July 25, 2009
John Maxtone-Graham
(first day at sea):
So you’re going through boxes in the attic and you discover that beloved old jacket that you thought had been thrown out long ago. And while you’re celebrating that, you reach into one of the pockets and discover fifty bucks. Well that’s kind of where I am today. The ocean passage was good enough, but imagine my pleasure in discovering that we were taking it with, and would spend the crossing being lectured by, John Maxtone-Graham.
Maxtone-Graham, eighty this year, is one of the preeminent maritime historians, author of “The Only Way to Cross,” one of my favorite books. It was his first book, published in 1973, and a masterpiece. He’s going to spend the voyage lecturing on materials drawn from that and other books published since, and we got the first round today.
He lectures the way he writes, with great urbanity and aplomb. Today’s course was over the early years of the 20th century, and the competition between Cunard and its chief British rival, the White Star Line. More to follow. After the lecture I had the mahi-mahi for lunch, keeping up a personal shipboard tradition.
That modest storm predicted has arrived, with overcast skies and seas of seven to twelve feet, which our TV ship channel describes as “rough.” Makes you wonder what adjective they’d use to classify fifty-foot seas. Although the modern ship stabilizers eliminate rolling almost completely, they can’t do much about pitching, even on this giant ship.
So we’re bobbing around a little bit. Barbara finds any such motion unsettling, and has done the sensible thing and headed for bed. I set out this evening to explore the ship, included my patented lowest, farthest aft (for a passenger) vibration test. In this case it’s a disco, sitting maybe forty feet over four large screws turning three revolutions per second, and the only vibrations came from the band. Pretty impressive engineering.
