UNDERWAY. There’s a universe condensed in that one word. To the uninitiated it simply means getting your boat away from the dock. For those that toil, sweat, prosper, and die on the endless blue gauntlet it means everything. Underway – leaving the normal life behind; a life most sailors are not interested in keeping in the first place. Underway – looking for storybook excitement; enormous waves crashing on the bow, starlight canvas nights, strange and foreign lands. Underway – searching for something that doesn’t exist long after you lost your way. Underway – lost in repetition, numb to catastrophe, salt in your veins.

SALT. Responsible for life itself. Without salt our bodies would not function. Our early empires would not have thrived. Our food would spoil. Life as we know it would not exist. Just as salt is the very lynchpin that binds us all together, so it is for the sailor. The smell of salt in the air gives a sailor a clear head. The salt on the wooden vessel helps preserve certain timbers, while salt on a steel vessel will slowly lead to catastrophe. Why is it that the image of an old sailor conjures the term “old salt”? It is these old salts that preserve sailors’ history the world over. These men are essential.

Old salts are the ones with all the stories – proverbial storehouses of knowledge, wisdom, and bullshit all rolled into one.  The stories they choose to tell are always convincing.  The factuality of the story really isn’t important.  What’s important is that it is good.  The best stories are the ones that have just enough credibility to make the audience believe they happened. 

Mister Kemper is an old salt. It isn’t a title he would give to himself, but it is a title he wears well. His eyes are cold and grey. His head and face are covered with matted, white hair. His clothes are weathered; frayed by overexposure to the elements. Two of his fingers are missing on his left hand, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he comfortably grasps a cold beer. While his left hand is used to smoothly raise a glass from the bar to his cracked lips, his right hand stays firmly placed on the bar to keep himself steady. He stared at the floor for a while, then slowly gazed up at me three bar stools down. We were the only people at the bar. It was 1030 on a Tuesday morning, so maybe we were the only ones desperate enough to need a bar at that hour. No introduction was given. He wasn’t even talking directly to me. Hell, he may not have noticed I was there. His desire to speak had nothing to do with my intention to listen. I am fairly confident he would’ve finished his story even if I walked out halfway through. But when you hear a story like this one, you stay through to the end.

Captain Mark Fleming was a mean son of a bitch. In fact, he was the meanest Captain I ever had the displeasure of working under. For all my years of sailing on freighters, Captain Fleming made all the other miserable asshole Captains pale in comparison. Nothing you could do would satisfy him. If he gave you a task that he wanted done in two hours, and it took you forty-five minutes to finish, he’d slap you across the back of the head and demand why it took so goddamn long. He wasn’t gentle, either. His big ass hands must’ve weighed about ten pounds apiece. And he wasn’t afraid to use them. He put more bruises on my body during that six months than Cassius Clay put on Sonny Liston.

I’d had Captains that would rough you up before, but this was different. One time he took the Third Mate, new kid straight out of Kings Point, out to the poop deck for a little talk. And when I say this, this kid hadn’t been onboard more than 24 hours. Anyhow, Captain Fleming was a graduate of Mass Maritime. He didn’t like anybody that didn’t come from his alma mater. I happened to be stowing some mooring lines about twenty feet away so I saw what happened. Captain Fleming got six inches from that kid’s face and said “if you say one god damned thing to me over the next couple of months that doesn’t begin with ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Captain’ then you will be doing all your cock sucking with a toothless mouth.” The kid looked at him, blinked, and said “What exactly does that” BLAM! That fucker took his right bear paw out wide and did a haymaker against that kid’s face that sent six teeth flying onto the deck. I know it was six because I’m the one that cleaned up the mess. We fixed him up the best we could and it took him about a month before he could actually eat or talk again. But guess what? He didn’t forget that lesson. Every time he had to talk to the Captain it began with “I’m thowwy to boffer fwew, Cap-fin…” Hell, I could tell a hundred stories just like that. But you get the point. He was a mean bastard.

Anyhow, we were due to pull in to Somerset to offload our coal from down the coast. It was December and cold as all hell. We were still a good twelve hours from port when Captain Fleming’s voice came bellowing through the PA. “Now all hands, lay to the crew mess. All hands, crew mess.” Unfortunately for myself and the rest of the crew, we knew exactly what to expect. When Captain Fleming called for all hands, it was to chew our asses good for something we had no control over. Sure as shit, that’s what this was.

After two more crew members, the Captain took a break.  Not because he wanted to, but because he had to.  He was so damned angry that his entire body shook.  I’ve never seen such a thing.  He grabbed a cup of coffee from one of the tables and shouted, “Where the hell are the watch standers?!?”  As if by magic they all spilled in from the passageway outside the mess deck.  They’d all been standing at the door waiting to come in.  Too scared to enter and not dumb enough to run away.  Where the hell could they hide on the Captain’s ship?  That would only make things worse.

             With four fresh bodies in the room and some coffee in his system, he seemed renewed.  “Now,” he said towards the watch standers, “did your cock loving watch reliefs tell you what was going on?”  They all nodded slowly in unison.  “Good, then you know what I’m going to ask you and you know the consequence for insubordination.”  He walked up to the fifth person in line.  That fifth person happened to be me.  Turning towards the new crop he said, “you all get to go last. It will make you think about your answers!”

             He looked me up and down.  Then he said to me quietly, “Kemper, you piece of shit, I’m going to hit you so goddamn hard my fist will come out your asshole.”  Then he yelled at the top of his voice, spittle flying into my face, “Now tell me who is sabotaging MY SHIP!!!”  I tensed.  I tried not to but it’s just instinct.  And right as his fist was rearing back, I heard, “I’m thowwy to boffer fwew, Cap-fin, but fere’s sumfin’ you haff to fee!”

             “WHAT THE HOLY FUCKING CHRIST, THIRD!!!”  The Third Mate was jabbering and pointing out the porthole on the starboard side.  “’I’m thowwy to boffer fwew, Cap-fin, but but but…” The Captain’s eyes bulged out of the sockets, sweat covered his brow.  “You’d better have something important to say, because if you are stalling me I’m going to make you wish you’d never crawled out of your mother’s….” but he never finished his sentence.  Just then we heard our ship’s whistle blow and the entire ship violently lurch forward.  Shit flew everywhere.  When we recovered, I saw the Captain laying in front of me, his massive right hand clenching his chest.  White foam was coming out of his mouth and he was gurgling, “cock sucking, dick licking, mother fuhhhhhhh…”  

            And that was how he went.  Massive heart attack when we ran aground.  Amazingly nobody else was hurt.  A few scrapes and bumps but overall we were ok.  The Chief Cook lost his job, even though it obviously wasn’t his fault.  They actually have a fucking memorial for Captain Fleming at Mass Maritime.  You should go check it out sometime.  When they built it, I gathered up most of the crew and we took turns pissing on it.  One at a time.  Lined up in the exact same order he had us in the mess room.  Good riddance.

             The other funny thing about it is, we never figured out what the hell he was talking about with his sabotage.  We had to answer to the company and everybody else under the sun, but none of us could put it together.  I guess it doesn’t matter why he thought we were sabotaging the ship.  Live like an asshole, die like an asshole. 

            Once he finished his story he stared at the ceiling for a good minute or two.  I could tell he was tired.  It was well past noon and we both had put down about six beers each.  He looked down at his right hand, still firmly gripping the bar, and let out a raspy cough.  He put a few dollars next to his glass and shuffled out the door.  

 Fair winds and following seas, Mister Kemper.  

– Captain Z