I've been in tankers for 50 years, and I like it. For me, it's still fun.
Seafaring can be lucrative - the elite, such as gas-tanker captains, can earn $100,000 for six months' work - but the isolation is a heavy price to pay.
My father was a sea captain, so was his father, and his father before him, and all my uncles. My mother's people all followed the sea. I suppose that if I had been born a few years earlier, I would have had my own ship.
I sometimes think it ironic for an ex-seaman, longshoreman, truck driver, policeman, bus driver, etc... to find success writing children's novels.
I have several plan Bs: I want to become a sailor; I like to draw; I would love to learn many things, but I don't have time.
When she became very ill with heart trouble, I saw that it would be impossible for my parents to provide for my studies, and I obtained their permission to go to sea to make a career for myself there.
When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!
Recollect that you must be a seaman to be an officer and also that you cannot be a good officer without being a gentleman.
As a cabin boy on a Norwegian sailing ship I earned five kronen a week in addition to my keep.
