Freighter Days Aboard an Africa-Bound Lady

There are ships that sail on the sea and there are ships that belong to the sea. The former are called cruise liners, and they sail at you each month off pages of those slick travel magazines, all glitter and glass, all chrome and cocktails.

What I wanted was an honest ship, a working ship, a ship that felt and looked and smelled like the ocean. Something with a bit of rust. An unpainted lady. What I wanted was a passenger-carrying freighter.

I found her down on Henry Clay Avenue Wharf in New Orleans three years ago. Her name was the Genevieve Lykes, and for three memorable weeks she was my home.

No, there wasn’t a swimming pool on board, or a casino, or a movie theater. No, there were no fancy dress contests, or lavish late-night buffets, or captain’s farewell parties. And, no, there were no attentive stewards hovering at each passenger’s deck chair.

Hell, there weren’t any other passengers!

It was my lot, or my luck, to stumble across a freighter that would carry me down the Mississippi, through the Gulf of Mexico, out into the Caribbean, across the South Atlantic, around the tip of Africa and up into the Indian Ocean without so much as another fare-paying soul on board.

It was perfect.

“You like my ship?”

I was standing on the wharf gazing up at the Genevieve Lykes while stevedores and crew members labored to position the slings that would hoist the giant, Kenya-bound locomotives from their dockside rails and up onto the foredeck.

I turned, and Capt. Salvas Kerageorgiou stuck out his hand.

“ Bon giorno ,” I said. It was my first mistake. His parents were Greek, not Italian.

But I had to admit that I liked his ship. The Genevieve Lykes was everything I had hoped she would be: 13,808 tons; solid black hull with a gray superstructure; heavy-lift booms sticking out in every direction as she loaded her Africa-bound cargo; officers and crew in work clothes, not uniforms; yes, even a spot of rust here and there.

This was a real ship heading out on a real voyage--carrying not only the railway engines but also rice for Ghana, machine parts, chemicals and assorted other cargo. Not a piece of designer luggage or a brightly ribboned bon voyage fruit basket anywhere in sight.

Perfect.

We were supposed to sail that evening, but loading the 10 locomotives was proving more difficult than expected. With that much weight up near the bow, each 60-ton engine had to be exactly positioned. So, as is usual in freighter travel, there was a delay. We’d leave the next day. Or perhaps the day after. It didn’t really matter.

That gave me the chance to hear some comforting news while sharing a cab to Bourbon Street that evening with a couple of crewmen.

“With those engines on deck, we better not be gettin’ into no rough seas,” said one.

“Yeah,” the other agreed. “If that bow gets under a big wave, we ain’t never gonna come back up. We jus’ gonna keep goin’ straight down.”

I grinned, sheepishly. They had to be joking, right? But then the conversation took an even less optimistic turn.

“I’ll be stayin’ on board with the cap’n,” said one sailor. “Sharks like bright colors; that life vest, they’ll go for it!”

All this is a far cry from the “Yes, madam I’m sure Fifi will be fine even if the sea turns a little choppy” type of remark that I used to hear spoken to blue-haired, poodle-toting spinsters aboard passenger liners. These people were talking about capsizing and sharks, for God’s sake.

It promised to be a real journey aboard a real ship. I’d be able to feel the ocean beneath my feet; I’d be able to taste the sea salt on my lips; I’d be able to hear the sound of the waves and the sea birds. Who needs stabilizers, glass-enclosed decks and ship’s orchestras?

But first we had to get to the ocean. New Orleans is a port city, but it takes half a night’s sailing just to reach the Gulf.

Tugs eased us away from the Henry Clay Avenue Wharf at 6:20 p.m. on a warm, late-September evening. By 1 a.m. I was still standing at the ship’s rail, watching the pilot boat come alongside at Pilot Town.

Here, the river pilot who had guided us downriver from New Orleans left the ship, and the pilot who would take us over the bar and see us safely into the Gulf came aboard, scrambling up the rope ladder.

It had been an intriguing few hours. By leaving when we did, I had been able to see the setting sun paint the mud-brown Mississippi and the skyscrapers of New Orleans myriad shades of orange. As the sky darkened, the lights on shore stood out: small river towns, giant oil refineries, cargo ships loading by night at riverside grain elevators.

Unlike cruise ships, which sometimes look like floating Christmas trees, freighters travel with a minimum of light. There are navigation lights on the masts, a few hooded lamps at the head of companionways, and a soft green glow from the bridge. All else is in darkness.

Being the only passenger, I had been given pretty much the run of the ship by Kerageorgiou, a no-nonsense sort with 40 years’ experience at sea. It took several days for him to thaw to the idea of having a lone passenger roams his decks. It was almost more difficult than having eight, the maximum the Genevieve Lykes can carry.

Eventually, once he realized I was not about to take advantage of his generosity and make a nuisance of myself, once he realized that my books and my camera were all I needed, he became quite amicable.

