Lenin’s love of ships

Comfortably voyaging on the Dunai River (ht sk).

 

On the radicals’ walk

One of the many advantages of plotting world domination on our radicals’ walk are the close encounters with ships entering and leaving Newcastle harbour.

When the ships enter the harbour, we are but a few metres away:

Of course, it had to be a Chinese coal tanker:

 

Two new travel stories: The Hansa Run and Red Petrogard

From my semi-nomadic existence: ‘Six Places to Visit in Red Petrograd’ is over at Aussie Travel Advice , while ‘The Hansa Run’ is on Voyages on the Left.

 

 

What is the name of the port of St Petersburg?

Warms your heart … of course, you can see this only if you depart Leningrad by ship:

 

Publications: Gottwald in Monthly Review; the greasy palms of harbour pilots

Some shameless self-promotion, but two new and somewhat different publications:

1. A piece on Norman Gottwald, a pioneering Marxist biblical scholar, in that great lefty journal, Monthly Review.

2. And something on harbour pilots, cigarette cartons and container ships – called ‘Greasing Palms’ – at Aussie Travel Advice.

 

Sex on the high seas?

Over at Voyages on the Left …

 

Ship’s log: voyages on the left

After much delay and some editing, my travel blog, Voyages on the Left,  is well under way. For now, a ship’s log is the focus – with a pic or two of me acting like a complete tool (and cp) singing karaoke with a Filipino crew in the middle of the Pacific.

 

Norm Gottwald in New Zealand?

Does Norman Gottwald, author of The Tribes of Yahweh, really live in Napier, New Zealand? Is he really the owner of all the port equipment in Napier, moonlighting as a Marxist biblical scholar?

 

Life before biblical studies: Greenpeace activist and super-tanker engineer

As promised, some pictures of Gitte Buch-Hansen before she became a respectable biblical scholar – even the text comes from Gitte (or most of it). This is becoming a small series, after John Lyons and his daredevil North Sea oil rig adventures and my less thrilling efforts in a flotation suit. But I reckon Gitte’s story will take some beating.

The first pictures are from a campaign against the A-weapon at sea:

I used to work as an engineer for Greenpeace before I got my certificate for the merchant navy.

Putting our lives on the line in those Greenpeace inflatables (OK, the ed admits he added this line):

(Beat that anyone – or this)

(They were a hairy bunch, those Greenpeace activists):

This is from my first ‘real’ ship: Karama Maersk, a supertanker (in fact, the second largest on the seven seas at that time). We had been in dock at Dubai (the pictures tell about the size of the ship), loaded crude oil in the Persian Golf, and were now waiting outside the Emirates for a final destination (or for the oil prices to rise).

No booze onboard, just a lot of time to kill. I had the night watch (with nothing to do) which I spent deck fishing together with the Thai crew. We had more than 25 fishing lines that had to be checked regularly. I happened to catch a shark, which I – with a little help from my Thai friends – dropped in the captain’s swimming pool. He didn’t like the joke. Having gone to sleep, the first officer woke me up in the morning and I was ordered to move it immediately … at least, the crew enjoyed the show. I gave it to the Thai cook and he made a splendid dinner …

Now that should be required training for all biblical scholars.

 

Force 9 on the North Sea

It’s the sort of thing you dream about, long for: the infamous North Sea delivering one of its signature storms while you are on a ship. And since this one – the Dana Sirena – is a small ship, you can feel every towering wave, every crunch into the next wall of water, every shuddering thunk that runs through the ship, every shiver as the solid iron of the ship flexes and wobbles and shivers in the sea. Force 9, shouted the woman on deck to me, trying to be heard above the screeching wind – and we weren’t even outside the protected zone of Esbjerg harbour (from where we were headed to Harwich).  I’ve been in a Force 11, out from New Zealand, but that was a larger ship which took the punishment a little better than this one. On one of the last occasions were we allowed on deck, I stood on the ninth level, gripping whatever I could with both hands because of the roll, ducking spray from the bow wave, in fact seeing the bow wave threaten to come up and over the deck. But then the doors were closed and we were banned from the deck. I tried to read in my cabin, but found the words swimming and my head getting dizzy. I tried to stand and was almost knocked over by a double slam. So I simply went to bed, spreading myself out so that I wouldn’t be thrown to the floor. And instead of instinctually resisting the violent movement of the ship, trying to right myself, I let myself go with the rolling, bucking ship. In the morning I was one of the few at breakfast; by contrast, a long line of ashen-faced people with white, crusty lips, were lining up at the reception desk for free seasickness tablets.