Sea Star & A Common Seaman

By Jill Whalen

Sea Star was beloved by the inhabitants of the sea. She swam with the whales and porpoises. A man from another fleet fell in love with her, but he didn’t know she was the legendary Sea Star. He started out as a common seaman from below decks, but he became a legend in his own right.

Come aboard the ships and see how the men and women lived their lives. The ships in the fleets sailed all over the oceans long ago before we even had records. They sailed, fought battles, traded, and raided. This is about two people who were born on the sea, lived on ships far apart, and found each other at a gather.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Whalen
• Release date: May 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310874321

Jill Whalen

I am a Celtic mother of eight who is writing about family stories that have been handed down by word of mouth. I live in the beautiful Missouri Ozarks, am a graduate of Millikin University, and a member of Mensa.

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Sea Star & A Common Seaman

By Jill Whalen

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 by Jill Whalen

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 1

I will tell you the whole story about a common seaman who was to fall in love with a lady on the top decks, but first I must tell you about the ships.

Long ago the deep ships sailed upon the ocean, and people lived upon those ships. The great home ships were the ones the women, children, old men, and sailors who were not warriors lived upon. The home ships were one eighth as wide as they were long. There is no tree big enough to make one true keel, so they had a rigid interlocking honeycomb rib that was called a keel pin. The keel plate is on a board that sticks down another board you use to steer. Most all of some home ships had forty floors from the bottom of the ship to the main deck. The floors varied somewhat. Down below where the weight was the greatest they were perhaps nine feet tall. If you went up around the living decks around floor twenty they went up in height a few feet for a bit more room to maneuver. Finally when you got up to really below where the animals were there was plenty of room, room enough to lull for days. Those home units took two floors and three to five rooms apiece. Deck one was the main deck of the ship that usually had three buildings. Aft was single officers’ quarters. The fighting guards had two rooms, one at each side. They were ready always. Forward was the place of those who determined the way the boat went, the navigators. In the middle was the great, great rudder. It went up very high, at times as much as eight decks. Up on the very top was one perhaps two regular houses with orchards all around and gardens. One side was for public; the other side was private for the one who lived up there, the highest woman on the ship. But the finest women who were the greatest in the fleets lived on the main deck of the boat. The ones who lived below that deck were down a bit. They were known as crew. Every young boy yearned to go on the fighting ships, knarrs, and make a name for himself, so his family could live on the deck, or at least one story above B deck. The main deck of the ship had exercise places, plants everywhere, and sunshine. Many a man had been killed because of the pots hanging up there. You get a pot as big around as a bed, fill it with dirt and plants, and add water. You’re up in the rigging and suddenly the ship gets a sharp keel and lurches. If that pot hits you you’re going to come off the rope. When you come off you’re going to go down. If the ship happens to be underneath you you’ll make a hole in the deck and some poor sap is going to have to replace the wood. If you are fortunate enough to miss the deck you’ll have another three to four hundred feet of space to the water. With a sharp keel like that and the ship going so fast, if you fell off near the front sail, the stern would be by you before you were able to recover your senses enough to even look. You aren’t going to be able to swim fast enough to catch it. Either make a grand slam into the deck or the great dive into the water. If you survive the dive you’ll drown.

You may say you’ve got the bone in your teeth and you go real fast stern. You can turn a knarr over, just lay it right down, but you can’t do that with cargo ships. Knarrs are the fighting ships. In foul weather they sliced through the huge waves and cut or else they were broken and went to the bottom. Cargo ships were like being on a huge beer barrel. Cargo ships at the end of a bad storm didn’t know where they were. Knarrs were like wolves. They circled about the home ship. There were some smaller ships that held two to six people. Usually you rowed them; sometimes they had a sail, sometimes they didn’t. There were a few of those about for going places that larger ships couldn’t go. We had some odd ships too, but they were so odd nobody cared about them. Everybody was free to do their own thing.

Do you know what a bane is? It means certain death. Coldark Mabane was Coldark of the certain death people. They were pleasant sounding folks. He led thirty of his knarrs into a place to trade with another clan. They had the parley sign and came alongside. Some said Coldark should have known there was treachery afoot but others said there was a parley sign that means you are going to talk and trade. It turned out that the group that was there wasn’t the group that was supposed to be there. It was a group that the fleet had a blood feud with. They had a few thousand other knarrs. There was no way for the thirty to get free. What they did as they should have was scuttle their ships and burn them too. All the men were killed. There was a great roar from the home ship the admiral was on.

The admiral said, This is not right. He has dishonored us.

Other people said, How has he dishonored us? He went to a place to trade that was set up ahead of time. If there is any shame it is for the people who set the trap or the men who set up the trade. Why weren’t they there?

The important part of the tale lies in the fact that Coldark’s woman lived in one of the two top cabins upon level thirty-four, deck A6. It was the high center cabin deck with the private gardens and all that. She got along well enough with the admiral who lived in the other cabin, but a lot of the other women didn’t care too much for her. She didn’t mind the differences between her and crew. When someone in the crew was sick she was often below deck helping out. She didn’t go much for gossip and told off with a sharp tongue a few