'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me.
A ship is always referred to as 'she' because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder.
On the other hand, if there's an underlying core of poetry that I go to, I go to the sea. I've lived on the sea all my life. I live on the sea in Cape Breton.
Sailing became one of the mainstreams of my life. I suppose my father was an influence. I remember seeing a photo of him at home sailing a big boat to Bermuda in his 20s. I still have it.
Everyone in Denmark has at least two or three sailors in their family; sea travel is part of the DNA of our nation, and because of that, I'd always wanted to tell a story aboard a ship.
The only reason that they say, 'Women and children first' is to test the strength of the lifeboats.
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.
Whether the type of old sea captain that I have portrayed in my stories is gone forever, is a question. Certainly each summer I find that the ranks have perceptibly thinned. The longshore captain is still there, many of the men who are not any older than myself, but their viewpoint is not that of a man who sailed his square rigged ship out one morning with China as his destination.
Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive and unpredictable.
Every sea-captain who sailed to the West Indies was expected to bring home a turtle on the return voyage for a feast to his expectant friends.
Round the world and home again, that's the sailor's way!
Some men play golf. I've got this crazy thing about maintaining our nation's maritime heritage.
Portugal is a high hill with a white watch tower on it flying signal flags. It is apparently inhabited by one man who lives in a long row of yellow houses with red roofs, and populated by sheep who do grand acts of balancing on the side of the hill.
Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.
the captain is supposed to go down with the ship" . "unless the first mate knocks him out and throws him in a lifeboat
Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years, The battle and the breeze!
The head of a ship however has not always an immediate relation to her name, at least in the British navy.
Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be, but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
