Ship Captain's Daughter

by Ann Michler Lewis

  The company’s “china” featured a red, white, and blue flag with the initials PM in the middle, standing for the company’s founders, Colonel James Pickands and Samuel Mather. Even when the company merged with another to become The Interlake Steamship Company, the fleet continued to be known to its employees as the PM Line.

  The fog began to roll in, and soon the throaty ship whistle started sounding our position every two minutes. Several other ships in the distance began to do the same. Over the whistles, I could hear Dad’s contented snoring. I lay in bed watching my sweatshirt on the wall hook sway back and forth to the rhythm of the rocking of the ship. Two and a half days down, and two and a half days up. I wondered what my friends were doing. I wondered if they thought about me. I wondered if somebody had ridden his bike by my house. I fell asleep, dreaming of sailing in the South Seas with a handsome lover.

  When we started to see the North Shore again on our return trip, I put my hot rollers in, getting ready to disembark in Duluth. Dad was getting ready, too, to enter the port.

  “Want to come up to the pilothouse with me?” he asked, sticking his head in the bedroom door. “But you’ll have to take out those whatchamacallits!”

  He stood there chuckling. I could tell he really wanted me to come up with him. After all, I thought, we would have only a few more hours together, so I took them all out. I put the bobby pins back in the jar, stuck my hair in a ponytail, and went up.

  It was still open water. Dad didn’t have to be “in the window” quite yet, so he told the second mate to stay there, and he went back to the big desk and got the chart out of the drawer. He showed me Two Harbors off to our right. We had passed the Apostle Islands several hours before, but he pointed them out on the chart, knowing that I had been there. He told me about the time he had taken coal to Washburn and then sailed out to Duluth between Bayfield and Basswood and Oak Islands, and how tricky it was because of the currents and shoals.

  Then he closed the drawer, walked up to the window to relieve the mate, looked back at me, and said, “I think you should give the wheelsman a break and take a try at the wheel. I was thinking you should do some wheeling this trip, and here we are already at the end of it.”

  I thought he was kidding, but the wheelsman smiled and said, “Here you go, matey.” He stepped off the little platform, looked at me, and said, “Steering steady as she goes.”

  Dad said, “Go ahead.” When the wheelsman went over to the thermos and started to pour some coffee, I could see that this was serious. I stepped up on the platform, and Dad said, “Now put your hands on ten and two of an imaginary clock and take hold of the spokes of the wheel in those places.” The big wooden wheel was still warm from the wheelsman’s hands, smooth and smelling like furniture polish.

  The wheel in the pilothouse stood on a platform, elevating the wheelsman so he could see out of the surrounding windows.

  “The trick to wheeling is that you have to anticipate the rate at which the ship responds,” Dad said. “You have to get a sense of how long you have to keep the wheel over before it catches. If you hold it over too long one way or the other, the ship turns back and forth too much. Then you’re always overcorrecting it, and it will zigzag. Every ship handles differently, so a good wheelsman learns how long it takes for the rudder to respond on the particular ship he’s wheeling. In open water, what you’re aiming for is to keep a straight wake.

  Mother takes the wheel with her hair up in pin curls under her bandanna, which would come off for dinner at the captain’s table. The humidity, she lamented, often caused her hair to go flat.

  “Now look down in front of you and you’ll see the compass. When you turn the wheel and the ship moves, it will look like the compass is moving the opposite way of the ship. That’s because the ship moves around the compass. You have to get used to that. When I say, ‘Steady as she goes,’ you want to keep the lubbers line on the compass from moving either way.”

  “Do you ever take the wheel?” I asked. “Like if the wheelsman isn’t doing it right?”

  “Nope, I don’t. By the time you’re wheeling a ship like this, you know what you’re doing. My job is to analyze and chart the course. The wheelsman’s job is to get the ship to do it. Your mother’s done it! So let’s practice.”

  He continued, “Take a half-turn to starboard and wait and see how long before the ship grabs hold so you can get an idea of what it feels like.”

  I turned the wheel several spokes to the right and nothing happened, so I turned it some more.

  “Remember,” Dad said, “it takes a while for the ship to answer you. The wheel shaft is about a block long, so just be patient. Another thing, when I give an order, you repeat it. That’s an international sailing law to make sure that the captain knows that the wheelsman has heard exactly what the captain wants.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” I said.

  Then he repeated, “Take it one-half turn to the right,” and I said, “One-half turn to the right,” and in about a minute, it started to turn, a lot. I panicked and quickly turned the wheel the opposite direction to get it to come back. A long minute later, it started to go left, but then it went a little too far. It felt scary, and I wondered out loud what the men on deck were thinking with the ship, all of a sudden, waltzing back and forth.

  The wheelsman laughed. I turned the wheel back the other way.

  “Check your wake,” Dad said. I looked back, and it looked like a Z. “Now you can see how that works. You have to make smaller adjustments. Just let the wheel go now and get itself back to midships and then keep her steady as she goes.”

  “Back to midships,” I said, and I let the wheel go. It went back by itself to the middle, again.

  “Remember, just small adjustments are enough to keep her going straight. Think of yourself as helping the ship find its path. You really have to feel her, how she likes to move. Every ship is different. See that ship in the distance? Keep the steering pole right on it.”

