Sleeping with the Captain

By Pauline Isabel Dowling

At sea it is possible to believe for quite long periods that we are in some unpolluted, uncluttered, prelapsarian world where time is never linear. There are no straight lines at sea.

In Sleeping with the Captain, the author travels on the MV Scottish Star with her husband, Captain Stuart MacCormick Ross, whose job it is to del

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mor Media Limited
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999366858

Book preview

Sleeping with the Captain

My Trailing Career

(Volume 2)

Sleeping with the Captain

My Trailing Career

(Volume 2)

Pauline Isabel Dowling

MÒR MEDIA LIMITED

Sleeping with the Captain

My Trailing Career

(Volume 2)

Copyright © 2020 Pauline Isabel Dowling

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

Pauline Isabel Dowling asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

Photographs © Pauline Isabel Dowling, unless otherwise stated.

Swan logo

ISBN 978-1-9993668-5-8

First published 2020

Mòr Media Limited Argyll, Scotland

www.mormedia.co.uk

Cover artwork by Gill Bridle

Design by Helen Crossan

Dedication

To Captain Stuart MacCormick Ross (H), for making trailing in fruit boats seem dignified.

Contents

Dedication

List of Maps

List of Photographs

Acknowledgements

Chapters

Seoul–Busan–Masan, South Korea

The East China Sea–The North Pacific–Hawaii

The Doldrums–Golfo de Guayaquil–Guayas River

Guayaquil, Ecuador

The Panama Canal

The Caribbean and the Atlantic

Zeebrugge and the Atlantic Again

Once more: The Caribbean–The Panama Canal–The Pacific

San Antonio and Santiago Chile

The Pacific–the Panama Canal–The Atlantic Again

The Channel–Dover–Heathrow–Oban

Index

About the Author

About the Book

List of Maps

Map 1 North Pacific

Map 2 North Atlantic

Map 3 Panama Canal

List of Photographs

1 MV Scottish Star

2 The famous Blue Star Line funnel

3 Converted to a Del Monte tin of fruit

4 Leaving Masan, South Korea

5 Captain Ross in his office

6 Captain Ross pinning the tail on the donkey

7 Party game: threading a needle

8 The Captain’s bed

9 The SS Arandora Star

10 Lifeboat drill

11 The horse race

12 Victoria Drummond

13 Barbecue

14 MV Roman Star near Ecuador

15 Frigate birds near Ecuador

16 One of many large moths

17 Loading, Guayaquil

18 Guayaquil from Santa Ana

19 Iguana, Santa Ana Hill, Guayaquil, Ecuador

20 Workers resting, Guayaquil

21 The author in Simón Bolívar Park

22 Rotunda, Simón Bolívar Park

23 Iguana, Simón Bolívar Park

24 Captain Ross has his shoes shone in the main Square Guayaquil

25 El Hemiciclo de la Rotonda, Guayaquil, Ecuador

26 Captain Ross and the pilot leaving Guayaquil, Ecuador

27 Departing Guayaquil with tug

28 Lifeboat nr Ecuador (crew taking it for a trial)

29 Chief Officer Stuart Ross handing over to the Filipinos

30 MV ACT 5, flagged out at Panama

31 MV ACT 5, London hastily changed to Nassau

32 Entering a Panama Canal lock

33 Leaving a Panama Canal lock

34 Guided into the lock by a mule

35 Chief Officer Stuart Ross at the captain’s table on the MV ACT 7

36 Bruges

37 Bruges church

38 MV Afric Star berthing, Zeebrugge

39 Captain Ross shifting ship, Zeebrugge

40 Getaria with Captain

41 Getaria town, Basque country

42 Getaria lane, Basque Country

43 Loading San Antonio Chile

44 Torpid curs, San Antonio, Chile

45 Street view, San Antonio, Chile

46 San Antonio crucial corner

47 San Antonio boulders

48 View of the port San Antonio, Chile

49 Buses in San Antonio, Chile

50 Plaza de Armas, Santiago, Chile

51 The Metropolitan Cathedral of Santiago, Chile

52 Monument to the Indigenous people, Santiago, Chile

53 Santiago with rotunda

54 The MV Snow Delta at Panama

55 Chipping the windlass

56 The crew scaling the deck on the Scottish Star

57 Our croft, Craignich No 9

58 View from our house

