AUCKLAND, Aotearoa – Break time. I stood by the coffee machine, waiting for my black coffee, while looking around the modern cafeteria. My colleagues in their bright yellow vests were busy eating their lunch. They came from various parts of the world, the majority were Filipinos though. „Where are you from?“ one of my colleagues asked me. He was next in line.
„Germany,“ I replied with a smile. Having worked in the workshop for two weeks, not all of my colleagues knew me. „Ahhhh okay.“ The colleague pointed with his thumb behind him. „Hector here worked in Germany.“ My gaze went behind his back to a short Filipino. With his grey hair and stubbles, I guessed him around the end-fifties. He wore a dark green woolen cap and glasses. The wrinkles around his eyes told me that he laughed a lot.
„Really?“ I asked. „Where did you work?“ Hector stayed silent for a moment, looking at me with wise eyes and a half-smile. Was he scrutinizing me?
His half-smile turned into a grin. „My home port was in Hamburg,“ he said, nodding. „But I also have been in Bremen and Bremerhaven.“ „Ohh so you are a sailor?“ I noted. Now that I thought of it, he really looked like a sailor.
The grin turned into a heart-warming laugh. „Yes, I worked on a German cargo ship for fourteen years; oh, no wait, my first year was on a Greek ship, and there was a year on a Spanish ship…“
Interesting. Immediately I felt a rush of curiosity. The best stories always found me, not the other way around.
ABOVE: Container ship under Panamanian flag anchoring in the port of Auckland.
„How was it?“ I followed up. A rather vague question. He laughed again. „Ohhh, it was good.“ He nodded, and his gaze wandered somewhere behind me. Then he fixated me with his eyes and captivated me with his huge smile. He nodded again. „Yes, it was very good.“
At that moment, my friendship with Hector began. And in the following weeks, in between our work constructing metal panels, I got to know Hector’s story.
Ironically, around that time, I had just finished reading ‚The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea‚ by Mishima Yukio, a gift from one of my closest friends. So my mind was already filled with romantic notions about the sailor’s life.
Exotic places, crazy adventures in the ports of the world, meeting interesting characters – friends and romances – connecting intimately with these strangers… and in a couple of days, all of it gone. Gone because of the closing time window, left on the wide ocean with only the collected memories. Memories that value so much because of the pureness of each moment and the secludedness on the open sea.
There was something melancholic, as well as beautiful, in this romantic notion of a sailor’s life. But how did it compare to reality?
As I listened to Hector, it became clear that his experiences were about to offer me a glimpse into the real life at sea. What followed were stories that were even better than fiction.
So, without further ado, here is a collection of the short stories Hector shared with me:
ABOVE: Auckland City harbor.
The First Voyage
„So how did you get into the sailor’s life?“ I asked one day.
„Ohhh when I was young, maybe twenty, I went to become a mechanic. During the education, I actually applied for a military program. You could get a military education with the US Navy in California, since there is an agreement with the Philippines.“ Hector nodded, remembering.
Then he looked at me; „And I got accepted!“ The nodding turned to head-shaking. „But no, no, no – I couldn’t go. I was too scared to go to the tests… so I didn’t go.“
„A bit later, a friend approached me and told me that he could organize ourselves a job on a boat. They had advertised it everywhere in the mechanic school, so I thought, ‚Why not? Seeing the world, traveling, that sounds good.‘ So I signed up for a shipping company, and my first trip was with a Greek cargo ship from Portland to Hong Kong.“
„Were you scared on your first trip?“
„Ohhhh yes, the first months on the ship were hard. Me and the two friends I went with, we were homesick. That was the first time for us to be so far away from the Philippines. And on the ship, you feel lonely. Back then, you couldn’t contact your family easily.“ He paused for a moment. „And that feeling wasn’t made better by our first storm.“
He nodded slightly. „It was tough. We were near the Mariana Trench. The waves were meters high, and the ship sunk and fell heavily on them. Even though it was daytime, it was dark like the night. I couldn’t sleep for four days because I was so scared of shipwrecking! We all heard the stories.“
„After the storm subsided, one of my friends wanted to go home. He had enough of the sailor’s life. The captain tried to convince him to stay, but he didn’t want to, he just wanted to leave. The next stop came, and he was out. Only me and my other friend stayed.“
He nodded again. „It wouldn’t be our last storm.“
ABOVE: Container ship preparing to depart the harbor
The Cults of Japan
The more we spoke, the more Hector revealed about the exotic places he had been to. Here was a man who had literally sailed the Seven Seas, been to every continent (besides Antarctica) and got a taste of every climate zone and many cultures.
In our chats, he told me how he sailed down the Amazon in a river cargo, throwing food and cigarettes to half-naked indigenous people in their canoes. He reminisced about the voyages to Latin America, which where his best due to the warmth and love for life of the Latinos – a memory I could relate to. And he had passed places I never even heard of. Where on Earth are the Midway Islands?
I wanted to know more about the people who lived in those places, especially in countries I planned to visit.
„Have you been to Japan?“ I asked once.
