Review of John McPhee's Cargo
Deutschlandfunk, Editorial Office of the Book Market "Captain, have you seen any sailing boats recently?" "No." "But you should. A mast complete with rigging hangs from their anchor.” Their names are Andy Chase, Dirty Shirt or Terrible Terry. They are machinists, second officers or able seaman. They have legs like beer kegs, they smile once a month and they don't know friendship. Sometimes, when they've ridden banana boats long enough, they know all about bananas. Except how they speak. They make $30,000 for six months of work at sea and throw coins into the water as they cross the equator. Your commander is the captain, the absolute ruler as long as you are on board. The only exception: In the Panama Canal, pilots have unrestricted authority. Most of the time, however, the captain obeys the instructions of local pilots elsewhere, no matter how idiotic they may be. insurance risk. In "Cargo", the report by John McPhee on the South American voyage of one of the last US merchant ships, the name of the captain is Washburn. And Washburn said, "Your worst enemy can be your insurance agent. If I'm in Borneo and someone comes on board with a spear in his hand and a bone in his nose and says he's the pilot, he's hired.” McPhee, who spends half the year at Princeton University, was also hired Literature of facts teaches. The other half he drives through the world and researches the facts for his literature. It has now been published in the New Yorker magazine for 25 years, and in most cases later as a book. over the years more than twenty reports have appeared: on the geology of California, on the straightening of the Mississippi River, on orange farmers in Florida. Most recently, McPhee wrote a report on tires that, after reading it, one felt as if one knew almost everything there was to know about this type of rubber. And it's similar with cargo and seamen on cargo ships.˙ It's a journey of the third kind on a dying genre: there are hardly any US merchant ships left, the seamen are almost all between fifty and sixty, too old to fight pirates chance to have. pirates? Yes, pirates loitering on speedboats all along Latin American shores, attacking ships at night, threatening sailors with submachine guns and rummaging through containers for TV sets. Captain Washburn's provision for these fellows is a flare pistol with a chrome barrel firing golf-ball sized flares. Also on board: hazardous waste, a load of starving horses, four thousand seven hundred bags of cellulose acetate flakes, twenty tons of hormones for poultry. And a lot more, which McPhee also lists in his obsession with detail. obsession with detail at all: This reportage is often more than thorough. Pages of explanations about weather faxes and gyrocompasses, about maritime officer's handbooks, satellite navigation and sea coasts, about three centimeter radar, north radar and ten centimeter radar. Or quotes from Charles Darwin, who traveled the same route a hundred and fifty years earlier. All pretty ungainly for New Journalism, but McPhee isn't Tom Wolfe. And it doesn't want to be either. But McPhee is a master of structure. Imperceptibly, he pushes his report forward: Washburn is talking to his ship on the bridge, one page further the ruler of the world seas gets lost in the roundabout in his hometown because he has no sense of direction on land. McPhee writes what Andy Chase, Dirty Shirt and Terrible Terry do during their 80-hour workweeks, how they sweat in engine rooms, how they slam onto the port wing in a Force 12 wind. And why are they doing all this. Stupid question for the money. A first officer can earn as much as $70,000 a year. Half a year work, half a year playing golf. McPhee describes union regulations in as much detail as the mafia's narcotics smuggling ruses. He writes why American shipyards no longer build merchant ships, that it is better - that is, cheaper - to register a ship in the Republic of Vanuatu, that the Chevron fleet is 56 percent Liberian and that no Texaco ship is under flies the American flag. Like a montage, McPhee writes about people, things and the sea. A fictional sociology of seafaring, a literature of facts that no one can easily fool him. Cargo is a book to be read as an appetizer. Because McPhee now seems to have found a publisher in Klett-Cotta - or the publisher the author - who wants to publish more books. Next up is a translation of Levels of the Game; a report from 1969 about a tennis match between Arthur Ash and Clark Graebner, which is still considered the pinnacle of American sports journalism. But Washburn's monologues are as brilliant as Ash's backhand: How much list a ship can take, how an extreme storm wave develops - the captain knew the most magnificent ships that have sunk somewhere and of which no one has ever heard again. Because gyrocompasses have to work. If they don't work, east becomes south, north becomes west. Then the next day it is in the newspaper that a freighter has lost plutonium, oil or simply explosive capsules. But not every ship that goes missing is a victim of the forces of nature, says McPhee, the intent listener who now knows the tricks of the trade like an insider. Thanks again to Washburn, Chase, Dirty Shirt and Terrible Terry. McPhee: “Not every (ship) sinks due to collisions or navigation errors. Crews were brought out of lifeboats who had packed suitcases and packed lunches with them. Suppose South Africa is in dire need of oil because of an embargo and is willing to pay freight rates at any rate. You disguise the supertanker by painting a false name on the bow, send it to a South African port, unload the Persian crude oil, you leave South Africa, open the external valves to replace the oil with water, pack your bags, get ready some sandwiches and leaves the valves open until the ship sinks. If you follow this scenario, nobody will give you the prize for an original idea. You might collect the insurance money for the ship and maybe also for the 'oil' that went down with it. Maybe it will have to be explained why there was no oil stain.”
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