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to my husband, Captain Stuart MacCormick Ross (H), for offering me this trailing career. Thanks to my sister Suzanne Dowling, my sister-in-law Pauline Dowling, to Jennifer Allan, Jennifer Baker, Dorothea Hay, Hazel MacCormick, Colette Walker, Catherine Gillies and Caroline Bath for support and advice. Thanks to Iris Piers for publicity, Gilly Bridle for her art work and to Helen Crossan of Mòr Media for metaphorically steering the MV Scottish Star towards publication with her advanced editing and designing skills.

Maps

Caption reads

Map 1 North Pacific

Caption reads

Map 2 North Atlantic

1 MV Scottish Star

© Fotolite

The MV Scottish Star was one of four ships built at Harland&Wolff of Belfast, the last of many built for the Blue Star Line and known as the Harland Class. It has four fully refrigerated hatches, banana doors, seven-cylinder B&W engine 15200 BHP, and a service speed of 21knots.

Chapter 1

Seoul–Busan–Masan, South Korea

26–28 December

The agent in Masan is not pleased to see me. Smirking, he shakes my hand and points at a chair. As I collapse, he lights a cigarette, blows smoke in my face, and taps ash into a bulging ashtray. It’s stifling; his office is thick with tobacco smoke, and the fumes of a kerosene stove are choking me.

‘I must have food and drink,’ I blurt out, no longer able to call on stoicism to protect my dignity. I imagine it might help my throbbing head, and curb the almost overwhelming desire to vomit.

‘The ship’s not here.’ I let out an involuntary groan, the tip of an iceberg of despair. I’m no longer sure I can hold myself together for this clown. ‘You will go to a hotel,’ he pauses, ‘at your expense.’ His sneering is naked.

‘At yours,’ I say boldly, past caring. ‘I’ve no money. Sort it out with the company. I’m sick, I’ve had no sleep and no food for hours. I’ve endured a flight on Korean Air from Auckland, a scrum at Seoul airport, a flight to Busan, and a car journey with no-one offering so much as a crumb. And I’ve just buried my mother so, if I don’t get food soon, I may vomit all over you.’ He sucks deeply on his fag, taps ash into the stinking tray, trying to absorb his shock. He clearly wasn’t expecting this from a wife. Neither was I. I smile, adopting his tactics. Not sure where the energy is coming from, but come it does.

Finally, he calls to the only woman in the room. She pretends not to hear, so he shouts, ordering her to get me coffee. As she hauls herself up against her will, she shoots me a look, blaming me for centuries of bullying. ‘Yep, I know,’ I say with my eyes. ‘You’re female: you cater. You must know it’s a planetary rule.’

She brings the coffee on a tray, with a china cup and two pottery jars, one with sugar, the other whitener. A large plain piece of cake, resembling a plank, is wrapped in cellophane. I thank her, offering a real smile. She returns it, and I devour the mass-produced cake, despite the crumbs coating my teeth and making tactical smiles difficult.

On the back wall a huge chinagraph movement board is scrawled with ships’ names. I search for the Scottish Star. It’s expected, but it doesn’t say when. I know it is coming from Osaka in Japan, where H joined after flying out from Scotland.

All around me, men at computers suck on cigarettes. My chair is uncomfortable and the fumes are stinging my eyes. The coffee and cake help. ‘Do you deal with many wives?’ I ask with an ingratiating lilt.

‘Wives normally keep their children,’ he’s laughing and cocky. He looks straight at me, but my blinkless gaze pierces his cockiness with a shaft of fear. He knows I see it. ‘Like you, I wish the ship was here. I don’t like working in the middle of the night.’ His tone is softer. I let the bad grammar go; it’s not his first language!

‘Do you work for the company or the charterer?’ I smile innocently.

‘Del Monte.’

‘Just as well.’ I smile even more. My silly threat is empty, but my voice is not. That’s what counts.

