Jim puts on a suit he has kept hanging pressed in his locker. Then he and Juan go down the gangplank. They are off to see the sights in the fascinating Egyptian city—and to buy souvenirs.
But before they have gone very far from the waterfront where a tangle of masts and booms and stacks marks the skyline, they meet Lars, an old shipmate of theirs. That’s not so strange as you might think. A sailor often changes ships, and he gets to have many friends who travel just as much as he does. While they eat an Egyptian meal in an Egyptian restaurant, Lars says he’s on a tanker now. She’s in Alexandria getting her rudder repaired. It broke in a storm, but the men fixed up something to take its place. They called it a jury rudder.
Lars’s tanker looks very different from a freighter. She is long and low and has two houses. One is midships, and the officers’ quarters and wheelhouse are there. The crew lives in the other house at the stern.
Between the two houses the deck is so low that waves often wash over it, and so there has to be a high bridge called a walkaway or a catwalk.
Lars says his particular tanker carries “clean” oil. By that he means oil that has been refined into different grades of gasoline. “Dirty” oil is crude oil just the way it comes out of the wells. Lars is a tankerman and a seaman. He has taken a special examination for his job. He knows all the ways to pump different kinds of oil in and out of the tanks on a ship. He knows how to keep gasoline from exploding. He has learned to use special equipment. For instance, he never goes down to clean a tank on his ship without an oxygen mask and a lifeline. The lifeline is tied around him so that a seaman on deck can haul him up if fumes in the tank knock him out.
Like most seamen, Lars has travelled all over the world. In China he has seen junks and sampans. He has seen fishing boats in Portugal with big eyes painted on the bows because sailors thought that helped the boats to see their way. Eyes of the same kind have been painted on ships for hundreds of years in many other places, even in Chesapeake Bay.
OUTRIGGER. Long ago South Sea Islanders sailed great distances, guiding themselves by the stars. The outrigger at the side gives their small vessel balance in rough water.