  “Aye, aye, captain,” I said. “Steering pole on the ship.”

  “Attagirl,” he said.

  I kept a pretty straight wake until a little land breeze came up. Then it began to get wavy, and we started to slip off course as the wheel got harder and harder to hold onto. Dad didn’t say anything, but the real wheelsman could see I was struggling. After a few minutes, he got up and stood a few steps behind me.

  In the pilothouse, Dad, left, is pictured with the mate, the watchman, and the wheelsman, who had just come on duty for his four-hour shift.

  He kept hovering there, and then he finally said, “What do you think, Cap?”

  Dad said, “It’s okay, Charlie, let her keep trying. You have to learn how to handle a little chop.” I stuck it out for a while longer, and then the wind got stronger, and the waves started to pound harder. The Aerial Bridge at Duluth was starting to come into view, and there were several ships at anchor, and one coming toward us.

  The wheelsman cleared his throat, and then he said again, “What do you think, Cap?”

  Finally, Dad said, “Okay, Charlie, keep her on the bridge.”

  Charlie said, “On the bridge, sir.” As he stepped up, I stepped down.

  After passing through Duluth’s Aerial Bridge, the SS Herbert C. Jackson makes a left turn toward a dock just past the grain elevators across the bay in Superior, Wisconsin. DIANE HILDEN

  I stayed around for a little while. I had a donut and played with the slide rule on the chart desk, and then I asked if it was okay if I went back down. Dad didn’t answer, as just then the phone rang and he started talking to the captain of the ship we had been following. It was just starting to enter the canal. He told Dad there was a strong current running out of the bay today. There was a “saltie” just letting go of its lines over at the grain dock, the man said, and it would probably meet us at the turn by Rice’s Point right after we got through the canal.

  Dad thanked him for the heads-up, lit a cigarette, blew for the bridge, and then he looked down. At the
entrance to the canal, Mom was waving on the walkway in front of the lighthouse. Dad blew her the captain’s salute, one long blast and two short ones, then grabbed the big bullhorn, shot out the door, and yelled, “Forty minutes to the dock!” as we passed her.

  I ran out too and waved at Mom and all the people gathered to watch what always felt like a triumphal entry. Dad had already dashed back and started to call for a tug, seeing that there was both current and traffic.

  From the pilothouse, Dad calls for a tug, with the radar situated to his left. In tense situations, I could see Dad’s cheek muscles contract.

  While he was calling, I slipped down the stairs, went into the bedroom, and plugged my rollers back in. As I was waiting for them to warm up, I could hear the ongoing background chatter of the shortwave radio upstairs. Then I heard my dad say, “Did Ann go down already?” I parted my hair to put a roller in my bangs, and when I looked in the mirror to stick the bobby pin in, for the first time I wondered: Did Dad ever secretly wish I were a boy? But I knew he wouldn’t trade me.

  November Gales

  Every year my dad was a captain, I took at least one trip with him, until I was nineteen. That year, I went to school in Paris to study French.

  At first, it was exciting to be away, and I didn’t even think about home. But by the end of the summer, I was homesick. I even started to miss the rhythmic drone of the foghorn and the cold, damp flannel-and-fleece Lake Superior “summer” days. It was the first time since I was twelve that I hadn’t spent time aboard ship with my dad. Now I missed it, and I knew how much he must have missed me.

  When a letter came from him, I couldn’t wait to open it. I thought I knew what it would say: How long is it until you’re coming back? The summer hasn’t been the same without you.

  What a surprise when I opened it and read: “Hi Honey, hope all is well. I’m having a great year so far. I’ve never had it so good. I have a crackerjack first mate, darned good second and third mates, the best cook in the fleet for a steward, a 2nd cook whom everyone wants, and the best chief I ever had. On top of that, I have a humdinger of a ship, which is a beautiful handler. It has a splendid master’s quarters, and your mom was just aboard for a trip to Chicago where we got to see Around the World in Eighty Days, and it’s been beautiful weather.”

  He didn’t say anything about me at all! He didn’t even write again for several months. The next time I heard from him was November, the meanest month of the shipping year with its steel grey skies, high winds, and waves that wash over the deck, gluing the hatches and the cables and the railings and the ladders together with ice.

  During a late November day on Lake Superior, the ship rides low in the water from a heavy load and the weight of the ice.

  In Dad’s letter to me in Paris, he calls me “A-N-N,” as he sometimes did. I had heard that he wanted to name me something a bit more glamorous, like Gloria, but Ann, which was my mother’s middle name, won out.

  This time, the letter began, “My Dear Daughter A-n-n: Know what? I’m very, very lonesome for you. I haven’t seen you and you haven’t seen me for darned near SEVEN months. We’ve been at anchor now for twenty-four hours in Lake Michigan. The wind has raised the water level in the lake six feet. We can’t get into port, and I’m sitting here at my desk thinking I can’t wait to see you for Christmas. Glad it’s about over once again.”

  It was a long November.