Eventually, a man in a fine, navy, woollen coat and a Burberry scarf drives me to the Hotel Lotte Crystal in a rattly van full of soft toys and pictures of his family. We sit uncomfortably close in the front.

From the tenth floor I have a view of Masan and the harbour. Tugs are running about and a few ships are alongside. I check none is the Scottish Star, take my strongest migraine medication (the only thing likely to work at this stage), place the waste bin by the bed, and lie down. The pillow is cool and soft, the bed beautifully firm.

Three hours later I’m awake again, hardly daring to move, sceptical the pain has gone. The room is roasting, the skin on my face is taut and my hands feel like paper. I am so hungry my abdomen is convex. For a while hunger fights with tiredness but, afraid the pain will come back if I don’t eat, I drag myself up.

The room is large and almost plush. The floor-length windows have gold curtains. Or maybe they are dusty. Two pairs of leatherette slippers at the foot of the bed are too small for me. Notices are everywhere: the door tells me to lock myself in and not leave valuables when I go out; the bathroom regrets that because of the government’s Greenpeace policy the management can no longer supply razor blades, hair shampoo or hair rinse; beside the bed I’m told I’ll find gas masks and a fire cut, whatever that is, in the closet and, in case of fire, I am to escape by tying a rope to a link on the window. I find the rope already tied to the link. It looks long enough to get me down a couple of floors. No doubt it satisfied the inspectors, and I’m too tired to care about fires or thieves.

I waste no time in the desolate, ill-lit common parts, and head for the Peninsula Coffee shop, where the well-heeled in cashmere, jewellery and theatrical make-up are taking tea. I could be in Vienna, I think, hoping the coffee’s that good, except people don’t bow in Vienna. I like bowing: it is good exercise and not a health risk. I bow at the beautiful, polite waitress who asks where I’m from and walks about saying Scot Land, looking perplexed. While I’m waiting for my steak sandwich with chips and salad―the least wons for the most food and there’s no rice which I’m craving―she brings an atlas and says: ‘Where is Scot Land?’ It isn’t there, so I point to a blob on the end of Europe. ‘Lon Don,’ she cries. ‘Well, near enough.’ I did once come from Lon Don. Truth is I long ago stopped coming from anywhere I could legitimately claim.

The steak sandwich is half-toasted, sweet, white bread, with a few files of leathery meat. I devour it and the soggy chips with the enthusiasm of the hungry, but when I ask for apple pie she says: ‘No apple pie, sorry,’ and as I go down the dessert list getting ‘No peach melba, no banana split,’ I realise it’s the off‑season and I’ll be lucky to get anything, so settle for glutinous ice cream floating in rubbery, tinned fruit and topped with hundreds and thousands weeping multicoloured tears. To the hungry, this is delicious.

After a cup of―alas―instant coffee, I go out to explore. Because the hotel is stifling, the cold shocks me. I walk briskly in the exhaust-laden air on pavements full of rubble and wobbly slabs. Many buildings are wrapped in scaffolding and a welder showers me with sparks. Well-turned-out schoolchildren, wearing backpacks and Burberry scarves, wait with workers at bulging bus stops. The traffic is orderly. It’s late afternoon.

Up a side street with small shops, street vendors, and young boys who follow me saying ‘hello’ and ‘one, two, three’, I find a supermarket and, glad of the wons I was forced to take at the airport, I head back with crisps, yoghurt and biscuits.

The agent has said he will collect me at 7 am tomorrow. At the hotel desk, a young man drags himself up, wanders towards me in slow motion, and stares without speaking. It’s quite a performance. I order an alarm call for 6.30 am. He speaks good English but continues to stare blankly until I mention the Korean Tourist Authority sign in the lift asking me to report honed rudeness. With mirrored blankness, I ask for their phone number. He understands immediately; honed rudeness becomes cold courtesy. He has done a first-rate course in repelling visitors, unlike the females in the restaurant, who are the most welcoming—in a real way—I’ve ever met.

At 2330 the phone wakes me. ‘Were you asleep?

‘Yes.’

‘This is the agent. I will be there at nine tomorrow. Okay?’

