All I Ask is a Tall Ship

by Lev Nelson ’04

October 16, 2002
The rain is coming down so hard that my mother misses the driveway and has to make a U-turn further down the road. “Sea Education Association—Woods Hole, MA,” says the sign. The dream I’ve been hatching since freshman year—beginning with a vague interest sparked by a poster passed in Wilson Hall and gradually building in intensity—is now a reality. In six short weeks, I will be embarking on a scientific research cruise aboard the 134’ schooner Corwith Cramer. “Aren’t you a geology major?” people have asked. “And you’re spending a semester on a boat?” Yeah, well, geologists study the whole planet. I’ll be doing oceanographic research. “Oh. Didn’t Road Rules do a show about that? I hear it’s a party boat.” No, not that.

November 2, 2002
The alarm goes off at 6:00. My two roommates are stirring, and soon all ten of us are gathered in the kitchen, notebooks spread on the table. Someone has made coffee. “So once you’ve got declination, latitude is just…”

“Way to go!” When I went to bed she was freaking out, sure she was going to fail this test on celestial navigation. Now, she’s got it. Among my 49 classmates are English majors, biologists, and a physics and trumpet performance concentrator from Oberlin. Different things come easily to different people.

It’s 6:50. Somebody puts on “Eye of the Tiger” from the Rocky soundtrack and cranks the stereo up as high as it will go. We sing loudly, badly, dancing around the living room, jumping up and down. Then we grab backpacks, coats, and run out the door, charge up the hill to the classroom building.

After two grueling hours of nautical science—“naughty sci”—we’re glad for a break. In Maritime Studies, “Dr. Dan”—barefoot, in shorts and a t-shirt, with his dog following him as he paces the room—lectures on the history of navigation and how it is emblematic of the difference between science and technology. This idea intrigues me, and I ask him about it after class. We get into a heated discussion of what science is, and I make a note: investigate Science Studies when I get back to school.

“Dr. Dan”—barefoot, in shorts and a t-shirt, with his dog following him as he paces the room—lectures on the history of navigation and how it is emblematic of the difference between science and technology.

We go next to Oceanography, where Jan, our Finnish Chief Scientist, tells us that the Phoenicians discovered that they could more easily sail out of the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic if they lowered a large parachute on a line down to about 50 feet. Why? Because the Mediterranean is saltier than the Atlantic, and so the strong surface inflow current—which slowed them down—is matched by a strong outflow current at that depth. I love the way our classes fit together like this.

After class I ask a shipmate if he wants to go down to the Marine Biological Laboratory library in Woods Hole to pick up some articles for our shipboard research project. We have a meeting with Jan tomorrow to continue thinking and talking about what we’ll be doing, and more research is in order. He can’t—he’s on boat-building watch that day; we are all participating in the painstaking construction of a 12-foot wooden skiff. Can we go this afternoon? No, it’s my turn to cook. After dinner? No, Dan is showing that documentary about the American annexation of Hawaii. Well, we’ll find time—somehow. Can you believe how busy they keep us?

December 1, 2002
It’s hot. I’m dressed for New Jersey, not St. Croix. But that’s not important. I was home briefly for Thanksgiving, and now I’m here. I met up with ten of my shipmates in the San Juan airport, and now we’ve reached the promised land. After months of expectation, after six weeks of studying, we’ll be aboard ship in half an hour. The other half of our class, is already aboard our sister ship, the Robert C. Seamans, off Mexico’s Pacific coast. As the van cuts across the tiny island, I am thinking about A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid—taught by Dwayne, our other Maritime Studies professor. What right do I have to be here as a tourist, as a rich, white student amid these poor, black people working just to feed their families? But I’m not really a tourist, I’m about to be a sailor, a scientist. I’ll be up and working at all hours of the day and night, cooking and scrubbing toilets and taking saltwater showers. Does that change things?

We approach the sea and my breathing quickens. A huge smile grows on my face. Come on, how cheesy, I think—but it’s happening nonetheless. And then, over the houses, the tip of a mast comes into view. Another few turns and we can see her in her entirety—all 134 feet of SSV Corwith Cramer. . There she is! I gaze up at the two masts, at the hundreds of lines (there are no “ropes” aboard a ship—neither, as I will learn, are there “floors,” “walls,” “ceilings,” “bathrooms,” or a “kitchen”) and have trouble believing that this will soon become not only home but our entire world. We scramble out on the pier, grab bags, pay the driver, and hurry to get aboard. I stow my duffel in my bunk, and before I have a chance to do anything else, the engineer comes by. “Hey, I’m James. Want to come help me measure the fuel level in our tanks?” Uh…sure, why not? And so it begins.

The deck is lit only by the red glow from the compass and the stars overhead—stars such as I have rarely seen in my life.

After an endless stream of orientations and drills (Man Overboard! Fire in the engine room! Abandon Ship!), and a night’s sleep, we get ready to pull away from the dock. “I need two people to pull on this line,” the first mate tells us. We have no idea what’s going on, but we pull energetically until she is satisfied.  We’re motoring at first, but then we set two sails and the engine dies. And there we are, a sailing ship as we were meant to be—the sun on our backs, the wind on our faces, the beautiful blue sea rolling beneath us as we leave St. Croix behind.

December 14, 2002
Phase one of our trip is behind us. After beating upwind to the tiny island of Bequia, where we spent three days of shore leave, we’re now set to traverse northeast across the Caribbean to Little Cayman. As I climb back aboard Cramer from the Zodiac, I really don’t feel like working—I was enjoying my time on the beach. But then a remarkable thing happens. When the captain calls all hands and gives us our instructions, I snap to. Like a switch being thrown, I am no longer on vacation: I’m a sailor again.