This, in turn, was picked up by the other officers and crew, and before long I had made friends with many of them and was treated as one of them.

That is one of the pleasures of a freighter voyage: It provides freedom from all the organized activity on board a cruise ship and, at the same time, allows the opportunity to find out what life at sea is really like.

By the time we reached Durban, South Africa, where I disembarked, I was more than ready to stow away for the rest of the voyage. But the Genevieve Lykes sailed without me on her way to Mombasa, Kenya, to drop off the locomotives, then back around the Cape to Tema, Ghana, to unload the rice, and finally back to New Orleans by late November, eight weeks after leaving.

But although all I had was 21 days on board, I made the most of them. I was able, among other things, to:

--Take a complete tour of the engine room, escorted by Paul Grosso, the 34-year-old chief engineer who explained in detail the workings of the ship.

--Take a similar tour of the galley and the vast storerooms, courtesy of chief steward Elijah Ellis.

--Learn the phonetic alphabet from radio operator Bob Monko, an odd but friendly soul who used to pace around the deck during his off hours, voicing opinions on everything under the sun. Listening to life through headphones can lead to that sort of thing.

--Discover the sad state of the U.S. merchant marine in several hours of discussions with chief mate John Donnelly (J.D.) Smith, a captain in his own right just waiting to be given command of one of Lykes’ fleet. Smith also took me on an instrument-by-instrument tour of the bridge, explaining the satellite navigation system, showing me how to plot the ship’s course on the huge sea charts, and patiently answering one question after another.

But there was far more than that. There was a special feeling aboard the freighter, a camaraderie that I have never experienced on a passenger liner. Perhaps it was just the sea air, or more likely the whiskey I’d brought aboard in the absence of a ship’s bar.

Alcohol is not allowed on board merchant ships, although there was more than one occasion when I thought the stagger of a crew member had little to do with the roll of the ship.

But Kerageorgiou and his officers kept a close watch, and discipline on board was tight. Passengers, of course, are exempt from the rule and can bring aboard as much as they like.

Exploring the ship had turned up a few noteworthy items. There was, for instance, the plaque on the wall of the officers’ recreation room. I read it with interest:

“The AOTOS Mariners Plaque.

“Given to the officers and crew of the SS Genevieve Lykes, Lykes Brothers Steamship Co.

“On June 8, 1979, in keeping with the highest tradition of professional mariners, the SS Genevieve Lykes, en route from Kuantan, Malaysia, to Manila, Philippines, rescued five Malay men in shark-infested waters from a small boat, sinking after being adrift for four days.”

The award, it said, had been presented in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York three months after the incident.

So, adventures were to be had. Unfortunately, the only ones I discovered on this voyage were gastronomic.

I never met the cook, and perhaps that is just as well. Officers and crew dined in separate but adjoining messes. Messes were what we were served, too. It was the only negative aspect of the trip, but I was not alone in being disappointed with the food.

Kerageorgiou was furious (his brother owns one of Louisiana’s finest restaurants), and the officers were no happier.

The variety of meals was fine, but the preparation lacked, shall we say, finesse. What it didn’t lack, unfortunately, was grease.

The daily menu, typed on a single sheet of paper, was a joy. The author is unknown, but either his typing ability was poor or his spelling broke new frontiers. I began collecting examples.

“ Buttered red berts “ was the offering one day. On another occasion, it was “ calm chowder .” Then there were “ stewed dry red benns ,” “ bolied plain potatoe ,” “ beef and noods “ (the wrong sort of “noods” for a shipload of men hundreds of miles from the nearest woman, it seemed to me), and my own particular favorite, “ grilled bologna to order “ (well-done bologna is so gauche).

Apart from the meals, served promptly and without fanfare at 7:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. (I could raid the refrigerators in the galley for a “night lunch” if I grew hungry later on), the three-week trip passed pleasantly and far too quickly.

What is there to do on a freighter? Nothing and everything.

I lazed in my cabin (not a bit less comfortable than a lower-grade cabin on a cruise ship) or in the sun up on deck, reading the stack of books--Lawrence Durrell, Paul Theroux, Norman Lewis--that I’d brought with me.

I shot roll after roll of film: New Orleans and the Mississippi, the ship itself, magnificent sunsets, Jamaica as a smudge of green and brown on the horizon (not an award-winning shot), passing ships, sea birds and flying fish, the curious islands of Fernando de Noronha off the eastern tip of Brazil, a fierce lightning-and-thunder storm off the African coast.

I climbed to my favorite spot aboard the Genevieve Lykes late at night, stood on the flying deck above the bridge and counted the stars, or scanned the horizon in search of distant ships, or stared at the locomotives chained securely across the foredeck, wondering what their own future journeys across the African veld might bring.

I talked to the crew, listened to sea stories, did a little writing, but most of all I just unwound, throwing overboard the accumulated tensions of the land and watching them float away like so much driftwood.

And isn’t that what an ocean voyage is really all about?