‘Fine. I’ll be waiting downstairs.’ I can’t be bothered re-scheduling the alarm call.

When I wake again, the bedside clock says 0645. I’ve had no alarm call. I turn on the television; it’s only 0520, so I watch an English lesson teaching a class of exquisite female children the days of the week. And much more.

‘What do you do on Monday?’

‘I clean the house.’

‘What do you do on Tuesday?

‘I help Mom with the laundry.’ Their voices are cute, but the unhidden agenda so loud I switch to world news, which constantly flashes to serious-looking men with earphones in Tokyo, France, Germany, or the United States. Britain, or rather Lon Don, isn’t mentioned. However, as television is a migraine-trigger, I turn to the Korean Times, which was free in the lobby, and read a light-hearted piece on the problem of Korean men getting drunk and falling about in public places. Is this the result of pressure, or nature, they wonder. Neither. Like a lot of human behaviour, they do it because they have time and can. If they ‘kept their children’ it would be harder.

I get my alarm call on the dot, and at 0700 the agent phones. He will pick me up in half an hour. He’s forgotten last night’s call but, as I need breakfast, I agree to appear at 0830.

‘I’ll be in the coffee shop,’ I tell him. By now he may be thinking I think only of food. Which I do. For me, going without matters. Even poor food is better than no food.

The waitress asks more questions, but this time she reads them with careful inflexions and lots of laughter. All the waitresses are perfectly made up, and walk briskly and confidently in high heels. Their starched white aprons, with a large bow tied at the back, is straight out of a 1950s movie. All are beautiful, but mine is striking and, whether she is standing at the till dreaming, or walking briskly to a table with water whenever anyone appears, she gives the impression she is fulfilling her greatest dream each time she stands, pad poised.

‘What do you do for a living?’ is her first question.

Her comprehension of English is slower and it is some time before she makes sense of ‘I am a writer.’ Even after I write it down. ‘I am a trailer’ would have been harder to explain.

‘How long have you been in Korea?’

‘One day.’

‘How much longer will you stay here?’

‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’ She smiles and shakes her head, clearly confused. Two men, who look as though they have hangovers, stare at me without moving or seeing, while I devour the continental breakfast of white toast and jam with fresh fruit and coffee. I am so grateful for food it is posing as a banquet.

When the agent finally delivers me to the ship, I am astonished to see it has a Del Monte tin of fruit painted over the distinctive Blue Star funnel. It has been on charter to Del Monte for a few years, picking up fruit from the Philippines (and sometimes Indonesia), and taking them to Japan, Korea, and occasionally China. This is its first trip off charter.

H is at the top of the gangway beaming, his luminous eyes lakes of wonder and relief. Although his sympathy is almost too much, I hold myself together until we are in the captain’s suite. We have been apart for twelve emotionally-fraught days, but it feels much longer.

Caption reads

2 The famous Blue Star Line funnel

Caption reads

3 Converted to a Del Monte tin of fruit

§§§

Getting here has been a trailing ordeal. When H heard he was to join the Scottish Star in Japan on Boxing Day, we were in New Zealand, caring for my mother. He agreed, as long as the company flew me to Korea after Christmas. He returned to Scotland, visited his father in hospital in Glasgow, and then headed north to Lismore, our island home, to prepare. The jobs were many, the time short. We have a croft with Aberdeen Angus bullocks. In less than a week he put the croft fencing out to tender, made sure the cattle had enough winter feed, hauled seaweed from the beach to cover the garden, went up and down to Glasgow to see his father, and collected what he thought I would need, which included my laptop and a medication mountain. Such juggling defines the life of a mariner and his partner. And H is a master of it.

On the day he left Auckland, my mother died unexpectedly. We remembered her in a celebratory wake, buried her and ten days later, on Boxing Day, I flew on Korean Air flight 667 from Auckland to Seoul via Nadi in Fiji.

Fortunately, the flight was not full for the ten and half hours from Fiji to Seoul, and I nabbed four seats in the middle. Unfortunately, a man joined me at the other end of the row, and I spent the night dozing and failing to stop him resting his feet