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Article
24
May 2013
I
n a storm,
Lost in time, in very deep…
Or in the wild cold of a winter, you
are in your cabin…
Alone ...
Sitting down and thinking,
You know, there are such boring gloomy
days…
It is such a day.
I ask myself ...
Waves of the sea;
indicates the severity of a wind blowing
or a long-term missing?
I remember my first days at sea…
Year is 1974...
I am together with Captain Tosun on-
board a ship named Eskişehir.
He shouts from the Bridge with his
baritone voice:
"Since two days, I see the same light-
house on starboard beam,
Speed up this damn ship! .. "
Wind force is 8; steam-powered main
engine is full ahead; but ship’s speed over
the ground is simply “zero’”...
How says the poet;
"Listen,
the earth is breathing ... "
* * *
M
y eyes searching the sun in
a sky covered by dark gray
clouds…
Even a glimpse of the sun
showing the face through the thick clouds
Giving us a strange peace, such as the
seven colors of the rainbow; despite the
sorrow multiplying foams..
Do you know? Sailor feels a pain, deep
in his heart, in such weathers.
Accelerated heartbeat, appetite is cut.
Can not sleep...
This situation is often experienced by
sailors, so he/she is familiar with it, it is a
way of life ...
Engineer, does not leave the engine
room, and deck officers does not want to
leave the bridge, though.
The winter of 1982 ...
43,000-DWT bulk carrier ship, trying
to proceed with swings and rolls in a
weather of 8-9 Beaufort, in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean. Cargo is corn, laden
from Norfolk and bounded for Rostock…
Evereything seems OK in safety docu-
ments bot however, the ship is simply a
rust-bucket…
An old, neglected, “ bad” ship ...
Location, bridge,
Weather reports, continuously broadcast-
ing gale warnings of strength 12.
Captain, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer,
Radio Officer of the Watch Officer and
Captain Dursun, who is an unschooled
practical deck officer, nicknamed as Jack-
al, gathered. All restless, all anxious...
Not enough, Chief cook steps in with a
hurry…
"Below, Sir; pots, plates are clashed,
glasses are all broken…What shall we
do, Sir...?"
Last weather report being revised and
deciding what to do upon…
The Captain constantly eyes the barome-
ter. Tapping with his finger, and reading ..
"Hey, it is falling too fast"
Captain, likes to double check the ba-
rometer on the bridge with the one in his
cabin. Asks Captain Dursun to do it.
"Captain Dursun,"
he says.
"Go and tap the barometer in my
cabin."
Captain Dursun, nodding, leaves the
bridge.
A few seconds later the door opens again.
Dursun stretches his head in:
"Sir,"
he says,
"Shall I read it after tapping? .."
Fog descends to the sea ...
At dusk, while evening arrives early…
Just woke up ind the morning,
while
sunshine hurts our eyes…
Nothing but all fire of love, longing,
yearning in the hearts of yours, mine, and
all sailors’.
Seamanship…
Not snowfall, not blizzard, neither rain
nor storms…
It is the color of love and passion.
A passion whose abandonment is very
difficult!
* * *
S
ea calms down, I look into the
sky with my head up for a long
while.My heart overflows; I
want to sing a song loudly with
an indescribable enthusiasm…
There are not so many sea songs of ours;
due to the the fact that we are not a na-
tion of the sea. Even there are a number
of existing, theme is always loneliness
and longing. On watch, where loneliness
returns to dreams, there is always a love-
ly one in the songs that comes out from
the heart…This lovely one is pain in the
heart of the sailor, smoke in his head,
photograph between the pages of his
book, It is a song, a ballad, a poem spo-
ken out towards the endless horizons…
The fact that it as difficult enough to be a
sailor as to be waiting at the port.
If Sailor's heart bleeds, the heart that is
waiting for him is bleeds, too...
In one ofhis poems, which was written
from the lips of a waiting heart; Greek
poet Kavafis points out;
"You won’t find a new country, won’t
find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
there is no ship for you, there is no
road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this
small corner,”
The poet puts the point as follows:
" you’ve destroyed it everywhere else
in the world. "
This id a poetic way of saying “Stop the
nonsense fight of life; if you can not be
happy with me, you can not be happy
with no one, either!” to the Seaman!
n
“If can be not happy with me,
You can be happy with no one!”
Süleyman Savaş