Hector laughed. „Ohhhh yes, I have been to Japan. Yeah, that’s a good story.“ He nodded slightly, a habit when he was remembering the old times. „We arrived in Japan and had some time to kill because the ship wouldn’t be unloaded until the next morning. So me and a couple of guys from the crew went on land to see what was there to do in Japan.“
„When we came down the ramp, there were some beautiful Japanese ladies in white dresses waiting for us. They approached us and wanted to show us something. Since they didn’t really speak English, and our English wasn’t the best either, we didn’t understand what they wanted from us.“
He looked at me with a roguish grin. „But since they were beautiful, we all agreed: ‚Ohhh, let’s just see what they have to show us.‘ So we went with them. They escorted us to a van, and we started driving.“
„We were already driving a long while through the Japanese countryside when I started to think: ‚Oh man, we have no clue where they are going to take us. We didn’t understand them.‘ It had been afternoon when we landed, and now it was already starting to become night. ‚We also have no clue how we get back. We are totally in their hands… and what’s worse, the other crew members don’t even know where we went!‘“ He chuckled.
„It was night when we arrived at a lake. There were other people in white clothes waiting for us, men and women. We all stepped out of the van, and they brought us to the banks of the lake, where one of the beautiful ladies who had accompanied us, started some sort of ritual.“
„We had to take off our clothes and step naked into the lake. It was like some sort of baptism. We didn’t know what else to do, because we were totally in their hands, so we did it. One by one, we stepped into the lake and followed the ritual. It was really strange.“
„Then they gave us white clothes too, and we had to sign a paper. It was in Japanese, so we didn’t know what it said. But after we signed the paper, we all got together and had some food.“ He laughed. „I guess, I am now part of their religion.“
„After this strange ceremony, they drove us back. We arrived at the ship early in the morning. The other crew members were already waiting for us when we went up the ramp with bowed-down heads. ‚Where have you guys been?!‘ they asked us. ‚We don’t want to talk about it,‘ we said and went straight to our cabins.“
„We never talked again about what happened In Japan.“
We both laughed.
ABOVE: Container ship heading out to the Pacific Ocean.
Pirates and Peru
Since he had frequently passed the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, a place notorious for its Somalian pirates, I had asked Hector once if he had encountered, indeed, pirates on his voyages. Back then Hector had shaken his head.
„No,“ he had told me, „not really. One night we passed the Straits of Malacca, near Malaysia, when our officer radioed that a speed boat was approaching our flank. We activated our floodlights and pointed them on the approaching vessel. They knew that we noticed them, so they turned around and fled.“ He shrugged.
„Probably those were pirates, they operate in this area. But we don’t know.“
So far so good, no pirate stories from Hector. Well, that’s what I thought at this point.
One afternoon, I was sitting in the cafeteria, having lunch and chatting with my dear friend Luis, when Hector came over. Normally he ate at a table with the more experienced Filipinos.
„Hola amigos!“, he said with his typical grin. He had picked up some Spanish on his trips to Latin America and was dropping bits and pieces every now and then. Sometimes he exclaimed random stuff like: „Ahhh las mujeres!“ (Ahhh, the women!), „Time for café negro!“ (Time for black coffee!), „Mucha cerveza!“ (A lot of beer!). It always made me chuckle.
He sat down, leaned back and casually bit in his apple, listening to our conversation. We were just talking about South America. Out of nowhere he stated, „Ohhh, that reminds of Peru, when we chased after some guys on our ship with an axe.“ His tone was as casual as his posture.
What the heck.
„You did what?!“, I asked. Luis looked equally baffled.
Hector grinned at us. „Yeah, it was this night in Peru. Me and another crew member were on guard duty, when the second officer approached us. He was very nervous. ‚Guys,‘ he said, ‚I think there is someone on the deck. We have to do something about it!’.“
„‚Oh, but what do we do?‘, we had asked. ‚We have to chase them away!‘, said the second officer. So we looked for some weapons. The others took some crow bars or something and I took an emergency axe. Then we went down to deck level to see what was going on.“
„When we looked through the window of the hatch into the night, we really could see two silhouettes sneaking around the deck. We were all scared, because we didn’t know who these guys were.“ Hector pretended to be shaking.
„‚We have to do it,‘ the second officer had said, ‚On three we open the hatch and run at them shouting!‘“
„And that’s what we did.“
„On three, the officer opened the hatch and we ran at them screaming!“, Hector threw up his arms with an imaginary axe in his hands. „‚Ahhhhhh!’, we had screamed, running at them.“
„The two silhouettes also screamed ‚Ahhhhhh!’, and jumped overboard!“, Hector laughed. „The cargo ship was at least three stories high, so they were really scared to jump down into the ocean!“
„The next day, we informed the captain about what had happened. He scolded all of us for doing something that stupid. It was dangerous to approach intruders, because who knows who they could have been?“
„It turned out that those were two Peruvians who tried to steal some rope from our ship,“ Hector laughed, took a final bite of his apple, and walked away.
Luis and I sat there astonished. So no pirates, but Peruvian thieves.
What a lunch break.
Those three stories mark only the starter of many stories Hector told me in the course of our conversations, the tip of the iceberg. Since Hector had so many adventures to share, I decided to visit Hector at his home and have an interview over some beers.
And what adventures he would tell me!
Stories about drug lords in South America, collisions on the open sea, a storm with precarious consequences, stow aways and moments of bliss.
Stay tuned for Part Two.
