By Freighter to China I

We sailed at dawn out of the harbor of Los Angeles, destination China. Warm light from the sun’s early rays sparkled all around us in the water, and soon a school dolphins started swimming along beside us, jumping in and out of the light and playing with the bowsprit. Sea gulls swirled overhead, perching on the deck and then taking off again. At first there were many ships around us, other freighters as well as small fishing boats. But, as we headed out into the ocean, they dropped away over the horizon, and we were alone.

I was sailing aboard the MS Hanjin Phoenix, a 50,000-ton freighter or container ship, which was almost 1,000 feet long, the length of three football fields. Although it is not widely known, many freighters take passengers today, a practice started when mechanization reduced the number of officers needed and their cabins went empty. These ships go all over the world. My ship was a South Korean ship on charter to a German company currently on the China run. On board were thousands of highly colored containers, most of them forty feet long and eight feet wide. Looking out over the bow from the bridge, they were lined up in vertical rows stacked seven deep above deck and eight deep in the holds.

It was early September in 2011, and I was on my way to China to see the Zeng Bells. Although created more than 2,500 years ago, the Zeng Bells are some of the most technically sophisticated and beautiful bells the world has ever known. Sixty-five bells of graduated sizes hung on three racks, the bells were unearthed from tombs in the 1970’s and, when found, were still in perfect pitch. They are now preserved in the Provincial Museum in the city of Wuhan, which is where I was headed.

I had always been fascinated with China, and, before I left on my trip, I had done a great deal of reading about the history, poetry, and culture of the country. The more I read, the more I realized that I wanted to “take passage” to China, to actually experience the time and distance of going there rather than having the instant transport of air travel.  I wanted to go as someone would have gone a hundred years ago. That instinct proved to be right. By the time I reached Shanghai two weeks later, I felt I had been on a long journey to reach this ancient land, which deeply affected my time there.

I had also learned from an earlier trip to Australia that I liked the intimate contact with the life of the ship and sea that a freighter offers. On this trip, I was the only passenger, as well as the only woman and only American. After the initial curiosity about me, I became accepted as part of the life of the ship. There were twenty-one crew members, seven officers and fourteen seamen. The Captain and Chief Engineer, the two senior officers, were German, while the other officers were Filipino, with the exception of one Russian. The seamen were mainly from the Kiribati Islands in the South Pacific, where there is a seamen’s training school. Although English was the official language of the ship, there was a wide range of fluency, which limited how much I could talk with some of the crew, but I got to know the Captain and some of the Filipino officers quite well.

By my third day at sea, I had settled into a routine. I woke early, had breakfast, and went up to the bridge to read most of the morning. The bridge is the navigation and command center of the ship, and permission to be there is always at the discretion of the Captain, which he generously gave me. Whichever officer was on duty on the bridge usually offered me tea and cookies around 10:00. Most of the younger crew called me “Mum” – “Are you ready for tea, Mum?” 

Around noon, I would go down to the officers’ dining room where I took my meals. It was a nice room, light and airy, with a number of windows, and I usually sat at the small, round table reserved for the Captain. The food reflected a mixture of cultures and was much too heavy and plentiful for me, so I usually just asked for salads and vegetables. The Steward, a shy, kind man from the Kiribati Islands, would be disappointed that I didn’t want more, but always gave me extra helpings of ice cream, which he knew I liked.

After lunch, I usually spent time in my cabin, which was spartan but fully adequate for my needs. There was a comfortable trundle bed, a nice couch, table, and chair, plenty of storage, a good shower with lots of hot water, and even a small refrigerator where I kept the drinks and snacks I bought from the ship’s store. With a small photo of my daughter on the bedside table, I felt quite at home.

Author’s cabin

Captain’s Table

On the evening of the fourth day, we started to roll.  Until then, the sea had been steady. That evening we had a barbecue out on one of the decks. The crew set up three tables, and they cooked steaks, chicken, and fish. I ate with the Captain and the Russian officer but, by the time we finished dinner, the wind had picked up, the temperature was dropping, and we really started to roll.  We rolled most of the night. It got pretty rough, and I was glad my trundle bed had sides on it so I wouldn’t roll off—and that I had a good supply of Dramamine.

 After breakfast the next morning, when I went up to the bridge, it was cold, and everything was grey and rainy. The only colors I could see were the reds, blues, and greens of the containers closest to me; the rest of the ship was shrouded in fog. One of the officers showed me the weather map, and I could see that we were steering between two bad storm systems. One was a system near us with strong winds and the other was a typhoon coming out of Asia. We were headed north of the first one, which was why the ocean was so stirred up.

One of the reasons I loved being on the bridge was that it placed me so close to the beauty that was all around me. The longer I was at sea, the more I became absorbed into the life of the ocean and sky which, out there, blend together into one world. Some days the sun was brilliant and the sea deep blue; other days the sky was dark and forbidding and the sea churned up and angry. Without the horizon line of land, everything was round; I was surrounded by the ocean, and the sky felt like an endless dome over my head. 

After dinner, I often went back to the bridge to watch the sun set and the stars come out. Once the sun went down, the bridge was kept dark to preserve the night vision of the officer in charge. That made the stars even more brilliant. Most evenings, one of the Kiribati seamen came up to the bridge when he was off duty.  He must have loved the ocean as I did, for he stood like a sentinel in the dark on one side of the bridge just staring at the sea, while I sat quietly on the other side doing the same. It was the most peaceful time of the day for me.

The trip fell naturally into three parts. The first was embarking from Los Angeles and the early days of getting used to being at sea. The second was what I thought of as the middle period, when I was most at home on the ship, and the third was coming back to land.  We were now well into the middle period, and I found that time was starting to change its shape, losing its contours and sharp edges…… 

By Frieghter to China II will be posted next on BellTalk.

  Share your own memories, thoughts, and stories about bells with Jaan at: jaan@thebellsbook.com