tale signs.
“Come in. Have a beer!”
I needed no more encouragement and jumped into the water. My new best friends were a Lithuanian family eking out the last morsels of pleasure from their summer break to Scotland. (Summer and Scotland – surely a paradox?). We spoke about the kinds of things that men usually talk about: Football, beer, cars, petrol. Then after a lull in the conversation, my drinking buddy turned to me earnestly and said:
“Have you ever read the poems of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva?”
I lied and told him that I had, which brought a tear to his eye. Where else in the world, at that exact moment, were two men sitting half naked, up to their waists in sea water, with rain falling on their heads, discussing Russian literature? I gave him a second and asked him which football team he supported.
When I look at my Grandma’s albums with photographs of cruises in the Med during the Roaring Twenties, everyone, in their full-length bathers, seems to be having a gay old time of it. They larked about, playing quoights and holding fancy dress competitions where people made a real effort: skelingtons, cowboys and Black and White minstrels. Most of all, through the hazy monograph prints you can see the real sense of adventure in their eyes. They aren’t just sailing for the fun of it, although they are having plenty, they are sailing because this was the budget travel of their day, well before Ryanair and Easyjet turned us into cattle, herding us through the turnstiles of glorified shopping centres. We have passed the Golden Age of Seafaring and the days when going on a sea voyage held a whiff of adventure are well behind us. Travelling by ship is now just a faint taste of what it was to be a journeyman; every mile worked for and observed as it approaches, then disappears over the horizon. The monotony of the sea brings its own unpredictability, never knowing when you may meet another ship, whale, marlin or albatross. Or maybe, like me, a literary Lithuanian.