Our departure is flawless. We ease the ship around without using the engine, then set the sails crisply and quickly—including the squaresails, which we couldn’t use before. The big, square sheets of canvas are majestic. We’ve come a long way these past two weeks. “Gybe around and strike the jib-tops’l; set squares’ls; brace the yards sharp, let go and haul!” Such instructions now make sense, and we can carry them out without having every move scrutinized by the mates. In those first frenzied 24 hours, it seemed we would never be able to handle it. Yet here we are—certainly making mistakes, but learning from them. At least we know what mistakes to make, rather than being overwhelmed. And we know that our shipmates will catch our mistakes and help us fix them. One time, while furling the jib, a shipmate says to me, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s a granny knot, not a square knot.” I laugh and say, “That introduction usually prefaces something like ‘I’m pregnant’ or ‘I lost my job.’” She shows me how to do it right. The next day, I might teach her how to calculate when morning twilight—an excellent opportunity to get a celestial navigation fix—will occur. Not having tests and readings means that we’re using our minds differently; there are jobs we are expected to do, and we help each other do them the best we can. Ivy League junior or state school freshman—it doesn’t matter as much as who’s part of the team.

Our life is not all knots and sails. Take furling the jib: it takes four people to fold and tie down the sail, which is heavier than it looks. You climb out onto netting slung under the bowsprit, harness clipped to a safety line. Below, the water—so very, very blue—froths white around the bow. It rushes up to meet you and then falls away as the bow springs skyward. Nobody ever misses an opportunity to go out there and help; it’s exhilarating, and a tight, neat furl makes us proud.  Once we finish, we take a minute to lie in the netting, enjoying the motion, before climbing back on deck. At night, the water is black, dotted with phosphorescence that mimics the glorious stars overhead. The moon reflects off clouds and bathes everything in silver. Looking aft, the whole ship is laid out before us, while to the sides or forward there is only endless ocean.

December 26, 2002
“Good morning Lev,” a voice whispers. “It’s 0230, you have watch in half an hour. Weather’s great. You up?” I push back the curtain on my narrow bunk, glancing blearily at my watch. 0230. 2:30 a.m. Dawn watch starts in half an hour. What day is it? Does this count as “tonight,” “this morning,” something entirely different? I’ve been asleep since 8:30ish—where else do college students go to bed so early? Already dressed, I roll out of bed, grab a brownie from the midnight snack box, and check the duty roster. Oh great, lab. I’ll be spending the next four hours crammed into the hot, stuffy, fluorescent-lit lab “winkling”—measuring the dissolved oxygen content of water samples from 1000 meters below the surface—or counting zooplankton under a microscope. Why? Why do I care?

I know this ship. We know how to run her. We’ve come 4000 miles with only 80 hours of engine time. Restock her supplies, fix the forward head...and we could sail her anywhere in the world.

After a mind-numbing hour of data entry I take a break and walk out on the deck, carefully pushing the curtain back into place to keep the light from the lab in. It is pitch-black outside and only my knowledge of the deck—the result of boat-checks every hour on the hour—lets me navigate. “Blind labbies,” the first mate calls us in this state. The night breeze is cool and revivifying. We’re making four or five knots under sail, and the ship is quiet but alive. I make my way aft to the quarterdeck, where the other half of my watch is on duty. The deck is lit only by the red glow from the compass and the stars overhead—stars such as I have rarely seen in my life. I’ve been slowly learning their names—from Alkaid in the handle of the Big Dipper, around the arc to Arcturus, then speed on to Spica.

A friend of mine is at the wheel. Another, tonight’s Junior Watch Officer, is making an entry in the log. I ask the mate how long until our next scientific gear deployment, take a last breath of sea air, and then return to our box on the deck. More torture. If I came out here to explore if scientific research was for me, the answer is a resounding no. I may hate science research, but I’m good at understanding it, and I can write. Maybe there’s a future for me in explaining science to nonscientists. I add science writing to the mental list of things to explore when I get back to Brown.

A few hours later we go out to watch the sun rise. Billowing clouds lay draped over the horizon, and the sun is a tiny ball, spreading pink and orange goodness across the purple mounds, turning the black sea into a gray field of waves. While the first half of dawn watch had crawled by like the week before Spring Break, the second half has flown by like a semester. Before long we’ll be going below for breakfast, taking our turn at “dawn cleanup,” and then turning in for some quality napping.

January 8, 2003
Key West: it’s over. How could six weeks go by so fast? We pack our bags, clean the ship from stem to stern, prepare to go back to our lives in cold places like Providence. Soon another crew will finish their classes at Woods Hole and Cramer will be their home. As I walk the deck one last time, a thought takes hold of me: I know this ship. We know how to run her. We’ve come 4000 miles with only 80 hours of engine time. Restock her supplies, fix the forward head (toilet—it was broken for the last five days or so), and we could sail her anywhere in the world. Although for the past few days I’d been ready to go home, now that the time has come I’m reluctant.

We gather on the quarterdeck one last time to say goodbye. When the captain has finished speaking, none of us moves. We don’t want to break the moment, to admit that it’s over. However closely we may keep in touch, we will never be the crew of a ship again. That’s what we became. SEA was more than school: I was a sailor; we were a crew; Cramer was ours. And while I may forget how to tie a stopper-knot or start the generator, that is something that will always remain with me.