On 31 January 2017 at 22:39, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

On Jan 31, 2017, at 8:15 AM, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

couple of things to note:
it was small (6500 tons or so)
it was old (originally built in 1914 IIRC - it held the Guinness record for oldest ocean going passenger liner when I was on it) [1]
it had four incarnations - as a cargo ship on the east coast of the US, a pilgrim ship in 1950ish, a luxury cruise liner for the Italians from the 50s and the bookship I worked on from 1977 I think.

So it was essentially an oceangoing library?

Essentially, yes.  Strictly a bookshop, hence the bookship bit, although we did have a crew library as well where I spent many happy hours and if nothing else discovered Kalevala which I fell in love with.  Even have a Finnish copy next door along with at least two English translations...

Of course, reading Kalevala in South East Asia probably didn't quite do the atmosphere justice.  But then again I spent a Christmas in Nigeria and vividly recall singing "In the Bleak Midwinter" at one point which was interesting in its juxtaposition.

 

Cool! How would ANY SANE HUMAN get bored on one of those??? (At

Well, I didn't.  Not in two years.  And, let's be honest, cried when I left.  (I flew out of Cairns having held it together through the big quayside sendoff and as we took off flew over the port and saw the ship diminishing beneath me...)   (Of course, it was the folk I was leaving behind, not just the ship.  Really.)

least until you’d read every book!   Twice  :-)

I do recall getting lost in a bookhold (the stores for the shop down in the bowels) once when I discovered a biography of Disraeli I think it was.  I also got sunburnt down there.  Quite badly on my lower legs and chest.  Which was very odd until I twigged.  I was on firewatch sitting on an upturned paintbucket between the metal racks when Filippino welders were replacing a bit of hull [1].  There they were dressed only in shorts, flipflops and welding masks so I thought my overalls were a bit of overkill.  Had no idea arc welders put out so much UV until it was a bit too late...

(still they let me have a go at welding and cutting at one point which was pretty cool and not something I'm generally allowed to do) :-)

tc

[1] I may have bored with you with this story before, so forgive me if I have, but the bit they were replacing was a section below the waterline.  The ship, as I said, was the "oldest ocean going passenger liner" so unsurprisingly we spent quite a lot of time in the deck department chipping rust, needlegunning it smooth and then painting it over.  One guy went *through* the hull doing this while we were at sea.  I was on the team rushed there to help put a bung in a then a box around that and then concrete in the box to hold it till we were next in port.  Quite exciting although water rushing in through a grapefruit sized hole is NOT something I particularly need to see again.  Needless to say, next dry dock, that whole section got replaced!

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