In 2001 my husband and I left our home, jobs and life in Nevada to come to my home town of North Bend, OR to take care of my parents. My mother was in the late stages of Alzheimer's Disease at the time and between my and dad I we were able to keep her home where she could retain a feeling of safety and being loved until she passed away in 2005. After my mom passed, it was just my dad and me for another precious 18 months.
For six years I was blessed with this time with my parents and during this time my dad and I spent time together writing his story. I have decided to share what the two of us managed to write here on my blog, in segments and always to be continued. My father was a Master Mariner who started his sailing career at the age of 17, as a deck-hand, which is the lowest entry level job on a ship. By the time he celebrated his 28th birthday he had already achieved his master's license. He was a ship captain, my mom's "sailor man", and was licensed to skipper any ship, of any tonnage in any waters of the world... and that he did. The following is the beginning of his story as told by him to me.
"A late winter storm had been building up in the North Atlantic threatening all seafarers that this was no place to play around. Except where whitecaps broke, stringing out their lacey trails, the huge swells forced their way eastward building ever higher as they went along. Fighting bravely to hold her own against the fury, a freighter was rolling and pitching heavily. Her decks awash with the sea as each wave hit her, smashing into hatch comings and deck houses, she would struggle to free herself, throwing the water off, only to face another assault from the sea that was racing toward her. The water ran down her sides carrying bits of rust that had been blown astern to disappear back into the sea. With smoke pouring out of her stack she could barely clear each swell before it broke over her deck where it would swirl around in the down-draft behind the midshipshouse and be pushed over the poop-deck, streaming out over the foaming wake. Along the after-deck a life line had been strung out close to the hatch-coamings and at every change of the deck-watch men could be seen hanging on as they made their way midships. Her sides, once painted a glossy black were streaked with rust showing signs of her battle with the sea that had been going on for several days.
Sheltered from the wind and water behind the glass of the wheelhouse windows stood the ship’s captain as he stared at the leaden swells towering above the ship’s deck. His face was showing the strain of the past several days, unshaven and drawn with red-rimmed eyes from lack of sleep. A pipe was clenched tightly between his teeth only to be removed occasionally to be re-filled and fired up again. Between the pipe that was becoming sour and the many cups of coffee his complaining stomach was beginning to feel much like the weather outside resembling each swell of the angry sea.
The son of many generations of seafarers with a rich Viking heritage the captain was younger than most men in command of a ship. He had been raised on the ships his father commanded, spending many days of his youth helping out in the various sailor’s duties to pass the time, which gave him the years of experience at sea that were required. He had been in storms before but this time it wasn’t just the storm that brought the lines of worry to his face. In spite of the fury outside his mind was full of concern for his young wife. She had sailed many voyages with him before but had to leave this one several months before and had gone back to her family’s home to give birth to their second child who was expected to arrive at any time. With thoughts of the child his face would light up. They had one son already and he was hoping for another boy as he dreamed of the pleasures of future voyages with his family aboard, teaching his sons the ways of the sea as he had been taught. It would sure liven up the lonely life that a ship master lived. With that his thoughts drifted back in time a little to the days and nights when this child-to-be was most likely conceived. They had been in the tropics then, warm nights with a full moon laying a yellow band over the water and the air heavy with the fragrant moisture that was carried out to sea from the tropical growth. An ideal setting for romance and the memories warmed him, but the wild motion of the ship and the crash of water as it hit the bridge-deck and wheelhouse brought him back to reality and his struggle with the storm."
To be continued....
from the book (c)2002
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