  Our Last Trip

  After I graduated from college, Dad arranged for me to take one last trip. I packed the usual: rain gear, books, stationery, and cards. We left Duluth at night. The red blinking lights of the TV and radio towers on the hills receded steadily as once more I left the city behind. Our destination was Toledo, Ohio. We were to get there in the daytime, which would allow us to get off and go “uptown.”

  Dad said he knew where there was a great specialty popcorn store with caramel corn with lots of nuts, and he wanted to find a camera shop to take a look at the new Polaroid cameras. We talked a little more about what we might do: find a nice place for lunch, maybe even go to a movie. Then we looked out the front porthole at the deep darkness and went to bed. I pulled back the floral bedspread in the fancy passenger quarters, crawled under the quilt, and was just falling asleep when I could feel the ship start tossing up and down restlessly. I heard the plastic glass in the bathroom fall off the sink, roll across the floor, and hit the wall. The wind had shifted. Holding onto the end of the bed, then reaching for the chair to keep my balance, I opened the screen door and stole out to the bow to feel the cooling air. I looked down—so far down. The waves curled against us as we divided them with our bow, now lifting us up a few feet, then dropping us back down again before continuing their ride along the hull. When they hit the back cabin, the lights on the stack blurred in the spray. Up, down, clouds hiding the moon, no lights of any ships around us, no sound except for the rhythmic boom and swish of the water. I was sailing again.

  Dad waters his beloved pink-and-white petunias in our favorite spot on the “veranda.”

  By morning the wind had died down and it was clear and sunny. Dad worked on payroll and I sat out on the deck and read. He joined me for a while, watered his flower boxes, and then called for the porter to bring up lunch. Before dinner that night, we walked around the after-cabin a few times for a little exercise, and then we went into the dining room for something I ate only aboard ship—corned beef and cabbage.

  Sailing on the SS Herbert C. Jackson through the St. Mary’s River just below the Soo Locks

  When the moon came up, we began to see the outlines in the distance of several ships starting to get in line to go through the river leading up to the Soo Locks. Standing out on the bow, Dad made me look for the North Star just to make sure I remembered how to find “true north.” Since ancient times, he said, Polaris has been the “sailor’s star.” We now have modern navigational devices such as the gyrocompass, but those depend on human power sources that can fail. The North Star never goes out, he laughed. It’s still a sailor’s best friend.

  He pointed out Cassiopeia, important because it’s one of the constellations visible year-round in the northern sky. We stood there silently in a bowl of stars. The ship rocked gently in the night wind. “It’s so awesome out here,” I said. “It feels like we’re floating through time and space.”

  “We are, Dolly,” he said, still gazing upward. “We are.”

  We went up to the pilothouse together. When we nudged up to the breakwater, the deckhand called out the familiar “up against.” When we entered the lock, I held my breath as Dad expertly guided the ship to a gentle stop inches from the end of the lock. As we sailed down the St. Mary’s River, we began reminiscing. We remembered the time I had made a bed in the equipment room off the observation lounge (living room), just for fun, and how I liked to help the men sweep the deck. The best was when it was so hot one trip that Dad rigged up a fire hose to spray me on the life raft.

  The bells in the buoys chimed as we sailed past them. The houses ashore looked cozy with distant yard lights. After several hours, we reached the open water of Lake Huron and went to bed. From Dad’s bedroom I could hear Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” playing softly on his tape player. We both slept soundly until noon.

  When we got to Toledo the following day, it was eight a.m., a lucky landing time for going ashore, though Dad had been up since four a.m. to take the ship in to the dock. Dad said that the guard here always let him borrow his car, so we were set for “going up the street,” as the sailors say. I was really looking forward to it.

  When the unloading was under way (unloading took a lot longer than loading—it was done with buckets called Huletts), we climbed down the ladder. Then we picked our way along the dock under the gyrating iron arms that were busily grabbing bites of iron ore from the hold and dumping them onto the towering stockpiles.

  The dock boss was in the guardhouse. He and Dad clapped each other on the back and shook hands. The guard said he was happy to lend us his car
. Dad thanked him and then inquired about his wife, Gladys, who was ill. Then the yard manager came in. Dad had known him for thirty years. He was credited with having put window boxes filled with petunias and geraniums on the retired locomotive that stood out by the maintenance shed on a section of old track. Dad introduced me all around, and then, through the open door, we saw a man in a sport coat and tie approaching. He strode in and shook hands with Dad. They went outside and talked for a long time. Then they came back in. I thought Dad was finally ready to go, but instead of taking the car keys off the guard’s desk, he just looked at me. I looked back at him expectantly. I didn’t get it. I was anxious to get started on our time together.

  To unload “down below,” a man went down into the hold, grabbing and lifting out cargo by operating the controls from a little compartment that he sat in just above the bucket.

  “This is my daughter, Ann,” Dad said. “Ann, this is the fleet manager. He’s here from the home office. He drove over from Cleveland to take a look at the leaky seam that I reported last week. I thought we were going to check it out when we got back up above, that they were sending someone from Fraser Shipyard in Superior to inspect it then, but he said he decided to drive over and take a look at the situation firsthand when he heard we were coming to Toledo. We’ll have to go back aboard. Maybe we can get going in an hour or so.”